Star Dust

2 Pages 449 Words

Star Dust


Have you ever wondered how many different objects and particles enter earth’s atmosphere everyday. The earth is growing fatter under continuous microscopic flurry of space specks. The earth gathers 100 tons of space dust everyday. These space particles come from all the over the universe, from the asteroids in the asteroid belt to pieces of distant planets from the dust that was there when our planet was created. By studying these dust particles, astrophysicists say we can learn about our cosmic roots. Cosmic particles are all around us, however, it is near impossible to tell it apart from all the earthly particles in the air. Such things as pollen, pollution, soil, human skin, etc. Not only is space dust hard to see it’s even harder to catch, they are the size of 100 micrometers (Or the width of a hair). To collect space dust scientist have turned to Antarctica. Where there are little to known of earth’s floating particles. The Amundsen-Scott South Pole station draws its drinking water from a well in a cavity of the never-ending ice. As the water is pumped up through a small hole on the surface, the water is heated and shot back down to melt more ice.
As the ice melts, it frees the space particles that were in the snowflakes. There was a lot of build up of particles on the well floor. Studying these particles was as easy as throwing a bucket down a hole. Another way dust particles are collected is to attach sticky film to a high altitude aircraft.
Once the Astrophysicist have captured the dust, they can determine how fast it entered the earth’s atmosphere thus telling us if it came from a comet, asteroids, or virginal stardust. The Astrophysicist determines the speed of the dust by putting the dust particle in an oven. They rise the temperature until the minerals in the dust particle start to evaporate. If the minerals evaporate at 901 degrees but not at 900 we know that the dust particle was heated to a ma...