Dust
It gets everywhere - but what is it and where does it come from?
Things mentioned in this podcast:
For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email podcast@alephinsights.com
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I am here with Peter Coghill, Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. And this week, although I say we talk about interesting things, in this week, we're discussing dust. And due to the lockdown, unusually, we're recording this remotely. Nick, I think this could be a pretty quick podcast, which we could solve with a bit of googling here and there. But tell us. You say that? No. Well, no. There's many mysteries involved. Okay, it's a hot topic of controversy. Yeah, everyone's talking about the moment. What is dust? Well, it is partly what it is. So I get stressed out by the way that you leave something alone, right? My printer is where I notice it the most, because it's, it's black. And I leave it alone for a week or two. I don't go near, I don't do anything to it. Right. Likewise, you could just close a cupboard, right, and then go away for a year, and then dust will have appeared in the interim. And this printer is always covered in dust. And so I just, I just wondering, you know, where where dust comes from, whether or not we could ever win the war against dust, or whether we whether that's something we shouldn't worry about. And, and then, but also more generally, does everything become dust eventually? At what rate are things turning into dust? And, and is there some mechanism whereby that dust gets turned back into things? Or is it? Is it? Are we all destined to become? Is it just dust is going to be everything's going to be dust at some point?
Speaker B:I think Aleph Insights needs to buy Nick a new Hoover.
Speaker A:Well, I just like the way that very quickly, this has got very metaphysical, which I didn't quite anticipate. Well, look, let's try and help out Nick, either Peter or Chris, go for it.
Speaker C:Well, I mean, it is metaphysical, right? I mean, look at Genesis, right? You know, the whole, the whole ashes to ashes, dust to dust, you know, and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and then unto dust, shalt thou return. Ecclesiastes 320, all go on to one place, all are of the dust and all turn to dust again. Quite. So it's big news is dust. There is something though, very, very fundamental about it, right? It's it's particles. And, you know, I mean, even when you look at even when you look at the formation of the universe, you know, arguably, you come up from tiny particles, you know, to to much larger sort of stellar bodies and so on. And so this idea of well, what is what is dust? And, you know, what does it mean, is actually surprisingly philosophical and fundamental, I think.
Speaker A:Now Fraser's just gonna go, so what is dust?
Speaker B:Speaking of stellar bodies over to Peter. Yeah, no. Peter, what are your thoughts on that? Well, what dust is made of is quite well understood atmospheric dust that we we find around the home is primarily bits of you and the droppings of the dust mites that eat those bits of you, and the dust mites themselves, plus various bits of flax.
Speaker A:Just to say it's starting to feel a little bit less metaphysical at the moment, but keep on going, Peter.
Speaker B: to: Speaker A:Typical Peter to use a metric like that. What's a teragram? How is that a billion tonnes, Peter?
Speaker B:Yeah, that's how it's written.
Speaker A:Wait, wait, wait, hang on, hang on. A thousand, hold on. A thousand grams is a kilogram. A thousand of those is a tonne.
Speaker B:Yeah, I got it written down. Okay, so that's a teragram is times 10 to the 12 grams.
Speaker A:Billion kilos. But you just said it's not very much.
Speaker B:Okay, so globally, it's a lot. But in the air at any one time is about 20 times 10 to the grams. And does it go up and come down again? Do you mean 20 million tonnes? No, yes, I mean 20 million. No, I mean 20 million kilograms. 20 million tonnes? 20 billion. No, 20 billion kilograms. 20 million tonnes. So for every square metre, so imagine the sort of square metre that you kind of more or less occupy, that the column above you, there's only about 0.4 grams in the air above you. So if it all fell on your head at once, you probably wouldn't notice. So it's not that much. Thank goodness. So, so I can alleviate some of Nick's fear.
Speaker A: th. ...is: Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:Right? Which is a billion kilograms. Which is a million tonnes, right? Am I right? Okay. So, so I have got, I found a figure that the average, I don't believe it. The average home in the U.S. accumulates 20 kilos of dust a
Speaker B:year. Yeah, that's, that's household dust. I'm talking about atmospheric dust.
