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During the past five years, a team of Agrogeological Division of the Hungarian Geological and Geophysical Institute has studied the nutrient elements potential of the East-Hungarian sandy soils. Among these elements, the natural potassium sources are insufficient, i.e. neither the soil forming sediments, nor the groundwater cannot satisfy the consumption of the plants. Therefore, the unique K-source seems to be the meteoric water. The authors consulting more than three hundred geochemical, ecological, meteorological, astrophysical and radiological articles, identified the origin of atmospheric K-bearing aerosols. Thus, in this paper, the K-salts, as the main aerosol particles in ice and rain nucleation, with stratospheric origin were discussed, mainly based on references. In the stratosphere, the solid particles show a well expressed stratification: aerosols from desertic, volcanic and anthropogenic origin are concentrated mainly at 20 km altitude, the cosmogenic particles are observable at 50-60 km, while the measurements prove a relatively uniform distribution of K bearing particles, decreasing abruptly in the troposphere, under cloud formation level. K-bearing aerosols form micron sized, soft flakes built up by very thin acicular crystals. They represent ideal nuclei for ice split and rain drop formation. Therefore, we suppose, that the stratospheric potassium is formed by cosmic radiation induced Ar/K reaction, the reverse of K/Ar decay. The increased K+ content in rainwater (or snow) samples above of highly populated centers is explained by the same Ar/K reaction, which is induced by low energy electromagnetic waves (UHF smog) due to (experimented) their Tunnel effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a successful dust collection flight in the upper stratosphere our DUSTER (Dust in the Upper Stratosphere Tracking Experiment and Retrieval) made a safe remote landing at its assigned location on Baffin Island during early June 2009. When the balloon payload that included DUSTER was retrieved it was found part of the payload had experienced a lithium-sparked fire while the payload was being dragged across the landing site. In this process the housing of DUSTER had developed a pin-sized hole that allowed smoke of the fire to enter the collector. Numerous smoke particles were found covering both the DUSTER collection and blank collector surfaces an indication that our experiment to collect upper stratospheric dust had failed! Both collector surfaces were covered by numerous carbon smoke and amorphous, aluminosilica nanoparticles. The compositions of vast majority of these aluminosilica nanoparticles, Al 2 O 3 = 49 wt% and SiO 2 = 51 wt%, was both surprising and unique because it was an exact match of the Deep Metastable Eutectic (DME) nanoparticles found in vapor phase condensation experiments. These vapor phase condensation experiments were conducted to explore the formation of extraterrestrial dust particles. We are not claiming an extraterrestrial origin for these particles from this DUSTER experiment. We submit that given the appropriate conditions of high temperature alumina and silica vapors and rapid quenching in a contained natural environment, DME aluminosilica nanoparticles will likely condense. This serendipitous result can be used to explore nanoparticle formation inside incandescent clouds associated with bolides and fireballs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nanometre CaO and pure carbon smoke particles were collected at 38-km altitude in the upper stratosphere in the Arctic during June 2008 using DUSTER (Dust in the Upper Stratosphere Tracking Experiment and Retrieval). This balloon-borne instrument was designed for non-destructive collection of solid particles between 200 nm to 40 µm. We report here on micrometre CaCO3 (calcite) grains with evidence of thermal erosion and smoke particles that formed after melting and vaporisation and complete dissociation of some of the CaCO3 grains at temperatures of approximately 3500 K. These conditions and processes suggest that the environment of this dust was a dense dust cloud that had formed after disintegration of a carbonaceous meteoroid during deceleration in the atmosphere. The balloon-borne collector must have coincidentally travelled through the dust cloud of a recent bolide event that had penetrated between 38.5 and 37 km altitude. This work identified a previously unknown meteoric smoke forming process in addition to meteoric smoke particles due to photolysis-driven oxidation of mesospheric metals from meteor ablation that had settled into the upper stratosphere.

Nanometre CaO and pure carbon smoke particles were collected at 38-km altitude in the upper stratosphere in the Arctic during June 2008 using DUSTER (Dust in the Upper Stratosphere Tracking Experiment and Retrieval). This balloon-borne instrument was designed for non-destructive collection of solid particles between 200 nm to 40 µm. We report here on micrometre CaCO3 (calcite) grains with evidence of thermal erosion and smoke particles that formed after melting and vaporisation and complete dissociation of some of the CaCO3 grains at temperatures of approximately 3500 K. These conditions and processes suggest that the environment of this dust was a dense dust cloud that had formed after disintegration of a carbonaceous meteoroid during deceleration in the atmosphere. The balloon-borne collector must have coincidentally travelled through the dust cloud of a recent bolide event that had penetrated between 38.5 and 37 km altitude. This work identified a previously unknown meteoric smoke forming process in addition to meteoric smoke particles due to photolysis-driven oxidation of mesospheric metals from meteor ablation that had settled into the upper stratosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raman analyses have been performed on Interplanetary Dust Particles (IDPs) collected in the lower stratosphere by NASA high-flying aircrafts, dust from comet 81P/Wild2 collected by Stardust mission, and three particles collected in the upper stratosphere by the balloon-borne DUSTER instrument. All samples contain amorphous carbon (aC) with different degrees of structural order. Fe oxides were detected in the IDPs, aliphatic chains were found in comet grains, and three particles collected in the upper stratosphere are calcium carbonate (calcite or aragonite). Raman spectroscopy is a valuable tool for the nondestructive analyses of micrometer-scale constituents of complex natural materials. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]