
Tiny meteorites are everywhere. Here's how to find them [video] - DanBC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q3uNcJh4pc
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rm999
Cool video, but what a disappointingly inaccurate title.

Spoiler alert: they spent days finding metallic dust, cleaning the dust, and
sifting through the samples with a microscope. They shipped ~15-20 interesting
samples to Europe where an expert with an electron microscope analyzed each
sample. The expert presumably spent a lot of time analyzing each sample on his
expensive equipment and found zero meteorites.

The title insinuates it's easy to find meteorites with no specialized
equipment, but everything about the video contradicts this.

~~~
fouc
I don't think the video mentioned anything about an electron microscope.

Jon Larsen is basically an amateur scientist that figured out what
micrometeorites would look like by a process of elimination. Clearly a regular
microscope is sufficient for this.

The nice images from Jan Kihle are due to a camera/microscope system that
takes a snap shot at different focuses to make a composite picture. It
wouldn't be an electron microscope.

This is clearly within the range of amateurs if you have a microscope & the
book and just get good at eliminating unlikely samples.

~~~
TomK32
I was about to write "Let's leave the composite picture as an excercise for
the image processing class" but there's already software for this [Focus
stacking]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_stacking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_stacking))
and even some python code [https://github.com/sjawhar/focus-
stacking/](https://github.com/sjawhar/focus-stacking/)

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ishi
I distinctly remember having a book about nature-related experiments back in
the 1980s, which talked about using a magnet to collect metallic dust
particles, some of which could be micro-meteorites. I think it was a
translation of "Simple nature projects" by Hans Jürgen Press. Perhaps Jon
Larsen had the same book...

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patrickyeon
That was really enjoyable, and I expect my inspection/soldering microscope
would be up to this task if I had a roof to search and a few days to spare.

Here's the book shown if anybody else is looking for it:
[https://www.amazon.com/Search-Stardust-Micrometeorites-
Terre...](https://www.amazon.com/Search-Stardust-Micrometeorites-Terrestrial-
Imposters/dp/076035264X)

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SubiculumCode
I really enjoyed this video (and the null result is honest). Welcomes good
amateur science video!

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newman8r
I wonder if you could use convolutional neural networks and a microscope
mounted on some sort of x-y platform to hunt these down. just collect some
dust, spread it evenly on the platform and process it.

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spiderPig
Good to see The Verge investing in these types of articles instead of the
usual tech drama

~~~
themodelplumber
This journalist's voice sounds exactly like Tucker Gott, who runs a pretty
interesting channel on paramotoring.

[https://youtu.be/e4bovIUYvrY](https://youtu.be/e4bovIUYvrY)

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porphyrogene
I wonder how much extraterrestrial material is added to the Earth every year
and how that affects the geological cycle. They said that the "glass foam" on
the samples is unexplained, could it have been formed by their interaction
with particles in the atmosphere while in their molten state after entry?

~~~
itronitron
40,000 tons is added annually, not sure where they got the number from but
there is an summary here >> [https://gizmodo.com/did-you-know-that-earth-is-
getting-light...](https://gizmodo.com/did-you-know-that-earth-is-getting-
lighter-every-day-5882517)

~~~
porphyrogene
Thanks, that's something to go on. It's interesting that the referenced radio
hosts estimate that over twice as much mass is lost by hydrogen escaping the
atmosphere.

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Para2016
None of their samples contained micrometeorites, that must have been really
frustrating.

He said they lost a cool looking one during transfer with a wet toothpick,
they could try using micropipettes like some biology labs use.

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lightedman
If you don't live in a dusty area like a desert, put a bowl of water on your
roof for 24 hours. Come back and take a magnet to it, and put that under a
microscope. Easiest method to collect micrometeorites.

~~~
istjohn
According to the video, each square meter of Earth will get one micrometeorite
a year. So that bowl is just going to have terrestial dust after one day.

~~~
lightedman
That's just a statistical average. I've got about three grams of them, all
collected in the method I describe, over about 5 years.

