bogeyman
13th April 2022, 08:38
https://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-official-gigantic-comet-approaching-sun-is-largest-ever-found-astronomers-say
The largest comet ever discovered has been traveling towards the Sun for over 1 million years, and its gigantic scale shines a light on the mysterious objects that make up one of the biggest structures in our Solar System.
In a new study, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to confirm that the solid center of the giant comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) is the largest comet nucleus ever detected. It measures a staggering 50 times larger than most known comets, at almost 140 kilometers wide (about 85 miles).
However, that freakishly large size – or rather the apparent weirdness of it – might say more about us and our limited conception of comets than it does about anything else.
C/2014 UN271 hails from the Oort Cloud: a gigantic, spherical scattering of icy objects proposed to surround the Sun at the deepest and most distant stretches of our Solar System (so far away, in fact, it's thought to extend at least a quarter of the way towards the next nearest star system, Alpha Centauri).
Sounds pretty big, right? It is, theoretically speaking. However, the Oort Cloud is so far away and so difficult to detect, it's basically a gigantic hypothetical mystery, even though astronomers consider it to be one of the largest structures in our Solar System.
Once in a while, though, something emerges out of this enigmatic mass, gravitationally lured towards the Sun from the remoteness of the cosmic hinterlands.
Dooms day, or a warning on how fragile we really are.
The largest comet ever discovered has been traveling towards the Sun for over 1 million years, and its gigantic scale shines a light on the mysterious objects that make up one of the biggest structures in our Solar System.
In a new study, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to confirm that the solid center of the giant comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) is the largest comet nucleus ever detected. It measures a staggering 50 times larger than most known comets, at almost 140 kilometers wide (about 85 miles).
However, that freakishly large size – or rather the apparent weirdness of it – might say more about us and our limited conception of comets than it does about anything else.
C/2014 UN271 hails from the Oort Cloud: a gigantic, spherical scattering of icy objects proposed to surround the Sun at the deepest and most distant stretches of our Solar System (so far away, in fact, it's thought to extend at least a quarter of the way towards the next nearest star system, Alpha Centauri).
Sounds pretty big, right? It is, theoretically speaking. However, the Oort Cloud is so far away and so difficult to detect, it's basically a gigantic hypothetical mystery, even though astronomers consider it to be one of the largest structures in our Solar System.
Once in a while, though, something emerges out of this enigmatic mass, gravitationally lured towards the Sun from the remoteness of the cosmic hinterlands.
Dooms day, or a warning on how fragile we really are.