In Search Of Micrometeorites

The above image is what they call a micrometeorite, I snapped a pic of it at 400x with the Celestron LCD Digital Microscope. Tons of these things fall from space daily, some in your backyard, you have probably been hit by one, they are very cool, again you are looking at something from space that is a remnant from the building blocks of our solar system, some 4.5 billion years ago.

You too can be the proud owner of one of these, how do you go about collecting your own? well the best places to look are where they are most likely to gather, as they come down from space they for example land on your roof and are washed into your eavestrough by the rain and down to your downspout, those are great places to look, I've found many in those places.


Or you can put out a piece of paper for a few hours in your backyard and check it out later to see if there are any micrometeorites on it, now they are kind of small, anywhere from around 25-350 microns, a hair for example is 50-70 microns, but the good news, the metal micrometeorites are made up of iron or nickel or both so they are attracted to a magnet, just take a magnet out, run it over the paper and anything that sticks to it is a candidate to be a micrometeorite.


The above image is a 10x20 ft poly sheet I left out overnight on top of the mall roof I work at, came back in the morning carefully brushed off the debris into a large pail, and took the pail back to as I like to call it, the micrometeorite lab in my basement, I found the micrometeorite in the top image on this poly.


Up until now that's about as far as I was able to go, now with the microscope I'm able to actually see the round metal micrometeorite up close and personal, to see the scaring and pitting caused by the interaction with our atmosphere as the micrometeorite is falling to the ground.


The next step is to weed out stuff that may not be a micrometeorite, I do this with the help of my handy dandy Wal-Mart light magnifier combo, after all microscope time is expensive,..... not really just like saying that, through the magnifier I see a couple of possible not micrometeorites. After I remove them, I rub a small screwdriver back and forth on the magnet to magnetize it, then rub the screwdriver on the particles in question that may be micrometeorites, then it's off to the microscope.

Now you'll notice I've taken many pics to guide you though the complex procedure just in case you want to collect your own micrometeorites, but there is one pic I didn't manage to get....... the look on my Wife's face as she happened upon my lab while I was working my way through the dirt to find micrometeorites, if looks could kill, I'd be a dead man.

Wife " What .....are.....you.....doing?"

Me " Collecting micrometeorites"

I think she is cool with it now, I mean after I explained what a micrometeorite was and showed her some pics. I'll leave you with a video I took just after I found the above micrometeorite, just to show you what stuff looks like under a microscope, every thing is at 100x, usually do 100x, wide angle, then when I think I've found something I go up to 400x.

Black holes Goes Micro, Cern's LHC Starts Up September 10

In celebration of Cern's Large Hadron Collider, (LHC), going live September 10, 2008 Black holes is going micro, that's right microscopic. I've always been fascinated with the microscopic world and so every once in a while I am going to post some micro images with the help of the Celestron LCD digital microscope.

The above image is what my meteorite that my wife bought me for Christmas looks like under a microscope at 160X magnification, notice the pitting caused by the meteor's travel at more then 30,000 MPH through our atmosphere, if you were to look at it normally it looks and feels very smooth, not so, it's amazing what stuff looks like magnified under a microscope, what's cool is you are looking at a remnant of the building blocks of our solar system, some 4.5 billion years ago.


Mark your calenders September 10 2008, that's the date when they flick a switch, or many, probably many, to send particle beams of protons or heavy ions , called hadrons around a 27 km circular tunnel in opposing directions and then guide the beams to collide into each other.

I know what you're thinking, why would they want to do something like that. Well by smashing particles into each other at such high energies they hope to break down the proton into even more smaller indivisible fundamental particles known to humankind, in essence re-creating the conditions that were present less then a billionth of a second after the big bang.

Have you ever starting reading a book , lets just say for argument sake at page 20?, doesn't work, you have no idea what's going on, nothing makes sense, crap, I start at page 2 I'm screwed, well that's where we started, page 20 in the theory of life book, a lot of things don't make sense, dark energy, dark matter, black holes, we have to get to page 1, the Large Hadron Collider promises to take us there, to page 1 and in doing so will give us the proper background as to why things work the way they do, to understand the big stuff like you, me, and the Universe you have to know how the little stuff works, understand why things are the way they are so as to be able to go forward, build a better mouse trap, to figure out a lot of the crazy stuff that's happening, like are there really more dimensions? what is dark energy? we know there are such things as black holes, or do we, there is no irrefutable proof they exists, they figure they can once and for all prove their existence by creating one every second, mind you it will be a real small one and is supposed to evaporate before it sucks us and the Earth in it, due to a theory called Hawking Radiation. Guess we'll find out September 10.

By understanding how something works puts us one baby step closer to harnessing it's power, "Beam me up Scotty" may one day actually happen.

I like to leave you now with another microscopic image of, well I don't know what it is , what ever it is it was hitching a ride on a rock the size of a pin head, it is at 400x, I like to call it Alien guy with a tail holding a laser gun.