Largest comet ever discovered is heading our way, arrival time found

A new paper that has appeared on the pre-print server arXiv has detailed the arrival time for what could be the largest comet humans have ever discovered.

The comet is Bernardinelli-Bernstein and researchers estimate that it is at least 62 miles in diameter, which is around 1,000 times larger than a typical comet. Researchers previously incorrectly estimated that Bernardinelli-Bernstein was a dwarf planet due to its size but later found out that it was a comet. Further analysis of the celestial object found that it's making its way towards the Sun.

At the moment, Bernardinelli-Bernstein is located in the Oort cloud, 29 astronomical units away from Earth. An astronomical unit is the distance between Earth and the Sun, which is about 93 million miles. Researchers detail in their paper that Bernardinelli-Bernstein will make its closest approach to Earth within 10.97 astronomical units, which will put it just outside of Saturn's orbit. The researchers estimate that Bernardinelli-Bernstein will make its closest approach with Earth 10 years from now.

The researchers wrote in the study, "We conclude that BB is a 'new' comet in the sense that there is no evidence for [a] previous approach closer than 18 AU."

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