Speaker A:Right? No, but listen, hear me out. 20 kilos of dust a year in a house, right? If you multiply that by, let's say, you know, let's, let's say that there's...
Speaker C:It's probably 150 million households.
Speaker A:Let's say a billion, let's say a billion house, households worldwide. That comes to 20 billion kilos of dust in houses, right? You're saying that the amount of dust in houses is the same as the amount of dust in the atmosphere. That makes perfect sense to me because we're, we're dusty creatures. So you, but, but I've also read, I read a study by these Leighton and Beamer suggesting that 60% of dust in a house comes from outdoors. It's atmospheric dust. The dust, yeah. Yeah, so what we're saying is that half of all the dust in the atmospheric dust ends up in someone's house. Yeah, I'm not buying it. I'd say, I'd say... Isn't this, isn't this cumulative, that cumulative is over a year, though. Hold on, hold on, everybody, everybody, everybody. He's saying half the dust in the atmosphere ends up in someone's house every year.
Speaker B:No, I'm not, no, I'm not, because you're misreading what I'm saying. I'm saying that in the atmosphere, any one time there is 20 times 10 to the 12 grams of dust at any one time. That's not, that's not including how much is kicked up and how much ultimately lands, which is a much bigger thing.
Speaker C:Right, so you're saying that there's a store of dust. Half of it turns up on your printer.
Speaker A:How much, exactly, how much dust is in storage at any given time versus the amount of dust floating about? How much potential dust is out there? Well, the Sahara?
Speaker B:It's a couple of, several order of magnities larger amount of dust that enters the atmosphere every year. And I'm assuming that that same amount of dust falls out of the atmosphere every, every year. The amount of dust in the atmosphere at any one time is 20 times 10 to the 12 grams. Right. Yeah.
Speaker C:The atmosphere is mainly of nectar.
Speaker A:So if we all did the hoovering at the same time and just threw our bags into the air, we'd effectively double the amount of atmospheric dust. Yeah, amazing. Sounds like it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah. So instead of clapping for the NHS, let's do that instead next Thursday. Um, okay, look, so, um, we've reached a point of, of, of calmness in the middle of this. Now we haven't touched on space dust. And let's move on to somewhere else. Um, let's talk about, let's talk about space dust. Yeah. So space, uh, apparently something like, okay, Fraser, you're the least scientifically inclined person here. So I'm going to ask you this, how, how many, how many kilograms or the unit of your choice of dust into the earth's atmosphere every day from space? What do you reckon? Uh, space dust entering the atmosphere of earth every day, um, space dust, how many tons? I'm going to say.
Speaker C:A lot is not a valid answer, by the way.
Speaker A:I'm going to say, I'm just trying to remember some of the other things we were talking about just now. A hundred tons. You're about right. That's boring. There was a long wait for a really boringly accurate answer. Oh no, he smashed it. Come on. Yeah. Um, so I reckon we get about, we get of the order of the order of a hundred thousand tons of dust a year, just from space, but that's, you know, very little. Apparently that's about the same as the amount of hydrogen and helium we lose each year. So in net terms, the earth is staying about the same. Um, but yeah, so, but space dust is not, dust doesn't come from space. Space dust is not from space, no? Yeah. The space dust is, but, but actually most dust isn't from space. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's space dust made of?
Speaker C:Uh, dust. I mean, if you think about it, that makes sense because space hasn't got a lot in it. Has it?
Speaker A:No, but it's a surprisingly large amount that we go through tons of dust every day. Like it makes you sound like space is pretty dusty instead of being, um, instead of being as empty as you know, that it's cracked up to be.
Speaker B:It depends very strongly where you are in the solar system. It's pretty dense compared to out in deep space. Out in deep space you might come across a dust particle every 10 to a hundred miles or so. It's pretty, pretty, pretty sparse out there.
Speaker A:But it's interesting that dust has even got that far. I mean, forget about my printer. That dust, the menace of dust has spread beyond the bounds of the solar system.
