Antrittsvorlesung: Urban Stardust

Micrometeorites are small dust particles from space that survive entry into Earth's atmosphere. These particles can provide important information about the origin of life and the composition of the Earth's atmosphere. Although up to a hundred tons of such micrometeorites accumulate on Earth every day, the search for them has long been limited to pristine places such as ocean sediments or Antarctica. Armed with just a kitchen magnet, a tea strainer and a microscope, an amateur scientist recently showed that micrometeorites can also be found on rooftops. Can anyone find such ?urban micrometeorites? What do they look like and why? How can we be sure that they are of extraterrestrial origin? How can information about the Earth's atmosphere be obtained from micrometeorite data? This lecture provides answers to these and other questions.