After 3.5 million-year hiatus, the largest comet ever discovered is headed our way
An enormous comet — possibly the largest one ever detected — is barreling toward the inner solar system with an estimated arrival time of 10 years from now, according to new research published on the preprint server arXiv.org . The comet, known as the Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet (or C/2014 UN271, in astro-speak), is at least 62 miles (100 kilometers) across — about 1,000 times more massive than a typical comet. It's so large that astronomers previously mistook it for a dwarf planet, according to a statement announcing the comet’s discovery in June 2021. But a closer analysis of the object revealed that it was moving rapidly through the Oort cloud — a vast scrapyard of icy rocks, billions of miles from Earth . The object appeared to be headed our way, and it even had a glowing tail, or "coma", behind it — a clear indication of an icy comet approaching the relatively warm inner solar system . Now, researchers have studied the massive comet in more detail, and the