Speaker B:Well, the dust was there first before the solar system. But actually this is a good point. So the early processes in the universe, Big Bang, et cetera, created all sorts of mixtures of chemicals, mainly hydrogen and helium. That's not dust, is it? No, that's not dust. But also other lighter elements like carbon and silicon and things. And as the first cycle of stars created more of these heavy elements through their supernovae, which was thrown out in small, very small particulates. That's mainly what the dust is. So dust comes from stardust.
Speaker A:But this is also why, I mean, we are plagued with dust as we are, Nick, because we live on the planet Earth and because we're one of the rocky planets and it's all to do with gravity and the sun and all these elements, all the stardust was swirling around billions of years ago, closer to the sun was able to form into planets, sorry, into rocky planets. Whereas back out, you know, Neptune and Pluto, et cetera, and Jupiter even. They're all gaseous. Because what we're saying, what you're saying is that the Earth was made of dust to begin with. Yeah. Why then is the Earth turning back from being, why is it turning back into dust? It's just shedding its skin.
Speaker B:I think you've got it. I think, Nick, you've just got a very, very tiny slice view of the entire life in the universe.
Speaker A:You said the Sahara is made of dust, right? I know. And that's on the Earth. So you'd have thought we'd have started as a big Sahara and turned into a rock, but it seems like we're going back. We're aggressive. I don't think it quite works like that.
Speaker B:You've got enough data to suggest that it's actually increasing or decreasing. This is like, this is the whole thing of, oh, it's a cold day. So what climate change, that's, is that a thing anymore?
Speaker A:It doesn't.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Is more dust getting sucked into the Earth and turned into rock than is rock turning into dust?
Speaker B:Well, I think the dust doesn't leave the atmosphere nearly as much as the lighter elements. It can't escape. That's it.
Speaker A:But it must get captured by the sea and eventually turn into sedimentary rocks and eventually turn into, you know, magma.
Speaker B:I think, I suspect it's in equilibrium.
Speaker A:Right. So we'll never be rid of this. Yeah, we're not going anywhere. We can't use dust capture technologies to, well, actually, that's the next thing I wanted to talk about. Well, look, I want to try and move us on a little bit in a, I was going to say, in hoovers. I want to try and move us in a more sensible direction or at least a direction. So who, who's, who, Nick? This is what podcasts are like when you've been in lockdown for too long. This is what happens. Yeah. So look, who's going to move this along for us? Who's got something to say? Who's got direction they want to take us in? Yeah, well. Oh, sorry. Yeah, Chris.
Speaker C: the whole sort of, you know,: Speaker A:But are you going to say that we, it's time for dust's reputation to be restored, that it fulfills some important role?
Speaker C:Well, I, I, I think dust, you know, you just have to, you just have to add a bit of water and you've got, you've got mud, haven't you? You know, so.
Speaker B:And everyone loves mud.
Speaker C:And everyone loves mud. I mean, that's what Prometheus made us out of. So, you know.
Speaker A: rse, interesting fact between: Speaker C:We could do with a timer to keep track of.
Speaker A:I'm with you. I'm with you, Chris. Yeah, no. Okay. So look, I still feel we're jumping around a bit. We're lurching from drunkenly from, from like a, like a, like a cannon across the deck of a ship. Okay. I've got a question.
Speaker C:Should you dust? Surely you're just putting it back into your, your household.
Speaker A:Yeah. I mean, we're not big dusters in my household and I can just look around, there's dust everywhere, but my wife's always complained. It's a very dusty house we live in. It seems more dusty than other houses. And I don't know where I've got these dreams of moving to another part of the country. That's dust free. Well, just to get rid of the dust. Just once the house gets dusty enough, you move house. Yeah. But yeah, I was going to say like dusting with a feather duster seems fairly pointless to me. I mean, I've never done it once.
Speaker C:Although I think don't, don't they hold the dust particles by static on there? You know, they're all the ways that, that kind of, uh, and then people empty a duster.
Speaker A:I think you shake them out. I thought you rinsed them under a tap or something.
Speaker B:Wash them while you shake them out outside. Put the dust back into circulation.
