Colin Smith reports that bubbles acting like parachutes are deployed by some cosmic dust particles on their entry into Earth atmosphere, preventing them from burning up. This is the conclusion of a new study carried out by geoscientist, Matt Genge, from Imperial College London.
Cosmic dust particles originate from events such the arrival of comets in the inner solar system and collisions between asteroids, which pulverizes them into dust. Some make it through the rapid descent through Earth atmosphere, providing microscopic records of some of the earliest events in our solar system.
Cosmic dust particles hit the atmosphere at nearly 40,000 kilometers per hour, roughly 11 kilometers per second. They are intensely heated by collisions with molecules in the air. Many of these particles are completely destroyed by the heating process, turning into gas, which dissipates into the atmosphere. The ones that survive the descent melt to form tiny little droplets of magma, which Dr. Genge calls cosmic spherules, the width of a human hair.
Dr. Genge indicated that cosmic dust provides us with direct evidence of events that may have happened in our solar system billions of years ago. However, his study is showing that water-rich particles may be more likely to survive entry compared to dry ones.
Geoscientists now need to take this into consideration when they are re-constructing ancient cosmic events or trying to develop a more accurate picture of the geological make-up of our solar system.
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