Have you ever wondered what would happen if a comet or asteroid hit our planet? Do you believe that scenes like the movie Armageddon could really happen? Unfortunately, about 100 tons of rock and stone particles really fall to Earth from outer space every day, and one of those asteroids dived into the Earth and hit about 65 million years ago, setting off a chain of events that eventually led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and gave mammals like us a chance to rule the planet.
But our time at the top of the food chain may not be that lengthy, and the universe is ready to test us. According to the news, a giant comet has entered our galaxy and it is heading towards us at an unbelievable speed. If it keeps flying, will it hit us? Will we have a chance of survival?
All comets that have passed Earth throughout human history have been so significant that they have been extensively studied by philosophers, priests, astrologers and scientists, and they are usually as large as asteroids. Comets have a tail of gas and dust ejected from icy atomic nuclei that make-up most of their mass, according to research in the journal Geophysics. The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a rare sample of the most enormous comet ever observed in less than a decade, the largest frozen core ever, and a planet that will pass Earth in 2031.
It's a comet about 128 kilometers wide, unlike any comet in history, and it's headed for Earth through the inner solar system. The object, 2014 UN271, was first spotted by Skywatch during its Dark Energy survey mission in 2014, but it wasn't until mid-June last year that they realized there was some bias in the data and that it was really a comet, dubbed a giant comet by some because it could break the all-time record for observations from Earth.
Scientists have given comet 2014UN271 a name, Bernadinelli Bernstein, and it's a long way off. At about 128 kilometers in diameter, the comet is considerably larger than the 10-kilometer wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, and it's hurtling toward us at 35,000 kilometers per hour. According to preliminary estimates, the comet weighs a staggering 500 trillion tons and has been around for more than a million years. Comets come from the Oort Cloud, which is made up of billions of comets and is a major source of this material.39bet-đua chó-game giải trí -đá gà-đá gà trực tuyến-đánh bài
The inner edge of the diffusive cloud is estimated to be 20,500 times farther from Earth than the sun, and its outer edge may extend at least a quarter of the way to the Alpha Centauri galaxy, which contains the closest stars to the sun. A three-million-year-long elliptical orbit around the supermassive comet lies about half a light year from the Sun. Currently, the comet is plummeting, roughly perpendicular to the plane of our solar system, less than 3.2 billion kilometers from the Sun and with a surface temperature of only about minus 348 degrees Fahrenheit.
Still, at this distance, it's hot enough for dust comets to form carbon monoxide on the surface and sublimate. In fact, it has already been suggested that the Oort Cloud has a strange connection to both life on Earth and the inner planets last year, with Harvard astronomers proposing that the dinosaur extinction may have been caused by a comet in the Oort Cloud, rather than the accepted asteroid. They believe that a comet, pulled from its orbit around Jupiter by powerful tidal forces, came too close to the sun and broke apart, and that the main part of the comet may have hit Earth, triggering the mass extinction!
In fact, mankind can thank Jupiter, without Jupiter's gravitational pull, possibly the Earth would have disappeared under the impact of a cosmic comet. Scientists think one of the reasons we haven't found intelligent life yet may be because of Jupiter-like planets. Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, is also a gas planet, with a mass 308 times that of Earth and 2.5 times that of all the other planets combined.
Surprisingly, scientists found that about 15 percent of planetary systems seem to have a gas giant like our own, and not simply our solar system. Jupiter can deflect asteroids and comets from their orbits through its enormous gravity, and Jupiter protects Earth and other planets from space meteorites. In 1994, a comet called Shoemaker Levy 9 passed through our solar system, traveling at 200,000 kilometers per hour. As it passed Jupiter, it was split into chunks by the gas giant's gravity, each up to three kilometers in diameter, and several of them eventually hit Jupiter in a huge explosion. Scientists understand this isn't the first time Jupiter has been hit by a space rock.
According to the data, Jupiter is hit 8,000 times more frequently than Earth, but given that we can't directly observe Jupiter's distant side, that number could be even higher. Because Jupiter is not only a reasonably large target, but because of its enormous gravitational field, it also attracts objects that are traveling through our solar system. The planet attracts asteroids, comets and other solar system junk like a giant vacuum cleaner. It will also be able to launch everything into space that it cannot absorb. If it were not for Jupiter, the Earth would be destroyed by a meteor strike!
Of course, humans can't rely solely on Jupiter for protection, and since the 1960s, scientists have been considering the prospect that an asteroid could one day strike Earth. They are now going to try several asteroid deflection technologies that will universe object smashing into thousands of pieces. However, these fragments may also be in ways similar to an asteroid impact causing harm to the earth, thus they developed the latest strategy. deflection is called kinetic energy impact. The strategy will launch an object in orbit, and make an asteroid deviation, so far away from the earth. Scientists have now observed that asteroid 101 955 Bennu is about 1 in 1,750 more likely to collide with Earth in the next 300 years. There is also a possibility that the Bernstein-Bernier comet will hit Earth, and the final answer will be revealed in 2031!