Transcription
Hello, wonderful person. This is Anton, and in this video, we're going to discuss some of the recent updates in regards to one of the biggest cometary discoveries in the last few years. The discovery of what you can kind of see right here. This is known as comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein. Sometimes also referred to as the BB comet. Discovered a few years back and confirmed in 2021 by Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein.
And as the title of this video suggests, what makes this particular comet super exciting and I guess kind of unusual is that this seems to be the largest comet we've ever seen coming from the mysterious Oort cloud. Initially, the size of the comet was believed to be 120 km, 75 mi across. But as we're going to discuss today, it looks like the size is even larger.
And in the last few years, we actually learned quite a lot about this object and about its somewhat mysterious features. And so let's discuss this comet once again. But I guess let's briefly start with the discovery because it was just a little bit unusual. And that's because initially, when it was first seen in some of the images, researchers actually thought they're looking at some kind of a distant asteroid. It had an extremely small, pointlike appearance.
But right away there was something super bizarre about this object. Unlike typical asteroids, by looking at this object in other images, researchers discovered that it was not really moving that much across the night skies; it almost seemed like some kind of a star-like object and not a typical asteroid. And so, because it was moving so extremely slow, this only meant one thing: It was essentially headed toward the inner solar system. It also very likely possessed a somewhat parabolic orbit, or at least an extremely eccentric orbit. Or, in other words, it was coming from somewhere super, super far away.
But because initial distance calculations put this object at approximately 29 astronomical units away from planet Earth, so a little bit closer than Neptune, and because it was already visible, it only meant one thing: This was an extremely large object and very likely something somewhat unique. With the initial discovery leading to a new race, all of the astronomers tried to find some of the previously captured images in order to discover what the motion of this object was and what the actual orbit was as well.
And so, by having several images going as far back as 2014, it was discovered to have this somewhat bizarre orbit. It's going to approach the sun at approximately 11 astronomical units. So just beyond the orbit of Saturn, but it also most likely came from a distance of approximately 44,000 astronomical units away, or approximately .7 light years, making this a true long-period comet coming directly from the Oort cloud.
But because this particular object has already started to show cometary signs, or in other words, it already started to emit a lot of stuff from the surface even though it was pretty far away from the sun, this implied that it potentially had a lot of pristine materials on the surface and may have only come close to the outer solar system just a few times. Or maybe this was its first time. In other words, maybe something on the outskirts of the Oort cloud disturbed this object sometime in the past, and it's now finally entering the solar system, producing all of these very, very unusual emissions. We'll come back to that point in a few minutes because that's basically what the new study is all about.
And so the observation of comet activity from such an extremely distant object is practically unheard of. It's really only been seen three times previously, and all three times from extremely distant comets. The most famous one is actually Haley's Comet. That's the comet that produced this incredible image that was captured in 1997. But unlike Halley's Comet, unfortunately, this particular comet is not going to be coming close enough to the sun to exhibit these extremely beautiful tails. It will have some tails, but just nothing so extreme.
Yet, nevertheless, this is one of three known comets to us that started to exhibit cometary activity beyond 20 astronomical units, which can only be explained if the material on the surface is more or less pristine, potentially billions of years old, or implying that this is one of the first visits this comet ever had so close to the sun. And well, based on the observations from 2021, we know it also experienced a major outburst. Basically, because the sun was warming up this comet even at these far distances, it sort of exploded, producing a relatively large emission, possibly as much as 100 million kg of dust was ejected from the surface.
And well, really, what makes this particular object so extremely rare is just the fact that we technically believe a lot of these distant comets generally experience something known as fading. With every single orbit closer and closer to the sun, they lose so much mass and so many volatile components that they eventually become completely invisible or maybe even completely fall apart. But because this object is so massive and is already so bright, this once again highlights that this is maybe its first time here. Or, in more scientific terms, this is a dynamically new comet.
And based on the calculations of how long it took it to reach this point, it seems to be approximately 2.88 million years. And so if this is its first time here, it means that 2.8 million years ago, something potentially disturbed the outer solar system or at least disturbed this comet to suddenly change its orbit dramatically. Now, obviously, we have no idea what could have happened. And so this could have been some kind of a passage of a nearby star or maybe even just the galactic tides themselves.
But what's certain is that this comet that most likely orbited for billions of years on the outskirts of the solar system inside the Oort cloud is now coming closer and closer to us. And it's going to make its closest approach sometime in 2031. But because it's going to be pretty far away from us, it's still going to be so much challenging to see this without a telescope. As a matter of fact, its total brightness will actually be kind of similar to Pluto, which means that you can actually see it with a telescope, but not bright enough for the naked-eye observations.
