[HN Gopher] Does space dust fall on the roof of my house?
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Does space dust fall on the roof of my house?
Author : firebaze
Score : 44 points
Date : 2024-08-05 20:28 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (astronomy.stackexchange.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (astronomy.stackexchange.com)
| andai wrote:
| I read about the magnet method when I was young. I always thought
| that was so cool. It never occurred to me until now that I never
| tried it!
| jmclnx wrote:
| Probably, but neutrinos definitely pass through your house (and
| you).
| throwway120385 wrote:
| That's horrible! What can we do to defend ourselves against
| this constant neutrino bombardment?
| btilly wrote:
| A lead suit helps.
|
| Of course you'd want it to be something like a light year
| thick. That may be impractical. Plus there are minor
| structural problems, such as how to stop it from
| spontaneously collapsing into a black hole.
| open_ wrote:
| Your comment makes me want to re-read the hitchhiker's
| guide.
| dakr wrote:
| As I recall from school, your lead suit would need to be
| more than 3 lightyears thick to make the chance of a
| neutrino (that was already heading towards you) going
| through you fall to 50%.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I don't have a SO account, so I'll post here. I'm having trouble
| finding the reference, but there's an IKEA in Sweden or Norway
| that is really far away from industrial pollution, and so gets
| basically no soot deposited on its perfectly white painted roof.
| Some intrepid amateur astronomer put 2 + 2 together and realized
| it's a perfect collection mechanism for space dust. They
| thoroughly cleaned the roof, then came back a week later and
| carefully collected the accumulated dust. Looking at it under a
| microscope confirmed minerals that only form in microgravity
| environments.
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| Reminds me of this hunt utilizing an English cathedral:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-66707859
| trte9343r4 wrote:
| Sahara dust or vulcanic ash has a global reach, and easily
| reaches Norway.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> confirmed minerals that only form in microgravity
| environments.
|
| So? That doesn't mean they landed on the roof from space. The
| really tiny stuff can be blown around. It may land on the
| ground at point A and then be blown onto a roof miles away at
| point B. This is why we should not use the simple math of a
| roof's size to determine the rate of material falling from
| space.
| jimhefferon wrote:
| Are you saying these did not originate in space? Isn't that
| what microgravity means?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| They originate in space but do not necessarily come
| directly from space. Stuff is landing on earth all the
| time. Much of it then becomes dust/sand and gets moved
| around. What appears on a roof can be new falls from space,
| but also space stuff blown from elsewhere. Take a an amount
| of topsoil or sand. Run a magnet over it and you will find
| tiny flecks of space rock.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Hmmm, so you say if a particle reaches a spot not in straight
| and shortest line from space then it does not count as a
| particle originated in space fallen on that spot? Could we
| have a wiggle room still? Like allowing trade winds carry it
| some limited km laterally, or such?
| buildsjets wrote:
| It was demonstrated to me a a young kid that running a strong
| magnet through beach sand would collect tons of black magnetite,
| at least some of which is likely meteorite derived.
| Bloating wrote:
| Clearly explains the crumbs around be office chair
| dredmorbius wrote:
| More likely the roof than your basement, though in the latter
| case, you'd likely not need me to tell you ...
|
| A prime meteorite and meteoric-dust hunting ground is Antarctica.
| With an ice cap that's kilometres thick, odds are high that all
| rocks, and much dust, found on the surface of the snow are
| meteoric in origin.
|
| 2018 story on that: "Hot on the trail of Antarctic meteorites"
| <https://www.snexplores.org/article/hot-trail-antarctic-meteo...>
|
| And yes, there's a global warming angle on this as well:
| "Thousands of hidden meteorites could be lost forever as they
| sink in Antarctic ice, taking their cosmic secrets with them"
| <https://www.livescience.com/space/meteoroids/thousands-of-hi...>
| (2024)
| einpoklum wrote:
| I thought everything was space dust, in the final reckoning of
| things, wasn't it?
| RIMR wrote:
| For anyone interested in an archive link of the meat of this:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240414181406/https://micro-met...
| jumploops wrote:
| The micro-meteorites.com website appears to be down, but you can
| see pictures from the book on the Internet Archive here[0]
|
| [0]https://archive.org/details/insearchofstardu0000lars/mode/1u..
| .
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