The US space agency NASA has the largest comet ever observed. Named Bernardinelli-Bernstein, these celestial bodies are still far from Earth, but on our way. According to Theo Jurians, an astronomer at the University of Groningen (RUG), there is no reason to panic.
The comet, about 80 miles in diameter, was discovered years ago, but it took scientists a long time to study Bernardinelli-Bernstein more clearly. We need not fear an earthquake, it will change. “Comet will be close to Saturn. It will not happen until 2031. Universally, Saturn is our backyard, but it’s not going to collide with Earth, so no need to worry.” , Says the Jurians.
According to the astronomer, a comet is a kind of remnant of the origin of our solar system. “Our planets formed from a disk around the sun, some of which remains. Comet is jokingly called a dirty snowball because it’s a combination of grit and ice, and it’s very cold. , So it says something about the history of our solar system, which is very interesting to scientists.
In our solar system, Jupiter is particularly attractive to comets. “It’s the largest planet, so there’s a lot of gravity. You’ll occasionally see the impact of a small comet on Jupiter,” Jurians know. Yet our own planet cannot escape the shocks. “Finally, in 1908, the famous crater in Siberia, fortunately, was in an uninhabited area.
Although Bernardinelli-Bernstein, the two men who discovered the comet, will leave our planet empty, Jurians do not rule out the possibility that in the future another planet will be affected by another celestial body. “You do not know, of course, but we’re talking about small rocks in our solar system.
If a large comet ever jumps to our planet, there are conditions to avoid disaster. “But we’ve going to try this for the first time, because we’ve never done this before,” Jurians says. “You could explode a comet with rockets. Another idea is to throw them away.”
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