Nevertheless, for such a distant comet, it's already pretty bright. As a matter of fact, the early observations by NASA suggest that it already had a coma and was already active back in 2018. And within just 2 years, it increased its total brightness by at least 1 and a half magnitudes. Basically making it approximately four times brighter.
And while it's some of these more recent observations and especially observations from this study by Nathan Roth and the team you see right here that essentially reveal even more unusual observations and even more mysteries showing us how super strange this object is. When this object was approximately 16.66 astronomical units away from the sun, researchers were able to use ALMA, or Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, to observe this object and discover what's happening around it.
And so first, by using the observations in radio light, they were able to determine that it seems to be bigger than we thought. So here's roughly how it compares to Muses and a famous Trojan known as Chiron. And because this was based on radiothermal emissions here, the observations seem to be pretty accurate. Although there's still a bit of an error of plus or minus 7 km. But as you can see in terms of total size, it's at least double a famous Halley's Comet. It's also several times larger than the Martian moon Phobos and nearly 50 times larger than a typical comet. And it's also 50 times larger than the asteroid Anton. Yeah, that one. The one you can learn about in one of the videos in the description.
And so yeah, this is definitely large. But it's not just large; it's also, for some reason, extremely dark. As a matter of fact, this image kind of shows us what it potentially looks like. It seems to only reflect 4.4% of light, giving it an extremely low albedo and making it almost pitch black. It's actually been compared to coal in terms of color. And because it only reflects 4.4%, 4% of light, this potentially implies that its surface composition is extremely enriched in organic compounds, various carbons, various sulfites, but also compounds that have been bombarded by cosmic rays for billions of years. Although here it seems to be a little bit more reflective or a little bit brighter in longer wavelengths, which also suggests it potentially has a very slight red color tint here. It's maybe kind of comparable to the redness of Pluto, but in this case, much, much darker.
But this is definitely not permanent. As it becomes activated and as it becomes a true comet, especially after its closest passage, it's extremely likely going to completely change its surface, exposing its inner structure and possibly making it just a little bit brighter. But intriguingly, because this is such a large and such a massive object, there's a very high chance that it can then recapture most of the stuff that becomes ejective for the next few years just because of its own gravity. In other words, even though it's going to lose some material as it approaches the sun, a lot of the stuff will actually come back and fall back on the surface sometime before this object goes back to the Oort cloud. And so its total mass will only decrease by just a little bit. Intriguingly, this is exactly what happened to the famous comet Ikeya-Seki.
And once it passes the closest point, it's then going to leave this place for at least 4 1/2 million years. That's because its orbital parameters will change just a little bit, and it's now going to go as far away as 55,000 astronomical units away, reaching even farther regions of the Oort cloud. But going back to these new observations here, the observations also revealed extremely complex evolving jets of carbon monoxide, which kind of explains what it had on the surface and why it became a comet so far away from the sun. So basically, here it seemed to be initially covered with huge deposits of carbon monoxide. But because it also experienced a few unusual explosions, this still raises a few questions about well what's actually going to happen here in the next few years.
As it approaches the sun in the next 6 years from today, it will be quite interesting to find out what happens to it and how it reacts to getting hotter. But I guess more importantly, these new observations and new calculations definitively confirm that this is not just the largest, but also one of the farthest comets we've ever seen coming from the Oort cloud, making this one of the most fascinating objects apart from those extrasolar comets like the famous 'Oumuamua, which a lot of astronomers are actually hoping we could maybe one day land on, collect some samples, and return to planet Earth. Because this is one of the few opportunities we have to study such a bizarre, unusual object literally coming from in the middle of nowhere in outer space.
But at least for now, researchers predict that it's probably going to start vaporizing a lot more stuff on the surface and will even eventually reveal some of its actual nucleus, possibly exposing what's under the surface and showing us what a lot of these comets might be made out of. And so in the next few years, this might help us answer some fundamental questions about the solar system and even answer questions about where Earth might have gotten its water from. As a matter of fact, if we actually find a lot of water that seems to be similar to planet Earth, this comet might help us solve a relatively old mystery of the origin of water.
But because so far this was the first detection and the first confirmation of molecular activity from its surface, it just means that this is just the beginning. And we're going to be discussing this comet more and more as it becomes more active prior to its closest approach in 2031. And so until future observations or future discoveries, that's all I wanted to mention. You can learn about some of the other comets or even this particular comet in some of the previous videos in the description. Thank you for watching. Subscribe. Come back tomorrow to learn something else. Support this channel on Patreon where you can actually find a lot of additional footage, videos without any ads, and some other additional bonuses. You can also support this channel by joining the channel membership that grants you early access and some other cool tidbits or by buying the wonderful person t-shirt you can find in your description. Stay wonderful. I'll see you tomorrow, and as always, bye-bye. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]