Much of Earth's 'space dust' may come from unidentified near-Earth asteroids

Like a shelf in an old house, the Earth collects a lot of dust from its surroundings.

This "space dust" is mostly made up of micrometeorites that survive atmospheric entry and provides researchers with a cheap and easy way to obtain samples to study our cosmic neighbors.

However, it can be difficult to determine which objects certain samples originated from if their parent bodies aren't already in available catalogs.

A recent study, published in Science Advances, describes a new subset of space dust with such mysterious origins and how researchers are tracking down potential sources. ...