The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) discovered a comet from another star system form in one of the coldest environments known.
According to researchers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Borisov "must have formed in the outer edges of its original star system - known as Kruger 60." Temperatures in Kruger 60 reaches -420 degrees Fahrenheit, cold enough to freeze carbon monoxide (CO), a highly poisonous gas.
The comet was named after Crimean telescope maker Gennady Borisov, who discovered the comet by chance on August 30, 2019. It has a tail that is 100,000 miles long called the coma, the fuzzy outer layer of light surrounding the comet.
The coma contains water and a high amount of CO - "up to 26 times as much CO than that of the average solar system comet," said Daily Mail.
However, the coma has shrunken because Borisov got within 190 million miles of the Sun. Its ice has also vaporized, which could have been preserved along with its chemicals in interstellar space. Before, it carried 26 times more CO than other comets.
Cool and important
Because of freezing temperatures, comets change their interior compositions over time, spending large distances away from any star. "The cold temperatures of interstellar space would have preserved its chemicals for millions or even billions of years while it journeyed across the universe," according to Daily Mail.
The Borisov sighting is significant. Dr. Martin Cordiner from the Goddard Space Flight Centre said, "This is the first time we've ever looked inside a comet from outside our solar system," proving how advanced space exploration has been.
According to Brittanica, "Comets are important to scientists because they are primitive bodies left over from the formation of the solar system. They were among the first solid bodies to form in the solar nebula, the collapsing interstellar cloud of dust and gas out of which the Sun and planets formed."
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile, researchers detected normal quantities of hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and CO inside Borisov. According to the study's co-author Dr. Stefanie Millam, Borisov "must have formed from material 'very rich in CO ice' which is only present at the lowest temperatures found in space."
Key to space and earth history
The study said Borisov must have been ejected into interstellar space after a near-collision with another planet in Kruger 60. Borisov then went on a voyage for billions of years before its discovery.
Its formation in Kruger 60 gives researchers insight into how other solar systems form.
Dr. Cordiner said, "If the gases we observed reflect the composition of Borisov's birthplace, then it shows it may have formed in a different way than our own solar system comets, in an extremely cold, outer region of a distant planetary system."
Borisov, like other comets, may also hold the key to understanding how Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago.
The world's largest airborne observatory, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), observed Comet Wirtanen as it approached Earth in 2018. It discovered ocean-like water within the comet, suggesting other comets in the past "could have delivered water to Earth," according to NASA.
