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| 96P/Machholz 1 as imaged by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) spacecraft. (Image credit: NASA Image Collection/Alamy Stock Photo) |
Scientists have spotted an enormous, 'alien' comet streaking straight
towards the sun.
The 3.7 mile-wide (6 kilometers) space iceball, called 96P/Machholz 1, is
thought to have come from somewhere outside our solar system, and is being
monitored by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar and Heliospheric
Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft as it zips toward our star inside the orbit of
Mercury, leaving an icy trail in its wake.
Comet tails are primarily composed of gas, which trickles behind the frozen
clumps of ice and gas as they are heated by the sun’s radiation. In 2008, an
analysis of the material shed by 150 comets found that 96P/Machholz 1
contained less than 1.5% of the expected levels of the chemical cyanogen,
while also being low in carbon — leading astronomers to conclude that it
could be an interloper from another solar system. Now, its plunge towards
the sun might reveal even more of its secrets.
"96P is a very atypical comet, both in composition and in behavior, so we
never know exactly what we might see," Karl Battams, an astrophysicist at
the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC, told
spaceweather.com. "Hopefully we can
get some beautiful science out of this and share [it] with everyone as soon
as we can."
David Machholz first spotted the eponymous comet in 1986 using a homemade
cardboard telescope. Most comets that fall towards the sun tend to be
smaller than 32 feet (10 meters) wide, and consequently get burned up as
they approach our star.
But the gigantic size of Machholz 1 (it is more than two-thirds the height
of Mount Everest) appears to protect it from complete evaporation, and the
SOHO has spotted the comet making five close passes around the sun since its
discovery. The icy interloper's closest approach to the sun will come on
Tuesday (Jan 31.) when it will near our star at a distance three times
closer than Mercury.
The comet may have found itself on its strange orbit after being ejected
from its original solar system by the gravity of a giant planet. Then, after
a considerable amount of time wandering the cosmos, an accidental rendezvous
with Jupiter could have bent its trajectory to ensnare it around our sun.
Other theories also suggest that the comet might not be alien, but may have
formed in poorly-understood regions of the solar system or had its cyanogen
blasted off by repeat journeys around the sun.
SOHO has spotted more than 3,000 comets since its December 1995 launch,
although the spacecraft’s primary mission is to observe the sun for violent
eruptions called coronal mass ejections, or solar flares that can cause
geomagnetic storms on Earth. The most powerful of these storms can disrupt
our planet's magnetic field enough to send satellites tumbling to Earth, and
scientists have warned that extreme geomagnetic storms could even cripple
the internet.
Source: Live Science
Tags:
Space & Astrophysics