Dark comets: puzzling celestial bodies discovered without tail!

astronomers recently made a remarkable discovery in the solar system: the identification of further “dark comets”. These special celestial bodies show comet -like flight behavior, but have no visible dust cover or a tail. According to current reports, 14 such objects are now known, and the latest discoveries are considering this number significantly. Dark comets arise in the cold, icy regions of the solar system, especially in the Kuiper belt, where ice and fleeting components evaporate under the right conditions when approaching the sun, which normally creates a comet tail.

The fascinating properties of these dark comets are, however, that despite the typical behaviors of comets, they show no signs of a tail. The first known object of this kind, 2003 RM, was discovered in the asteroid belt. As a result, astronomers in the database of the Minor Planet Center researched "suspicious" deviations in flight behavior according to other objects and identified seven additional celestial body that follow the pattern of non-gravity acceleration.

The classification of the dark comets

The 14 identified dark comets seem to form two main populations. The first group, the outer dark comets, consists of larger chunks on strong elliptical orbits that have similar railways to the short -period comets of the Jupiter family. The second group includes the inner dark comets that are smaller and measure a few dozen meters, but show different movement anomalies.

The origin of the dark comets and the connection between the two populations remains unclear. In addition, questions about the cause of the additional acceleration and the lack of coma and dust tail are still unanswered. This topic is illuminated in 2017 by the discovery of Oumuamua (1i/2017 U1), an object with origin outside the solar system, the orbit of which could also not be fully explained.

It is particularly interesting that newly discovered celestial bodies like Oumuamua look like asteroids, but behave like comets by showing an accelerated orbit. So far, scientists have not been able to find a clear explanation for the changes in the orbits of these new celestial bodies, which has led to the creation of the "Dark Comets" category.

Research by the University of California in Berkeley suggest that the Oumuamua object may have been accelerated by exhausting hydrogen, which is formed by cosmic radiation 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 become more and more complex research over the different classes of sky bodies in the solar system. The further development of knowledge about dark comets could lead to a better understanding of the dynamics and the development of our solar system, as has already been determined in previous reports, for example in an article on Futurezone .

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