Your Web News in One Place

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

Sign up for GreenGeeks web hosting
September 28, 2015 08:00 pm

Rosetta's Comet Is Actually 2 Comets Stuck Together

astroengine writes: Scientists have solved the mystery of why the comet being studied by Europe's Rosetta spacecraft is shaped like a rubber duck — it started off as TWO separate comets, a new study shows. Ever since Rosetta sent back pictures of its twin-lobed target more than a year ago, scientists have debated whether the comet, known as 67P/Churyumov-Garasimenko, could be the result of two comets that merged together during the solar system's early years. The other option is that the so-called "neck region" between 67P's two lobes experienced some particularly active and still unexplained outgassing over the eons, eroding its more spherical shape into a body that resembles a rubber duck. "Our study rules out the possibility that the comet shape is the outcome of erosion," planetary scientist Matteo Massironi, with the University of Padova in Italy, wrote in an email to Discovery News. Rather, the neck region is where two independent bodies collided, analysis of high-resolution images taken by the orbiting Rosetta spacecraft shows.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/M0ZQHBbMrP8/rosettas-comet-is-actually-2-comets-stuck-together

Share this article:    Share on Facebook
View Full Article

Slashdot

Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..

More About this Source Visit Slashdot