THE LARGEST comet ever discovered is more than 130 kilometres (80 miles) long, scientists have revealed.
According to New Scientist, the celestial giant was identified last year in the Oort Cloud, a spherical shower of icy objects surrounding our Solar System.
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It’s headed for the inner depths of the star system and is closer in size to a small planet than an ordinary comet, which are typically as large as small towns.
In a recent paper, scientists calculated the size of the huge object by measuring the heat radiating from it using radio telescopes in Chile’s Atacama desert.
They showed that the nucleus – the solid, central part of the comet – is 137 kilometres (85 miles) long, confirming a previous estimate.
That’s as long as 1,141 football pitches laid to end-to-end or roughly seven times the length of Manhattan.
“We have confirmed the estimate,” Dr Emmanuel Lellouch of the Paris Observatory told New Scientist.
“It’s the biggest comet from the Oort Cloud ever found.”
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As its name suggests, the first observations of Comet 2014 UN271/(Bernardinelli-Bernstein) were made eight years ago when it was as distant as Neptune.
Astronomers failed to recognise its significance until June 2021, when they identified that it was an enormous comet.
By then, it had moved closer to the centre of the Solar System. Estimates put its size at between 100 to 370 kilometres (60-230 miles) wide.
Although Bernardinelli-Bernstein is getting closer, it will never cross the orbit of Saturn, making accurate observations difficult.
While early estimates of its size using the amount of light reflected off of the object, Dr Lellouch and colleagues took a different approach.
They examined the radiation of the comet using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile.
That allowed the team to get an accurate measure of Bernardinelli-Bernardin’s surface area, allowing them to calculate its size.
According to their results, is twice the size of its closest known competitor, comet Hale-Bopp, discovered in 1995.
Another object, 95P/Chiron, orbits between Saturn and Uranus and is technically larger at 210 kilometres across. However, scientists cannot agree on whether it’s a comet or a small planet.
Dr Lellouch hopes that further observations of Bernardinelli-Bernstein can help astronomers to understand more about it.
“Now that we know the size, we are going to be able to study how active this comet is,” he said.
The research has been accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters, with a preprint available on ArXiv.org.
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In other news, a four-tonne chunk of a SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the Moon, according to online space junk trackers.
Boeing has sunk $450million into a flying taxi startup that hopes to whisk passengers across cities by the end of the decade.
Personalised smart guns, which can be fired only by verified users, may finally become available to U.S. consumers this year.
And, scientists are embarking on a mission to unravel the mystery behind dozens of grisly child mummies buried in an underground tomb in Sicily.
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