Spinning dust

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In astronomy, spinning dust emission is a mechanism proposed to explain anomalous microwave emission from the Milky Way. The emission could arise from the electric dipole of very rapidly spinning (10–60 GHz) extremely small (nanometer) dust grains as suggested by Bruce T. Draine and Alex Lazarian in 1998, most likely polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The anomalous emission was first discovered as a by-product of Cosmic Microwave Background observations which make very sensitive measurements of the microwave sky which have to identify and remove contamination from the galaxy. The smallest dust grains are thought to have only hundreds of atoms.^[1]