The strange tailless comet that made a passing passage to the inner Solar System in 2014, before heading back to the distant Oort cloud, could possibly fly close to its birthplace.
The comet is called C / 2014 S3 and is physically more like an inner belt - a rocky asteroid than an ice comet forged in deep freeze of the Solar System. This is evidenced by a new study.
The discovery made scientists think that C / 2014 S3 is a sample of rock material that served as building blocks for the Earth and the terrestrial planets.
Understanding how the body got into the underworld of the Solar System and the definition of how many other similar objects can exist (maybe the Rozet stone will make them company) will help explain how the Solar System was in its current configuration.
“This is the first time a rocky, internal object of the solar system has ever been seen coming out of the Oort cloud,” astronomer Karen Meech of the University of Hawaii told Discovery News.
The Oort Cloud lies beyond Pluto and the Kuiper belt and extends approximately 2000 to as much as 200,000 times farther from the Sun than the Earth.
C / 2014 S3, which scientists call the comet “Manx” in honor of the tailless Manx cat, is also the first stony body of the inner solar system, which acts like a comet, albeit at a significantly reduced speed. Computer simulations show that Manx has between 100, 000 and 1 million times less water than common comets. This explains the appearance of the tailless C / 2014 S3. As the comet approaches, it is warmed by the Sun, and water ice evaporates its bodies and forms distinctive bright tails.
By the time the dark tailless C / 2014 S3 was spotted by the Panoramic Panoramic Telescope and the Rapid Response System, or Pan-STARRS, in 2014, it was already approaching the closest approach to the Sun, which was about two times farther from Earth. Scientists estimate that C / 2014 S3 completes the orbit in 860 years.
An analysis of the Pan-STARRS images shows that the materials in C / 2014 S3 underwent minor processing, and the comet has been deep frozen for a very long time. Scientists suggest that the object is made from the internal materials of the solar system, which are preserved in the Oort cloud.
If scientists can find from 50 to 100 objects similar to Manx, they could solve long-standing disputes about the origin and evolution of the solar system.
“Depending on how much we find, we will know if the giant planets danced across the entire solar system when they were young, or they grew quietly and did not move,” said astronomer Olivier Heno from the European Southern Observatory.
“For the first time, we will be able to make predictions that we can verify with observations,” added Meech.
