Outer space holds a lot of dust from comets and past collisions of celestial bodies. Some of them are attracted by gravity and fall to the earth without realizing it.
The latest research report to be published April 15, 2021 in the journal Earth & Planetary Science Letters, the earth every year receives a large amount of space dust. Dust attracted by Earth’s gravity is estimated from a comet.
If calculated in terms of weight, the amount of dust is estimated at 5,200 tons or 4,700 metric tons. The total weight is far greater than the meteorite rocks that reach the earth which is only 10 tons or 9 metric tons.
So far, although the amount of dust that reaches the earth is large, it is quite difficult to detect or trace its accumulation due to other dust contamination. In order to detect precisely and determine the accumulation that has occurred the researchers do this at the research station in Adélie Land, Antarctica, near the French-Italian Concordia research station.
There it rains quite frequently and very little terrestrial dust is stored. For more than 20 years, physicist at the Center National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France, Jean Duprat, and his colleagues made six expeditions to the area to collect particles.
“The space dust layer is well preserved in the region enough for researchers to estimate the amount that falls over the years,” he was quoted as saying. Live Science.
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The researchers excavated the massive snowfall and carried a layer of snow in a barrel weighing 20 kilograms to the laboratory at the research station. They carefully melt the snow and collect any remaining dust particles. The dust particles were filtered to separate from contaminant particles such as lint from the researchers’ snow gloves.
The results of extrapolating snow in central Antarctica, the researchers found dust. They are quite abundant in size between 30 and 200 micrometers. In comparison to the size of the average human hair is about 70 micrometers in diameter.
Because most of the space rock that hits Earth’s atmosphere burns, the researchers estimate that the volume of dust in space will generate a flux on the planet’s surface. In metallurgy, flux is a cleaning agent that prevents oxidation from forming on the surface of molten metal.
15,000 Ton
Researchers estimate that every year around 15,000 tons or 13,600 metric tons of space dust enter the Earth’s atmosphere. Like only a meteor, the amount of dust that succeeded in falling on the earth’s surface was only one-third.
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“About 80 percent of the dust may come from comets known as comets of the Jupiter period,” wrote Jean Dupart. “This is a comet with a short orbit controlled by the influence of Jupiter’s gravity. The other 20 percent of dust is most likely from asteroids,” he continued.
Duprat said the research aims to understand the flow of space material falling to Earth. So far, astrophysical and geophysical researchers argue, these space rocks may have brought many elements to planet Earth. Some theories argue that the elements and molecules of outer space may have been very important for the early development of life on earth.
(hay / G-1)
Editor : Aloysius Widiyatmaka
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