The largest comet ever seen is barreling towards Earth at rapid speeds, but while there is no chance it will hit us, it does shed light on one of the most mysterious structures in the solar system, scientists noted in a new academic study.
The comet, identified as C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), is heading toward the Earth’s direction at a speed of around 35,400 kilometers per hour. Further, it is absolutely enormous, with its nucleus – the central part of the comet – is estimated by the Hubble Space Telescope to be over 128.7 kilometers in diameter with a mass of around 500 trillion tons. For comparison, the US state of Rhode Island is only around 59-60 kilometers wide and the state of Connecticut is 113 kilometers long, meaning this comet is larger than two US states, albeit not stacked together. Regarding the mass, it is so astronomical that a contemporary terrestrial comparison is essentially impossible.
The size of this massive comet absolutely smashes the previous record holder, C/2002 VQ94, but according to the study, published in the peer-reviewed academic periodical The Astrophysical Journal Letters, this is just the tip of the iceberg – literally.
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This comet is literally the tip of the iceberg for many thousands of comets that are too faint to see in the more distant parts of the solar system,” said study co-author David Jewitt, a professor of planetary science and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). “We’ve always suspected this comet had to be big because it is so bright at such a large distance. Now we confirm it is.”
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