Collection of dust in uninhabited house

Dust collects in appreciably large amounts in unnhabited houses whose doors and windows are shut. So human cells are not the only constituent of house dust. This much is sure.

What is rest of dust? Pollen, sand, disintegration of walls, paint wood etc.

Is there any chance that some of the dust is conversion of energy into matter? By an hiterto unknown and slow process.

There’s no such thing as an uninhabited house. People may be gone, but tiny little critters remain, various arachnids, silverfish, cockroaches and a bunch of other stuff. There’s all sorts of stuff that’s edible to something and of course there are things that eat other bugs. So stuff gets broken down and scattered.

Note that human skin cells also get eaten by mites and such, so it’s not so much the skin cells that make dust, but the … processed remains.

Nature has a thing about destroying human made stuff.

American Chemical Society press release about article studying the sources of indoor dust:

“Any chance” in the sense of “we cannot declare definitively that there is no possible way that this could be happening and never will be”? Sure. “Any chance” in the sense of “this is scientifically plausible or even remotely possible from a realistic point of view”? I don’t think so.

If there really were some “hitherto unknown” process that converted energy into matter in the form of dust, in large enough quantities to make a detectable contribution to the amount of dust we notice, then we sure as hell ought to have been seeing some effects of this “process” in other contexts as well.

Personally, I would like to know why this hypothesized conversion “process” for producing extra matter from ambient energy is producing more dust on my dusty floor but not more gold on my gold ring. Answer me that, boffins! :dubious:

Of course we see that happening in other contexts as well. The energy converted to matter most often is in gaseous form rather than dust, so maybe that’s why it isn’t so noticeable. But if this happens in an enclosed space that is really airtight (like, inside a Burger King restaurant after it’s closed for the night), the increase in air pressure could eventually reach explosive levels.

This happens, or threatens to happen, a lot actually. That’s why we keep reading news stories of Burger King and Jack-In-The-Box employees who find it necessary to smash their store windows out after hours to keep the whole building from blowing up.

Most recent story here (which also mentions several earlier instances). :smiley:

??? senegoid ? Did you write for X files ?