Smoking quasars: A new source for cosmic dust

Although dust is widely found in astrophysics, forming dust is surprisingly difficult. The proper combination of low temperature (<2000 K) and high density is mainly found in the winds of late-type giant and supergiant stars that, as a result, are the most efficient sources of dust known. Dust ejected from these stars into the interstellar medium has multiple important effects, including obscuring background objects and enhancing star formation. We show here that quasars are also naturally copious producers of dust, if the gas clouds producing their characteristic broad lines are part of an outflowing wind. This offers an explanation for the strong link between quasars and dust and for the heavy nuclear obscuration around many quasars and introduces a new means of forming dust at early cosmological times.