A massive icy comet emanating from the trans-Plutonian depths of our solar system is on a course to travel closer to earth than any comet of similar size – at least, so far as scientists have been able to tell.
The comet, known as C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), has a frozen nucleus that measures 80 miles across and is 50x bigger than the core of most comets that travel toward the inner area of our solar system.
It’s believed to have a mass of about 500 trillion tons, making it 100,000x more massive than the typical comet found toward the inner solar system.
The comet is traveling at about 22,000 miles per hour, moving from the edge of the solar system towards its the center.
Fortunately, the comet isn’t expected to get closer than 1 billion miles from the Sun, which is further away even than Saturn. And it’s not expected to get even that close until 2031.
American scientists have been aware of the comet since about 2010, at which point it was 3 billion miles from the Sun (about the same distance between Earth and Neptune. Since then, scientists have used telescopes both on Earth and in space to try and understand more about the comet).
Scientists used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to examine the comet and estimate its huge size. Right now, scientists can only estimate the comet’s size, since it’s difficult to distinguish the core from the vaporous aura. Scientists used a computer model to try and differentiate the aura from the comet’s core.
It’s believed that the comet is billions of years old – meaning it formed during the early days of our universe – and also that it came from the Oort Cloud, the icy enclosure of comets, asteroids and material that forms a spherical shield around our solar system. The Oort Cloud is a theoretical concept – scientists don’t have visual proof of its existence. But it’s believed this comet could help scientists learn more about the Oort Cloud, which is believed to be 5,000x further from the Sun as the Earth is.
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Another Hubble Space Telescope hoax. Thank goodness that the government bureaucrats haven’t found a way to tax it.
Scary headline backed up by gibberish and theories. Over educated eggheads spending our money so they don’t have to get a real job and produce something usable for mankind.
Sure it does.
And when you look up the word gibberish in a dictionary? The following passage is used as an example-
It’s believed that the comet is billions of years old – meaning it formed during the early days of our universe – and also that it came from the Oort Cloud, the icy enclosure of comets, asteroids and material that forms a spherical shield around our solar system. The Oort Cloud is a theoretical concept – scientists don’t have visual proof of its existence. But it’s believed this comet could help scientists learn more about the Oort Cloud, which is believed to be 5,000x further from the Sun as the Earth is.
Well just in case better have a $5 bill and three quarters in your pocket, and be dressed in a black shirt and sweats with new Nike shoes.
This has worked really well in the not so distant past.
And clean underwear… Just sayin…
Maybe it will speed up and break ‘the immutable laws of light speed/physics/The Science’…whatever the hip terminology is these days. Again.
When it breaches the rings around uranus…
Be afraid
So it is not getting any closer to us than Saturn? Clickbait headline.
I, too, was disappointed.
Reading the headline, I said “Well, it’s about damn time.”
Putin.
I always root for the comet.
“You cannot go around telling people that there is a 100% chance that they’re gonna die.”
Smod
With how many times the word believed and estimated appears in the article, all the proof you need that NASA is a bunch of make believe masquerading as science.
Planet Nine…
There ARE nine planets. Screw Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
The Fermi Lab nuclear accelerator collider guys in Illinois discovered something the other day that means they have been wrong about tons of stuff forever. I found that more interesting. They headline stuff like it may hit us or something and then say it will get close at something like a billion miles? Eleven times further away than the Sun.
Ooooo. Another light in the night sky.
I can not grasp how the “Experts” can give a true distance, direction and speed of that fuzzy light.
The Earth is not large enough to give an accurate triangulation of its distance.
We are to take it on “Faith” alone that what the Government astronomers tell us in true.
The Experts pull an Age of a celestial object out of a dark dirty stinky place.
Best news I’ve heard in years.
” The Oort Cloud is a theoretical concept ” Like so much of Modern Physics, they made up the Oort Cloud to explain why comets CANNOT be proof of a young universe. Dirty ice cubes whizzing around space could not still exist after billions and billions of years.
If Modern Physics had to stick with what they actually can prove, Einstein would be retired and the Earth would be about 10k years old and in the center of the universe.