Speaker A:Yeah. But then of course it'll just come back in through the window. It's like spiders. You shouldn't. Just, just to say, I feel that collectively we're okay on the metaphysical sides of, of dust. I don't think we're so good on the practical side. It seems to me on the sort of, you know, what happens with your house in your house with it and so on. Um, but look, I, I still feel we're just knocking around from one, one sort of thing to another. Let's try and. It's to do with tidying up and stuff. So I, I'm not sure. I think this is sort of people's philosophy of, of tidying up and dusting and cleaning and stuff of whether or not you think it's worth it because, um, you know, we'll just come back. Right. As you said, this kind of thing, aren't you? Well, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about it. Cause on one hand you could say, well, why bother cutting your toenails? Cause they'll only grow back. Um, you know, but on the other hand, so is dust in the air better than dust on the table? I mean, the number of people who dust suggests that it probably is, but, um, you know,
Speaker B:when you're dusting, you're dusting the effective dusting, cleaning, dusting, doesn't put it in the air. It takes it out of the building.
Speaker C:But you are fighting a rear guard action, aren't you? But you are fighting a rear guard action.
Speaker A:What I referred to earlier as dust capture technologies might be the solution. Yeah. Might, we could like suck the dust or something into a kind of machine.
Speaker C:And yeah, into a bag, put trapped in a bag and then said bag.
Speaker A:Wow. Yeah. Um, well look, I'm at a loss as to where to go now. Um, who's got something to say?
Speaker C:Well, I was just going to say like on a similar theme, um, there, there, if anybody's ever read the book, which Blade Runner is, is based on do Android's dream of electric short story. Yeah. Um, it's, uh, within it, there is this concept of, of Kipple, right. And, uh, um, it's not explored at all in the, in the film other than, uh, sort of via the, the buildings. But when, when Rutger Hauer is running around in his pants, right. In the, in the book, uh, they, they, the, the, um, the replicants sort of inhabit a, um, deserted, you know, set in a dystopian future. Uh, they inhabit a, um, a deserted building and there's, it's all described in dusty terms and so on, but Kipple is this notion of, um, kind of human created rubbish that, um, that in the absence of humans kind of, um, multiplies. And, uh, so there's this idea that, you know, um, all of this commercial crap that we, that we make, uh, is, is just kind of growing outside of our, um, our experience. And that's definitely, you know, I mean, dust, we, we know dust, although it's based on our, um, partly based on our skin filings. We, we, we know, um, that, uh, it's, it's, it generates in our absence as well. You come home from holiday and you still got dust in your house, right. Um, but, uh, uh, yeah, I, I, there's something about this notion of, um, of things we want to get rid of kind of just building up and this, this Sisyphean task of, of having to constantly fight them. That is, um, uniquely depressing, I think.
Speaker A:Yeah. You know how things don't get, things don't conglomerate, they break apart in general, like things, things, big rocks become smaller rocks and eventually entropy. Yeah. And like all the stuff that we buy gets broken up into smaller bits. Where do they go? Like where do they end up? Um, I think, I don't really know. Is the answer dust? No, I'm wondering how long it takes a TV to become dust.
Speaker C:It must be, must be measured in the tens of thousands of years, I would have thought.
Speaker A:Yeah. I guess it probably depends where you put it. Like if you put it into an industrial grinder, then it'll become dust much faster. Yeah. Well, it does remind me a few years ago, there was that sort of quasi documentary on, on TV that was examining what would happen to the earth. Um, um, if, if all humans, uh, just, yeah. Is that what it was called? Yeah. Yeah. It was really good. Yeah. And it sort of starts out by saying, well, this is what the world would look like a day later, a week later, six months later, a year. And then I think, you know, after about a thousand years, um, that's it all gone back to dust and, but also, you know, just, um, uh, vines and stuff growing everywhere. And, you know, within a, certainly within a million years, no trace whatsoever. Um, okay. It wouldn't go back to dust. It would go back to trees and things. But I think what Pete, what Peter's saying is that we, we, we're massive dust generators.
