Cathedrals Vacuumed for Space Dust

Scientists are vacuuming the roofs of our most ancient cathedrals in search of space dust that may unlock the secrets of the origins of the solar system and even life itself.

Hunting for Space Dust on the roofs of our Cathedrals

A team of planetary experts has drawn up a list of 13 cathedrals that it believes may be ideal locations to collect micrometeorites.

Samples have already been taken from our oldest cathedrals of Canterbury and Rochester and the scientists hope to tick Salisbury and Winchester off their list too.

Cathedral roofs are ideal for cosmic dust hunting, as they are large, inaccessible and largely untouched – and churches keep good records of work done, helpful for dating material.

The scientists hope that by putting their finds under the microscope they will learn more about how oceans and life are formed on Earth.

Samples already taken include grains that are up to seven billion years old that came from other solar systems and entered our own after its birth 4.6 billion years ago.

Dr Penny Wozniakiewicz, a planetary scientist from University of Kent at the centre of the project, said:

“We have a list of about 13 cathedrals we want to target.

“Initially, we did just collect the cosmic dust with a dustpan and brush, but we now have our own vacuum cleaner. Generally, we collect from where it’s washed from sloping roofs to flat ones and into gutters.

“There are a number of reasons why we are targeting cathedrals, apart from their iconic status, which might help us gain funding, there are also scientific reasons. They are large areas, and they have been collecting for a long time.

“Cosmic dust is mixed in with far greater quantities of terrestrial dust, created, for example, by welding or drilling or ash from combustion, but the proportion that is from space, and the number of different cosmic varieties, is likely to be greater on a cathedral than a house.

“Also, we often know the ages of church roofs, and they keep records of work done, so that can help us date material and pick out more quickly what is bona fide cosmic dust.

“Not many people get on church roofs to disturb the dust too. If you were collecting somewhere like a playground or road, identifying cosmic dust would be much harder,’ she added.

Meteorites originating primarily from asteroids and comets that settle on Earth as cosmic dust have an upper size limit of around 2mm.

If they are larger when they enter the atmosphere, they instantly burn up upon entry, but the smaller ones have so little mass that they are instantly decelerated and may survive.

Over 100 million of these land on Earth every year, some of which offer samples of different types of asteroids.

Dr Matthew Genge, planetary scientist at Imperial College, said:

“We are looking for information about how life and oceans developed on Earth. The asteroids and comets that have produced cosmic dust may have been the building blocks.

“The Earth had hot origins and water didn’t survive when it started. In our research, we would look at the composition of the water within the rock. We are looking at the starting material, and that can also tell us how other planets were built.

“We have also found some grains inside the dust that appear to come from outside our solar system, that pre-date our solar system. Our solar system is 4.6 billion years old. The oldest grains found so far are about seven billion years old.

“At present, we don’t know of any whole cosmic dust particles that are from other planets – only grains within particles – although that is possible, especially moons. Some of it might reach Earth. Potentially there are dust particles from Jupiter’s moons. We’re just scratching the surface.

“It’s incremental little discoveries that build up until there’s a breakthrough.”

Dr Genge said:

“They are everywhere. We will have cosmic dust on our clothes. But also surrounding us are billions of ordinary terrestrial dust particles making it hard to detect cosmic dust.”

Scientists can sift out cosmic dust from terrestrial material by identifying signs of exposure to radiation from the sun and the rest of the galaxy.

But collecting the cosmic dust is only the beginning of the research process, and arguably the easier part. The bags of dust will now be sterilised so that they are safe to work with, and then the scientists will examine each particle under a sterile microscope.

“We will spend hours and hours and hours and hours just extracting spheres and hoping that one is a cosmic spherol,” saysDr Matthian van Ginneken, also from the University of Kent.

They will be sharing their findings, and what these mean for our understanding of the solar system, in the coming months.

This includes the creation of scaled-up 3D printings of the micrometeorites they find, thanks to funding from a Royal Astronomical Society grant.

Photo credit – Gary University of Kent