SEWANEE, Tenn. – Something strange is sailing toward us. Something small and cold and extraordinarily fast. No one knows where it came from, or where it is going. But it's not from around here.
This is an interstellar comet – an ancient ball of ice and gas and dust, formed on the frozen outskirts of a distant star, which some lucky quirk of gravity has tossed into our path.
To astronomers, the comet is a care package from the cosmos – a piece of a place they will never be able to visit, a key to all the worlds they cannot directly observe.
Quite a lot has been going on:
Gujarat: Secrets of the solar system seen through the eyes of comets | Ahmedabad News - Times of
If Our Solar System Got Into A Roast Battle, This Is How It Would Look Like
Our Solar System is not so unique. There are literally hundreds of billions like it. But to us, it is home. And wherever there is a home, there's bound to be fights.
Massive 'wall of fire' reaching 89,000°F surrounds our solar system
Quite a lot has been going on:
How Astronomers Are Decolonizing Space
FILE - This Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2019 image made available by NASA shows the Kuiper belt object ... [+] originally called "Ultima Thule," about 1 billion miles beyond Pluto, encountered by the New Horizons spacecraft. On Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019, NASA announced its official name "Arrokoth" which means "sky" in the language of the Native American Powhatan people.(NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute via AP, File)
Most of the known objects in the solar system are named for Greek and Roman gods and mythical figures. But in the Kuiper Belt, astronomers are beginning to recognize a broader set of cultures, including indigenous groups.
Ice fossils found in 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite reveal building blocks of our solar system -
(CNN) A 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite landed in Algeria in 1990, the remnant of a larger asteroid born during the dawn of our solar system.
Voyager 2′s journey beyond the solar system reveals new cosmic secrets | Popular Science
Acfer 094 Contains Fossilized Ice Which Can Be a Gateway to Understanding the Creation of the
Meteorites are solid debris from outer space that land on Earth, are often believed to contain materials that will somehow give an insight into the creation of the solar system. Some of these meteorites even contain amino acids or carbon compounds which baffles most astronomers. Recently, a study has been published about a meteorite containing fossilized ice on its surface.
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The scientists behind this study used synchrotron radiation-based X-ray nanotomography, where charged particles are subject to acceleration. Through this methodology, the scientists obtained a high-resolution view of extremely tiny pores on the surface of Acfer 094 in which they believed to fossilized ice crystals. These pores measure up to 10 microns and serve as tiny indentations that may have or may not have contained ice and water.
Happening on Twitter
"Something strange is sailing toward us. Something small and cold and extraordinarily fast. No one knows where it c… https://t.co/AWX0Tbpy7C MrDanZak (from The capital) Wed Nov 27 16:49:31 +0000 2019
WaPo's @sarahkaplan48 with the lead of the day: "Something strange is sailing toward us. Something small and cold a… https://t.co/1xgVANJt4q brianstelter (from New York City) Wed Nov 27 18:46:42 +0000 2019
The comet is a care package from the cosmos — a piece of a solar system we will never be able to visit, a key to al… https://t.co/Ym7yAudiDd laurahelmuth (from Washington DC) Wed Nov 27 16:05:19 +0000 2019
To astronomers, the comet is a care package from the cosmos — a piece of a place they will never be able to visit,… https://t.co/sKF8bGoEZK sarahkaplan48 (from Washington, D.C.) Tue Nov 26 14:39:50 +0000 2019
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