A research plane that flew through Earth's stratosphere identified more than 20 elements that are linked to the aerospace industry. Experts predict that the problem could become much worse in the future.
While this is certainly an interesting thing to know, there was no quantitative data provided about the discoveries. While a bunch of rare earth metals wandering around the atmosphere is certainly not a common occurrence, knowing whether we’re talking about parts per billion or parts or parts per undecillion is a substantial difference (if Google didn’t just lie to me, there are around one quattuordecillion molecules in our atmosphere, probably give or take a couple orders of magnitude).
While this is certainly an interesting thing to know, there was no quantitative data provided about the discoveries. While a bunch of rare earth metals wandering around the atmosphere is certainly not a common occurrence, knowing whether we’re talking about parts per billion or parts or parts per undecillion is a substantial difference (if Google didn’t just lie to me, there are around one quattuordecillion molecules in our atmosphere, probably give or take a couple orders of magnitude).