Speaker C:And so, so without humans, there'll be less of it. And in, in this lockdown, you know, maybe that's one of the reasons your printer is so dusty at the moment is you can't, you can't get out and deposit your, your dust outside.
Speaker A:Spewing out. Yeah. Yeah. Most of the dust that would, I would normally leave in the road for someone else to clear up and now just spewing it out here. Amongst other things. Yeah. Um, okay. Are we done? I can't think of anything else. Um, I think, I think a dust, a fully qualified dustologist would be able to take this raw material and turn it into something amazing. There's a PhD in there somewhere. Yeah. Um, I don't even have a silly question. I don't even have a question to ask. Um, so, um,
Speaker B:It's a sensible question to ask Nick.
Speaker A:I'm not in the mood for that. No. Okay. So just finishing things off. Um, uh, I don't know if I'm alarmed or not, but I mean, we've discovered that, um, Nick, he doesn't trust dust. That's, there's a slogan right there for you. Don't trust dust. Um, what about you guys? Um, any other kind of seemingly normal, possibly household substances or things that you don't trust? Let's, let's get our, let's get our, what's the word? Our, um, substance mistrust off our chest.
Speaker C:Mould. Mould. I, I, I have a phobic relationship with mould really.
Speaker A:Have you got any persistent mould in grouting that you just will not go away?
Speaker C:No, but whenever I come across mould or like, you know, when like a loaf of bread has been left around too long and mould forms on it, it, uh, it really creeps me out completely. Um, yeah.
Speaker A:Okay. Yeah. I mean, because of mould of course is, you know, one of the great, I mean, in the great cycle of breaking things down.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:Mould is really the key player, isn't it? I mean, if it wasn't for mould, I mean, maybe ultimately I should blame mould for dust because, you know, because mould obviously breaks down trees, trees become soil, soil becomes dust. I think, I think it's all, yeah. But, but, you know, but I think, I think you still have to acknowledge the incredible role. Everyone keeps going on about the NHS, but the mould is the real hero.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:Clap for fungus.
Speaker B:Um, Peter. So I, I, I, my, my disgust is sort of triggered by slimy things. Um, so I don't like particularly slimy food and I don't, but, but the particular things of consistency, like the slime on a slug or hair gel or, um, that kind of sticky, slimy consistency.
Speaker A:Um, I find that something that plagues you in your house.
Speaker B:Not particularly though, but I don't like touching slimy things. Okay.
Speaker A:Which is unusual because most people love it. Most people queuing up to touch. To stroke a slug.
Speaker B:The slug petting zoo. But that's the closest I can imagine. But yeah, I, but I, I share Chris's disgust, but imagine how bad, you think mould is bad. Imagine how bad slime mould is. It's a slime mould, these wonderful creatures that, um, that have a sort of deter, it's like a determined slime. Wants to go and find the food and it sends these little tendrils out. It's quite, quite revolting. Sentient.
Speaker A:And don't they do really cool things though, slime moulds, like can't, is it, are they the thing where if you put them in a blender, they'll reform back into the original slime mould? And, um, and I think they, they've done these experiments where they, they put slime, like they dot slime moulds in, in a certain pattern, which are like, if you take a map of Japan, you can put slime moulds where the cities are. And then the tendrils between the slime moulds will, will be the same as where the roads and the railways are. So slime moulds somehow could solve the problem. City architects. Sorry. I, I drifted off for a moment there and I came back to that.
Speaker B:You're saying that Japan is all slimy and mouldy.
Speaker A:No, right. We need to stop there, um, for a number of reasons. Um, but I, I don't have a substance myself. Nothing holds fear for me that's, that is inanimate. Um, but yeah, we'll wind up there. We'll stop there. Suffice to say, I think it's time to shake the dust of, uh, from our collective feet from this podcast. And, um, yeah, I think the only thing I need to say is, you know, please let this lockdown finish soon so that, you know, we can return to sanity. Um, okay. Thank you as always, uh, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Nick Hare, Peter Coghill and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. And until next time, goodbye.
