With the research carried out with the support of NASA, scientists determined that the comet called Comet 46P/Wirtanen contains high levels of alcohol.
Normally for comets ‘drunk monsters’ is called. This is because when they move from the outer parts of the Solar System into the interior, they can heat up and release alcoholic compounds. However, Comet 46P/Wirtanen was observed to release an unusually high amount of alcohol.
‘Highest alcohol content’
Scientists discovered that the comet, which came very close to Earth 2.5 years ago, ‘coma’ He studied the atmosphere of the Earth and announced the result of the research in a scientific article they published.
Neil Dello Russo, a comet scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and co-author of the study, said: “46P/Wirtanen has one of the highest alcohol-aldehyde ratios ever measured in any comet. This gives us information about how carbon, oxygen and hydrogen molecules were distributed in the early solar system where Wirtanen formed.”
Normally, as comets orbit closer to the Sun, the frozen particles in their cores heat up, then boil or sublimate, going directly from solid ice to gas, bypassing the liquid phase. This process, called outgassing, causes coma.
But Keck Observatory data revealed that comet 46P/Wirtanen was also heating up in another process beyond solar radiation.
‘The temperature does not decrease with distance from the core’
Co-author Erika Gibb, professor and head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, explained: “Interestingly, we found that the measured temperature for the water gas in the coma did not decrease significantly with distance from the core, which implies a heating mechanism.”
‘Are we alone in the universe?’
Scientists have not yet been able to explain the reason for this warming. But even this discovery is crucial, according to astronomer Greg Doppmann of the Keck Observatory: “Comet studies like this are exciting because it can help us answer that question: Are we alone in the universe?”
At the end of the research, the analyzes revealed the following in the chemical structure of Comet Wirtanen: “Acetylene, ammonia, ethane formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide, methanol and water.”
Comet 46P/Wirtanen closest to Earth – December 16, 2018
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