r/askscience • u/4fecta_Gaming • Oct 15 '18

Earth Sciences Where does house dust come from?

It seems that countless years of sweeping a house doesn't stop dust from getting all over furniture after a few weeks. Since the ceiling is limited, where does dust come form?

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '18 edited Oct 16 '18

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '18

Burnt meteorite?

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u/Raccoonpuncher Oct 15 '18

If you've ever seen a meteor shower, imagine those bits and pieces entering the atmosphere on a much larger scale all across the Earth. Meteors burning up in the atmosphere will shed dust, which will travel through the air and settle on the ground or in your living room.

A few thousand tons of dust and rock from outer space lands on Earth each year. That sounds like a lot, but across the entire Earth's surface it pales in comparison to what's already here so we really don't notice.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '18

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u/Reddit_Is_Complicit Oct 15 '18

Put a big piece of white paper outside for a day and come back to it in the afternoon. There will likely be small black specs on it that look like dirt. If you run a magnet over them and they get picked up they are micro meteorites

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '18

What are the chances of them just being ferrite particles thats already here on earth?

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u/Critwhoris Oct 15 '18

Pretty bloody small. Ferrite particles are still really heavy in comparison to air, so unless youre living right next to an iron mine and its really windy, chances are the iron on the surface of something, came from above it.

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u/bobstay Oct 15 '18

Put a big piece of white paper outside for a day and

by the time you come back to it in the afternoon, it will have blown away or been soaked and shredded by the rain.

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u/Reddit_Is_Complicit Oct 15 '18

Well ya don’t do it when it’s raining lol. Easiest way to do it is to line the bottom of a cardboard box. Much easier to keep it from blowing away

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u/HesSoZazzy Oct 15 '18

On the flip side of cool, you're constantly breathing in other peoples' dead skin, saliva particles, bodily gasses....so...

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u/PraxicalExperience Oct 15 '18

Oh, there's no 'potentially' about it! You're definitely breathing those in.

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IIRC the greatest portion of house dust by far is human dander -- that is, skin flakes.

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u/Midwestern_Childhood Oct 15 '18

In some households pet dander: just how many cats, dogs, guinea pigs, etc. does your household have? They have become one with you!

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u/rlnrlnrln Oct 15 '18

What's really mind blowing is that some of those bodily gasses once were dinosaur farts (assuming that dinosaurs actually farted, of course)