:quality(80)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/lanacionar/PV2W4QI565H7ZGCDBNO6WYTIBI.JPG "NASA scientists have discovered the largest comet ever seen.")
A comet with a core 50 times larger than normal travels closer to Earth at 35,000 kilometers per hour.
NASA’s Hubble Telescope has determined that comets is It weighs about 500 billion tons and is 137 km wide, larger than the US state of Rhode Island.
But do not worry. It will be 1.6 billion kilometers from the sun, and not until 2031.
It was first seen in 2010, however Hubble has only been able to confirm its existence so far.
Y This is larger than what comet astronomers have seen before.
David Javid, professor of planetary science and astronomy at the University of California (UCLA) in Los Angeles, said: “We have always suspected that this comet must be so large because it is so bright at such a distance. Well, we confirm that. . »
NASA describes the ice ball as “rushing in this direction” and calls it Bernardinelli-Bernstein after it was discovered by astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein.
They first saw it more than 3.0 billion miles from the sun a decade ago at the Cero Dololo Inter-American Laboratory in Chile.
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NASA describes comets as “Lego blocks” of ice, which remain in the early days of the planet’s formation. “In the wake of the gravitational force of massive extraterrestrial beings, they were unexpectedly ejected from the solar system,” it said in a statement.
He added: “Evolved comets have settled in the Oort cloud, a large reservoir of distant comets that surrounds the solar system.”
Mann-du Hui of Macau University of Science and Technology described the comet as “a fantastic object” and added: “We thought the comet might be too big, but we need better data to confirm it.”
The Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet has followed an elliptical orbit for 3 billion years, carrying it from the sun for about half a light-year. The comet is now At a distance of less than 3.2 billion kilometers from the Sun, it falls almost perpendicular to the plane of our solar system.
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