{"id":512226,"date":"2026-04-04T08:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T08:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/512226\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T08:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T08:39:08","slug":"call-for-citizen-scientists-to-collect-space-dust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/512226\/","title":{"rendered":"Call for citizen scientists to collect space dust"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Citizen scientists will then be encouraged to gather sediment from rooftops and gutters and use magnets, sieves, and microscopes provided by the project to isolate potential micrometeorites.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Grimes said: &#8220;You just need a dustpan and brush to brush the stuff out of a gutter or off a flat roof.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;You need a bowl to wash it in, to wash away that organic matter, a sieve to get it to the right size fraction and then a magnet to sort out the magnetic fraction because these micrometeorites have got iron in them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The isolated candidate particles will then be analysed at the Plymouth Electron Microscopy Centre, and their discoveries will be  shared on a project website and a public exhibition.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Grimes said it was almost impossible to see a micrometeorite with the naked eye.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;These particles measure less than a millimetre, meaning that if you look on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-england-kent-66707859\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">roof<\/a> of your house or in a gutter, you wouldn&#8217;t be able to distinguish something that has come from outer space from any other particles or debris.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Citizen scientists will then be encouraged to gather sediment from rooftops and gutters and use magnets, sieves, and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-512226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}