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Aside from asteroids, scientists are also keeping a lookout on comets. The latest images have shown a few fragments of Comet Y4 hurtling toward the Sun.
Express reports that scientists have been keeping tabs on Comet Y4, also known as Comet ATLAS. So far this comet has passed by Mars, but scientists have seen the celestial object beginning to break apart after traveling for over a year since it was first discovered in March of 2019. Scientists had expected that the comet would be able to get close enough to the Sun that would make it seem like a bright star, such as Venus as seen from Earth.
Astronomers have since believed that the comet was beginning to break apart as its brightness was diminishing. This would suggest that the comet was no longer as big as estimated. Photographers from the Switzerland-based Mirasteilas Observatory, Jose De Queiroz and Michael Deyerler, were able to take photos of the fragmenting comet, specifically two pieces of the comet hurtling towards the Sun.
According to the site Space Weather, “Amateur astronomers taking a close look at the comet’s core are seeing two nearly identical fragments racing towards the Sun.”
“We used the observatory’s 90cm remote-controlled telescope with an SBIG STL-11000 camera. We have been monitoring with this large public telescope since early April,” said Mr. Deyerler. Their photos have shown the comets breaking up as early as the 1st of April, the fragmentation increasing by the 14th and 15th. Now, scientists believe that the comet is running out of gas and it would not be long before the comet would completely disintegrate.
Speaking of comets, scientists believe that a comet may have been responsible for wiping out an early human settlement thousands of years ago. Researchers from the University of California Santa Barbara analyzed findings from Abu Hureyra in Lake Assad in northern Syria. They found some meltglass over the samples. Meltglass could only be formed at incredibly high temperatures that the civilizations that existed around that time would not be able to achieve.
According to the UC geology professor James Kennett, the only way for meltglass to have been formed naturally is if it came from a high-energy, high-velocity, extremely violent phenomenon, such as a comet collision. Upon further analysis, the researchers determined that a comet collision may have occurred at the end of the Pleistocene epoch around 11,700 years ago.
