Dark comets: Mysterious celestial bodies without tails discovered!

Astronomers have recently made a remarkable discovery in the solar system: the identification of additional “dark comets.” These special celestial bodies show comet-like flight behavior, but have no visible dust cover or tail. According to current reports, 14 such objects are now known, and recent discoveries significantly double that number. Dark comets form in the cold, icy regions of the solar system, particularly in the Kuiper Belt, where under the right conditions ice and volatiles evaporate as they approach the Sun, usually producing a comet's tail.

However, the fascinating features of these dark comets are that, despite the typical cometary behavior, they show no signs of a tail. The first known object of its kind, 2003 RM, was discovered in the asteroid belt. As a result, astronomers searched the Minor Planet Center database for additional objects with “suspicious” deviations in flight behavior and identified seven additional celestial bodies that follow the pattern of non-gravitational acceleration.

The Classification of Dark Comets

The 14 identified dark comets appear to form two main populations. The first group, the outer dark comets, consists of larger chunks in highly elliptical orbits that have similar orbits to the short-period comets of the Jupiter family. The second group includes the inner dark comets, which are smaller and measure a few dozen meters at most, but show different motion anomalies.

The origin of the dark comets and the connection between the two populations remain unclear. In addition, questions about the cause of the additional acceleration and the absence of coma and dust tail remain unanswered. This issue is illuminated by the 2017 discovery of Oumuamua (1I/2017 U1), an object with origins outside the solar system whose orbit has also not been fully explained.

What is particularly interesting is that newly discovered celestial bodies like Oumuamua look like asteroids, but behave like comets in that they have an accelerated orbit. Scientists have not yet been able to find a clear explanation for the changes in the orbits of these new celestial bodies, which led to the creation of the category “dark comets”.

Research from the University of California at Berkeley suggests that the Oumuamua object may have been accelerated by outgassing hydrogen formed by cosmic rays in the interstellar medium. Dark comets are also divided into two categories by NASA: the outer dark comets are larger than 100 meters and have elliptical orbits, while the inner dark comets are smaller and travel between the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

These new findings and the associated questions fit into the increasingly complex research on the different classes of celestial bodies in the solar system. Further development of knowledge about dark comets could lead to a better understanding of the dynamics and formation of our solar system in the future, as has been noted in previous reports, for example in an article on Futurezone.

For more details about dark comets, also read the article on Lomazoma.