Mega Comet Arriving From the Oort Cloud Is 85 Miles Wide

Gizmodo ^ | George Dvorsky

[BenLurkin]

Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is currently inbound from the Oort Cloud, a distant region of the solar system known for packing billions and possibly trillions of icy objects. The comet will make its closest approach to Earth in 2031, when it will come to within 11 au of the Sun (1 billion miles), in which 1 au is the average distance from Earth to the Sun. The comet, coming no closer than Saturn, won’t likely be visible to the unaided eye, but astronomers will be keeping a close watch, as it’s turning out to be a rather extraordinary object.

Named after its discoverers, Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein from the Dark Energy Survey, the comet is special for several reasons. Astronomers first detected the inbound object when it was still very far away—some 29 au from the Sun (2.7 billion miles). That’s as far out as the orbit of Neptune, but astronomers didn’t appreciate its significance until it came to within 24 au of the Sun (2.2 billion miles), at which time it began to display distinctive cometary activity. Researchers with Las Cumbres Observatory confirmed its cometary nature in June 2021. Its remarkable brightness indicated an object of enormous size, with preliminary estimates pointing to an object between 62 and 230 miles (100 and 370 kilometers) wide.

Bernardinelli-Bernstein is not the 230-mile behemoth suggested by preliminary measurements, but it’s still gigantic. As it nears the Sun, volatiles on its surface, especially ice, will increasingly sublimate, turning directly from solid into gas. This could give the comet a distinctive coma and tail, but we’ll have to wait a few more years to know for sure

[Red Badger]

Feel the BERN-BERN!................

[Empire_of_Liberty]

2031! So, all we have to do is survive “The Great Reset” genocide until then.

[Vaquero]

Wow. This makes the chicxulub object look like a pebble. Glad it will stay a billion miles away

[Scarlett156]

Surviving humans will have other concerns by then: Following the caribou migration, finding a cave that’s warm and dry, making spearheads and foraging for nuts and berries, etc. #2031

[fluffy]

the Oort Cloud, a distant region of the solar system known for packing billions...

It continually amazes me what passes for scientific journalism these days. "Known"? There's no evidence that the cloud even exists, it's just a hypothesis based on a number of assumptions about comet formation. Unobserved, unmeasured, but reported as "known".

[BozoTexino]

I released an Oort Cloud after street tacos once. Okay, twice.

[tnlibertarian]

[PIF]

Stone Knapping 101 will be the course to take in a few years.

[Theophilus]

The comet will have a unique spin on it that will make it seem significantly more significant than it really is.

[dfwgator]

Yooo Hoo over here!

[SgtHooper]

LMAO!

[moovova]

It sounds big enough to be on Google Maps.

[wbarmy]

Oort Cloud is a theoretical concept of a cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals proposed to surround the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 AU (0.03 to 3.2 light-years).

If the Oort Cloud is a theoretical concept, how do they theoretically know it came from there? Even NASA has to say they "believe" the Oort Cloud is something, because no one has any real proof it exists.

The whole theoretical nonsense comes from the need to have a place which sends out comets once in awhile, because if the universe is as old as they say, there should be NO comets.

[wbarmy]

Should have read more postings before I did mine. You are 100% correct, even the NASA website on the Oort cloud has to admit there is zero evidence for this. Especially since there are really great methods for measuring tiny deviations of exo-planets, but none of these have seen anything where the cloud is supposed to be. No occlusions, lensing images, momentary eclipses of stars, nothing.

[Verginius Rufus]

Won't global warming have killed all life on earth by 2031?

Except cockroaches and telemarketers, of course.

[dfwgator]

Except cockroaches and telemarketers, of course.

And Keith Richards.

[Bratch]

"It's coming right at us!"

[Campion]

because if the universe is as old as they say, there should be NO comets.

Can you explain that comment? A comet is going to last virtually forever as long as it stays far away from stars (and other massive objects that could destroy it tidally.) A body at -350 F, receiving only faint IR radiation from distant stars, is not going to evaporate at any measurable speed.

Does the Oort Cloud exist? It's pretty clear that there's a reservoir of comet-like bodies in the outer solar system. Some of them, due to impacts or whatever, sometimes make excursions into the inner solar system, where we can see them.

[wbarmy]

Every single time a comet makes a revolution around the sun, they lose material. None of the comets we see now could last over the millions to billions of years that are theorized.

The comets we normally see cannot have lasted more than a 100,000 years. Even the long term comets they talk about could not have lasted the billions of years theorized.

So, they came up with a comet nursery which flings out new comets once in awhile for an explanation of why we have comets. Again. no actual proof, they just needed it to plug a leak in the theory.