Largest comet ever observed bumps Hale-Bopp from pedestal

The Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet, identified in 2021, is officially the biggest comet ever observed.  The new record, reported on the preprint website arXiv and now accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters, bumps the Hale-Bopp comet from the top spot. Hale-Bopp was discovered in 1995 and became visible to the naked eye in … Read more

The Sun Used to Have Saturn-Like Rings That Stopped Earth From Being a ‘Super-Earth’

Before Earth and the other planets in our Solar System existed, the Sun may have been surrounded by giant rings of dust similar to Saturn’s, according to a new study.   Those rings of dust may have prevented Earth from growing into a “super-Earth” – a type of planet that is about twice the size of Earth and … Read more