Scientists searching for space particles on Canterbury Cathedral's roof

KentOnline / KMTV

Tiny pieces of space called micro-meteorites have been raining down on earth for millions of years, and they're being collected from the roofs of cathedrals, here in Kent.

Transcript

00:00 These scientists are hoovering the roof of Canterbury Cathedral, but not to clean it

00:07 and not to collect just any old dust. These scientists are searching for cosmic dust,

00:13 tiny particles from asteroids orbiting Mars and Jupiter that have been shooting down to

00:19 Earth ever since time began. But how have these minuscule parts of our universe ended

00:25 up on the roofs of Kent's cathedrals?

00:29 Their rooftops are really large, so that's a large area that we're collecting from that's

00:33 been collecting cosmic dust. But we also choose rooftops in this case because they've had

00:39 no footfall on them or very limited footfall, so you haven't got people walking around and

00:44 displacing the dirt, taking those cosmic dust particles away with them.

00:48 The goal? To simply discover more about our universe.

00:53 They can preserve evidence of more organic materials, so the kinds of building blocks

00:58 of life, which can then tell us about what kind of materials were brought in to the Earth

01:03 over its entire history from space.

01:06 Just to give you an idea of the kind of size of this cosmic dust they're looking for on

01:11 the roof behind me, here's a pound coin, something we use every single day. And just on the surface

01:18 alone, you could probably fit more than 4,000 micro meteorites, and they're all on that

01:24 roof.

01:26 So you may not be finding them in your garden any time soon, but Matthias has been to the

01:31 Natural History Museum in London to create mini meteorite models so that we can see what

01:37 they look like.

01:39 Seeing them with the naked eye is very difficult because on average there are 200 microns in

01:45 size, which is one fifth of a millimetre, which is maybe twice as big as the width of

01:52 a hair. Thanks to these scans I was able to build 3D models of the particles, make them

01:59 bigger obviously, actually look like the original particles. You can see that they're very spherical,

02:04 even contain some bubbles in size. And this one for instance is from the roof of the Natural

02:12 History Museum.

02:14 The team are hoping to expand the project nationally and search for cosmic dust on ancient

02:20 roofs right across the UK. But with Kent's contribution collected, sorting can begin,

02:26 all to determine what signs of life have been right above our heads for millions of years.

02:33 Abbey Hook for KMTV in Canterbury.

02:36 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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