Detecting microbiology in the upper atmosphere: relative-velocity filtered sampling

TL;DR

This paper explores methods for detecting microbiological material in the Earth's upper atmosphere, proposing new sampling techniques and detector designs to overcome contamination issues in the largely unexplored ignoreosphere.

Contribution

It introduces a novel detector design that filters particles by size and relative velocity, enabling targeted sampling of biological material in the mesosphere and thermosphere.

Findings

Proposes the use of CubeSats and rocket-borne samplers for upper atmospheric microbiology.

Suggests a new particle detection method based on size and velocity filtering.

Highlights potential for discovering biological material in the Earth's upper atmosphere.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to re-open from a practical perspective the question of the extent in altitude of the Earth's biosphere. We make a number of different suggestions for how searches for biological material could be conducted in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere, colloquially referred to as the ignoreosphere due to its lack of investigation in the meteorological community compared to other regions. Relatively recent technological advances such as CubeSats in Very Low Earth Orbit or more standard approaches such as the rocket borne MAGIC meteoric smoke particle sampler, are shown as potentially viable for sampling biological material in the ignoreosphere. The issue of contamination is discussed and a potential solution to the problem is proposed by the means of a new detector design which filters for particles based on their size and relative-velocity to the detector.