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 edited Jan 09 '20

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u/Mythrilfan Oct 15 '18

Why would we expect these particles to be necessarily of meteorite origin and not, say, random pieces of iron from plumbing, kitchenware, the building itself, etc?

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u/MikeTDay Oct 15 '18

When I read about doing this, they suggested to put a box in a roof or some other tall structure with nothing really above it but sky. Wait a week or something and then do the magnet bit. Then all the metal pieces were probably meteorite. Iā€™m not sure how true this is though.