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(meteorobs) micro-meteorite experiment
Thomas A. wrote:
> Today I consulted with a professor of meteoritics at the University of
> New Mexico Institute of Meteoritics about such an experiment. He
> was discouraging and said in one month only one micrometeorite
> would be collected and it would take one square meter of collection
> area to do this. He cautioned that it is extremely difficult to distinguish
> an extraterrestrial dust particle from many varieties of terrestrial
> particles and that much volcanic debris is similar to space dust.
> There are many dust species in the air.
As long as we are not interested in the invidual dust particles (for composition
studies) the experiment might be successful for activity studies. If you can
detect little peaks of particle rates during/after major shower maxima, you can
perhaps get an impression of the dust 'activity' when subtracting the background
of non-maximum periods, regardless whether it is 80 per cent of the total rate.
Nevertheless, the particles don't get down to the ground directly, and I guess
it is almost impossible to get any quantities about dust influx to the
atmosphere during a major shower.
Rainer
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Rainer Arlt -- Visual Commission Director
International Meteor Organization
visual@imodot net
Home page of IMO: http://www.tu-chemnitzdot de/~smo/imo/index.html
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