How odd is it for you when relatives that you've never met in your life visit your family for the
first time super awkward am i right well earth is about to have such a visit too a primordial
relative of our lovely planet is about to visit our home but don't worry unlike don't
look up this guest is not going to annihilate all of us although it could do so quite easily
Welcome to Factnomenal and today let's talk about the gargantuan comet that's
about to visit our solar system and could be the largest of its kind!
this distant relative of the earth has been traveling towards our sun for a million years
on its way to meet us humanity wasn't even a thing when this four billion-year-old grandpa
started its journey towards our parents star a denizen of deep space this ginormous comet
is among the oldest objects to enter our solar system comets are icy lego blocks
that are left over from the early days of planet construction they were unceremoniously tossed
out of the solar system in a gravitational sumo wrestling match among the massive outer planets
these kicked out comets took up residence in the Oort cloud a vast reservoir of far-flung comets
encircling the solar system many trillions of miles away in deep space thanks to the Hubble
telescope astronomers confirmed that the solid center of the giant comet c 2014 un-271 also known
as Bernardinelli Bernstein is the largest comet nucleus ever detected it measures a staggering
50 times larger than most known comets at almost 85 miles wide when we look at comets in the sky
their spectacular multi-million mile long tail which makes them look like a skyrocket grabs our
attention deceptively however the source of that tail is at the heart of the comet a solid nucleus
of ice mixed with dust yep these amazing fireballs hurtling through space are actually secrets
snowballs deceptive as ever am i right most comet nuclei measure a few miles across and so would
fit inside the confines of a small town but this time hubble astronomers have uncovered a goliath
comet c 2014 un-271 could be as big as 85 miles across over twice the width of the state of rhode
island imagine if that thing crashed into our earth the ending would be much more devastating
than in don't look up it would be something like what ultron tried to pull in the second
avengers movie yeah you know that avengers movie we all like to pretend doesn't exist
named after astronomers pedro bernardinelli and gary bernstein who discovered this behemoth in
archival images from the dark energy survey at the cerro tololo inter-american observatory in chile
the comet was first observed in 2010 near the orbit of neptune hubble's contribution played a
crucial role in 2022 in confirming the previously made observations and to verify that this comet
is definitely the undisputed heavyweight champion of known comments interestingly
the return journey for this comet to its nesting ground will also take millions of years but first
to finish with its visit it still has roughly 2 billion more miles to go
see 2014 un-271 has its nesting ground located in the oort cloud this outermost layer of the solar
system is a gigantic spherical scattering of icy objects surrounding our sun at the deepest and
most distant reaches possible in fact the earth cloud's reach quite possibly extends
at least a quarter of the way towards our nearest neighboring star system alpha centauri due to its
gigantic and freakishly expansive nature mapping the oort cloud is difficult and thus our own
cosmic fence is a huge hypothetical mystery for us however the oort cloud likes to play with our
curiosity the oort club likes to tease us often by chucking something towards the sun from its
place there in the solar system's remote cosmic hinterlands c 2014 un-271 is definitely the most
massive hint the oort cloud has sent our way a hint that will help us to decipher the puzzle
of the frozen pristine masses that make up its entirety comet bernard nelly bernstein follows a
three million year long elliptical orbit taking it as far as roughly half a light year from the sun
the comet is now less than two billion miles from the sun falling in a nearly perpendicular path to
the plane of our solar system at that distance temperatures are only about minus 348 degrees
fahrenheit yet that's warm enough for carbon monoxide to sublimate off the surface producing
the dusty coma since the sighting of the comet in 2010 it's been intensively studied by ground and
space based telescopes researchers were astonished by how active this comet has been despite its
considerable distance from the sun and arrived at the conclusion that it has to be big really big
to confirm this assumption they needed the best data possible and that's why the team turned to
the hubble telescope the challenge in measuring this comet was in how to distinguish the solid
nucleus from the huge dusty coma enveloping it the comet is currently too far away for its nucleus to
be visually resolved by hubble that said the aging telescope may be getting close to its retirement
age but the old man still has its uses even today the senior telescopes data was able to capture a
bright spike of light at the nucleus's location a man named manto hui of the macau university of
science and technology in taipa and his team of researchers used that data to develop a computer
model of the surrounding coma and adjusted it to fit the hubble images next the glow of the coma
was separated leaving behind the star-like nucleus the researchers then compared the brightness of
the nucleus to earlier radio observations and voila the combined data was able to constrain
the diameter and the reflectivity of the nucleus but you must be thinking what does all this mean
the colossal comet is barreling its way at 22 000 miles per hour from the edge of the solar system
but not to worry it will never get closer than 1 billion miles away from the sun which is
slightly farther than the distance of the planet saturn and that won't be until the year 2031
so we can all take a collective sigh of relief as we're not going to die also we have nearly a
decade to study this amazing member of our solar system's family and hubble's measurements have
already given us astonishing revelations the surface of the nucleus of this icy fireball
is huge much much bigger than hayley's comet which is a more frequent visitor to our skies
and there's more to this story its very existence proves that comet c 2014
un271 is just a wave hello from the vast ocean called the oort cloud and there are likely many
more monsters out there for us to find there are presumably trillions of comets in the oort cloud
and there's a good chance that comet c 2014 un-271 is not the biggest of the bunch hidden out there
the york cloud's comets didn't actually form so far from the sun instead they were tossed
out of the solar system billions of years ago by a gravitational pinball game among the massive
outer planets when the orbits of jupiter and saturn were still evolving the far-flung
comets only travel back towards the sun and planets if their distant orbits are disturbed
by the gravitational tug of a passing star it's not that different from a strong wind shaking ripe
apples on a tree making some of them fall to the ground comet c 2014 un-271's inward journey
is helping us access the deep freeze samples of the composition of the early solar system
preserved for billions of years the reality of the oort cloud is supported by theoretical modeling
of the formation and evolution of the solar system the more observational evidence that
can be gathered through deep sky surveys coupled with multi-wavelength observations the better
astronomers will understand the work cloud's role in the solar system's evolution first hypothesized
in 1950 by dutch astronomer jan ort the oort cloud remains technically a theory at this point
because the innumerable comets that make it up are two faint and distant to be directly observed
estimates for the oort cloud's mass vary widely reaching as high as 20 times earth's mass
to give you an idea of just how far away and how vast it is it'll take the voyager missions about
300 more years just to reach the inner realm of the oort cloud moreover the voyager spacecraft
will still need another 30 000 years on their journey before they completely pass through it
this titanic comet will provide us a priceless insight into the size distribution of comets
in the oort cloud and that will help us to map the total mass of this outermost boundary of our solar
system better so please look up this is a once in a civilization event no really it's a once
in the entirety of humanity event it's an opportunity to understand our cosmic
neighborhood how it was formed and what lies around it tell us in the comments what else you
think lies in the dark corners of the oort cloud and as always thanks for watching Factnomenal