Space dust

The dust on your mantelpiece may be more interesting than it appears at first swipe. Some of it may be from outer space. While that may not make much difference to your dust rag, some feel that extraterrestrial dust might help explain the cyclical nature of the Earth’s climate, says Ed Brook, assistant professor of geology and environmental science at Washington State University’s Vancouver campus.

Brook and his collaborators have developed a method to measure the extraterrestrial dust found in the ice cores taken at Vostok, Antarctica. It involves filtering the dust out of the ice core, a process that takes four days per sample, … » More …