Cosmic Dust Pollution Simulator

Cosmic Influx

Influx rate 18 /s

Particle size 120 µm

Entry velocity 18 km/s

In flight

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Ablated

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Surface deposit

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Survival rate

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How it works

Roughly 40,000 tonnes of cosmic dust and micrometeoroids enter Earth's atmosphere every year. As a grain plunges in, friction with increasingly dense air ablates its surface, boiling off mass as vapor that condenses into a fine trace-metal aerosol (iridium, platinum-group metals, nickel) — a real, non-anthropogenic pollution source found in ice cores and deep-sea sediment. Only the largest, slowest-heated grains survive intact to reach the ground.

dm/dt = −σ·ρ(h)·v³·A / (2Q)
ρ(h) = ρ₀·exp(−(h−R_earth)/H)

Influx rate — how many grains are injected per second; a higher rate raises both the ablation cloud density and the surface deposition rate.
Particle size — bigger grains carry more mass reserve and are far more likely to survive ablation intact and reach the surface.
Entry velocity — faster grains dump kinetic energy into heating faster (v³ term), so a small size/velocity change can flip a grain from "reaches ground" to "burns to dust".
Deposition map — toggles the accumulating trace-metal dots left where surviving grains actually strike the surface.

Real-world relevance: this background cosmic flux sets a natural baseline for certain trace metals in soils and ice cores, which geochemists must subtract out before they can attribute the rest of an anomaly to industrial pollution.

Meteoroid Ablating Surface deposit

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