After 3.5 million-year hiatus, the largest comet ever discovered is headed our way

 The gargantuan Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet will strafe Saturn's orbit in 2031. Scientists are stoked.

An illustration of the massive comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein (Image credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva)


A massive comet, potentially the largest ever discovered, is speeding toward the inner solar system and is expected to arrive in 10 years.

The Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet (also known as C/2014 UN271) is at least 62 miles (100 kilometres) across, making it 1,000 times more enormous than a regular comet. According to a statement announcing the comet's discovery in June 2021, it is so massive that astronomers previously mistook it for a dwarf planet.

However, a closer look revealed that the object was speeding through the Oort cloud, a gigantic scrapyard of frozen rocks billions of kilometres from Earth. The object appeared to be heading our way, with a bright tail, or "coma," behind it, indicating that it was an icy comet approaching the relatively warm inner solar system.

Researchers have now researched the enormous comet in greater depth, and they have revised their predictions for its path toward the sun.

To begin with, the massive rock presents no threat to Earth. Bernardinelli-Bernstein (BB) is currently cruising through the Oort cloud at a distance of around 29 times the Earth-Sun distance, or 29 astronomical units (AU). According to the researchers, the comet's closest approach to Earth will take place in the year 2031, when it will swoop within 10.97 AU of the sun, putting it just outside of Saturn's orbit.

While the comet will be too far away for humans to see without telescopes, it will be much closer than the rock's last visit to our region of the solar system. The study's authors calculated that comet BB made its closest approach to the solar 3.5 million years ago, getting within 18 AU of the sun.

According to the researchers, the comet has gone as far as 40,000 AU away, deep into the enigmatic Oort cloud.

"We conclude that BB is a 'new' comet in the sense that no evidence for [a] previous encounter closer than 18 AU," the researchers said in their report, implying that humans have never seen it previously.

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) – a research to examine the expansion of the universe that spanned from August 2013 to January 2019 — is responsible for our present picture of the huge, distant comet. Astronomers discovered more than 800 previously undiscovered objects beyond Neptune's orbit during the survey, which surveyed 300 million galaxies in the southern sky. One of these objects was the Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet.

Over the following decade, researchers will have plenty of opportunity to observe the big comet as it approaches Earth. Because comets from deep in the Oort cloud are considered to stay virtually unchanged since they were kicked away from the sun billions of years ago, getting a closer look at the rock could help scientists learn more about the chemical composition of the early solar system. It'll be a once-in-a-lifetime brush with the early solar system, with millions of years separating the comet's next near approach from the one after that.

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