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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