NASA may be endlessly fascinate with microbial life onfar - flung moons in our solar systemortesting powerful projectile boostersthat will propel humanity off its ancestral home , but there ’s still tons we do n’t hump about our own satellite — and cosmic detritus is one of those enigma .
What incisively is cosmic dust ? Well , it ’s in spades not the diddley you seem to be continually Swiffer - ing off your shelf . That ’s just dead remainder of you . Eos sayscosmic dust “ is mostly 4.6 - billion - yr - old leftovers from the messy accretion cognitive process of solar system formation , which the planet picks up as it expire through long - disintegrate comet tails and remainder of asteroid belt smash ups . ” Scientists reckon this junk plays an authoritative function in cloud organization and even fertilizing plankton , an essential construction block in the Earth ’s ecosystem — and 60 tons of it falls to the airfoil every 24-hour interval .
That ’s 24 African elephant ’s Charles Frederick Worth of ancient star hooey , or if you do n’t care the ideas of animals hang to Earth at final velocity , about 31 Cadillac Eldorados ( from 2002 ) . Scientists first thought the number could be anything between 0.4 and 110 tons , but a new paper put out in theJournal of Geophysical Researchsays the number is actually a courteous Goldilocks via media of 60 tons .
That ’s pretty unhinged , and also a numeral that ’s important to immobilize down so scientists can begin to more fine dissect what exactly cosmic debris means for life on Earth . [ EosviaPopular Science ]
Image viaMarcel Clemens / Shutterstock
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