Amazing amount! 50 million tons of extraterrestrial dust fall on the earth every year, the earth is not safe!

In Antarctica, scientists have made an interesting discovery: Every year, about 50 million tons of cosmic dust break through the protection of the earth's atmosphere and eventually land on the earth's surface.

what is this concept? Let's look at a set of comparative data: the weight of an elephant is generally around 3-5 tons. For the convenience of calculation, we uniformly calculate it as 5 tons, which means that about 10 million elephants have as much cosmic dust falling every year. On Earth, it can be said that the extraordinary number is staggering.

50 million tons of alien dust fall on Earth every year

Of course, these extraterrestrial dust that finally landed on the earth are the products of meteorites, comets, etc. that fly toward the earth every year after burning at high temperature in the atmosphere.

For the past 20 years, scientists have traveled to Antarctica every year to collect and count space dust. To obtain this cosmic dust, scientists would dig up a lot of Antarctic snow, bring it back to the camp, and filter out the extraterrestrial dust from the melted snow.

At the same time, in order to make the data more accurate, they will filter and analyze it again in the laboratory to ensure that what they bring back is all alien dust.

So, where does this alien dust come from? The researchers believe that the extraterrestrial dust may be the product of icy comets located in the Kuiper Belt of the solar system, rather than from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

When they break into the interior of the solar system, they will be attracted by the earth under the action of gravity, and then pass through the combustion of the atmosphere, and finally land on the earth in the form of space dust.

What are icy comets?

Let's first look at what a comet is. To put it simply, it is a small celestial body that is located outside the solar system and will enter the interior of the solar system under the influence of gravity. Their main components are water, methane, and solid dust particles. Therefore, comets are also called "dirty snow". spheres," because their cometary nuclei are made of icy material.

And icy comets, as a type of comets, their main components are more "pure" and are composed entirely of ice and carbon. There is a view that the liquid water on Earth may have collided with a large number of early icy comets. related.

Although icy comets do not pose any threat to our lives today, it is not absolute. I believe that many of my friends have heard of the Tunguska explosion, which is also one of the unsolved mysteries in human history.

This happened more than 100 years ago, when a rare big explosion occurred in Tunguska, in the Siberia region of Russia, and with the sound of the explosion, a mushroom cloud rose into the air.

Seeing this, do you think it might be caused by a nuclear test? You must know that human nuclear tests began in the 1940s. Before the United States dropped the atomic bomb, no other country had the concept of nuclear weapons. Naturally, the Tunguska explosion had nothing to do with nuclear tests.

According to data, when the Tunguska explosion occurred, its explosive power was equivalent to 2,000 atomic bombs exploding at the same time, which also means that it is difficult for humans to achieve such a powerful explosion. So, what caused the Tunguska explosion? ?

After years of research, scientists finally locked the target: the "culprit" of the Tunguska explosion is likely to be an icy comet, because after the icy comet hits the earth, it will melt at high temperature. No explosive remnants were found.

In addition, before the Tunguska explosion, there were also witnesses who saw a large burning fireball in the sky, which also dragged a long tail, which is also similar to a comet.

At the same time, at the site of the Tunguska explosion, scientists also found a large number of silicate and hematite particles in the local soil, which are also one of the main components of icy comets. Therefore, scientists can now basically It is confirmed that the Tunguska explosion may be a tragedy caused by an icy comet hitting the earth.

This also means that there may also be a large amount of alien dust locally, including the space dust that caused the Tunguska explosion at that time.

Some friends may be curious, since a large number of meteorites and comets hit the earth every year, why can't we feel it? In fact, the answer is very simple, because these "extraordinary visitors" are too small, and they generally disappear through high temperature combustion after entering the atmosphere.

In the end, they will all fall in the form of space dust, and because the earth is very large, the places where meteorites, comets, etc. hit the earth and fall are basically in no-man’s land, or directly in the ocean, and natural humans also I can't feel it.

However, we cannot be blindly optimistic, because in the process of the evolution of the earth, there have indeed been disasters caused by comets hitting the earth, and we still need to guard against and be vigilant!