Don't Look Up! Solar System debris beneath our feet | ERC Lecture by Steven Goderis

Vrije Universiteit Brussel and professor Steven Goderis warmly invite you for the inaugural lecture on FLUX, with a festive reception afterwards. In 'Don't Look Up!' Steven Goderis guides us through the solar system, by digging out debris beneath our feet. 

When we think of material arriving to Earth from space, spectacular meteorites and enormous impact craters often come to mind. Far more commonly, however, our planet is showered with an almost invisible rain of cosmic dust. This dust consists of micrometeorites: tiny fragments produced by collisions between asteroids and comets in our Solar System. For more than a decade, the AMGC research team at Vrije Universiteit Brussel has collected these particles in Antarctica, Greenland, the Atacama Desert and even on urban rooftops. Although often smaller than a grain of sand, micrometeorites are by far the most abundant extraterrestrial material reaching Earth. 

Recent research shows that micrometeorites can remain preserved in sedimentary rocks for hundreds of millions of years. The ERC project FLUX studies these fossil dust particles as tiny time capsules, revealing how the influx of extraterrestrial material has changed through time and offering new insights into the evolving dynamics of the Solar System and the potential effects of cosmic debris on the Earth system. Because micrometeorites interact with the atmosphere during their descent, they also preserve valuable clues about the composition of Earth’s ancient atmosphere.

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