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32 A New Era they can survive their journey through the interstellar medium. Interstellar particles have been detected in the Earth’s atmosphere; some reach the surface without vaporizing.” We may have borrowed material from our nearest stellar neighbor. If the Alpha Centauri system is surrounded by a cloud of icy planetoids as our own solar system is believed to be, the two clouds may overlap. Science fiction author Ben Bova speculated that some of the comets we see in our skies originated in the Alpha Centauri system.** Physicist Freeman Dyson cited research showing that substantial numbers of objects from the star Beta Pictoris—ranging from dust grains to kilometer-sized bodies—pass through our solar system. A fraction of these objects will be captured into orbits around our Sun. These findings suggest that life adapted to vacuum has the potential to spread not only from world to world within our solar system, but far and wide through the galaxy.**