Scientists are baffled after discovering a unique asteroid-comet hybrid that’s like NOTHING seen before

In the dark depths of the solar system, astronomers have discovered a truly mind-boggling object.

This 200 km wide asteroid-comet hybrid, called 2060 Chiron, is a type of body known as Centaur, named after the mythical creature that is half horse and half man.

Centaurs are solar system bodies found between Jupiter and Neptune that move and behave like asteroids but produce glowing tails of gas and dust that resemble comets.

Now, astronomers from the University of Central Florida have used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to show that Chiron is “like nothing” they’ve seen before.

By analyzing near-infrared images, the researchers carefully reconstructed the chemical composition of this interplanetary chimera.

They discovered that Chiron’s surface contains a cocktail of chemicals from a time before the formation of the solar system, including CO2, methane and frozen water.

Co-author Dr Charles Schambeau says: ‘These results are unlike anything we have seen before.

“These detections advance our understanding of the composition of Chiron’s interior and how that material produces the unique behavior when we observe Chiron.”

When Chiron was discovered in 1977, it was the first of a new group of celestial bodies in the solar system that astronomers called Centaurs.

Astronomers believe that Centaurs were formed in the very first days of the solar system and have remained relatively unchanged since then.

Hidden in the frozen expanse of the Trans-Neptunian region, that is, beyond the orbit of Neptune, their enormous distance from the Sun makes the Centaurs frozen time capsules containing information about the formation of the Solar System.

But even among that growing number of mysterious objects, Chiron stood out as exceptionally unusual.

Dr. Schambeau says, “It’s an odd one out compared to most other Centaurs.

“It has periods where it behaves like a comet, has rings of material around it, and possibly a debris field of small dust or rocky material orbiting around it.”

But what interests astronomers most is the tail of dust and gas that Chiron produces as it is heated by the sun.

Most objects from the depths of space are either too cold or don’t contain the ice needed to create a tail.

Centaurs are a type of body typically found between Jupiter and Neptune and behave like comets, but produce tails of gas and dust like comets. Chiron (pictured) is a particularly strange Centaur because it has a ring of dust, just like Saturn. Pictured: Artist’s impression of Chiron and its rings

Comets, on the other hand, produce tails known as comas, but only when they get much closer to the Sun.

That means the coma is disrupted by interactions with the sun’s radiation and is so thick that astronomers can’t see through it to the comet below.

Lead researcher Dr Noemi Pinilla-Alonso said: ‘What’s unique about Chiron is that we can observe both the surface, where most of the ice is found, and the coma, where we see gases coming from the surface or just below. It.

‘By discovering which gases are part of the coma and their different relationships with the ice at the surface, we can learn its physical and chemical properties, such as the thickness and porosity of the ice layer, its composition and how irradiation affects it . ‘

Using the JWST, the researchers looked at the near-infrared radiation coming from the coma around Chiron.

Because certain chemicals absorb or re-emit energy at specific frequencies, researchers can look at the valleys and peaks in the spectrum to see which ones are present.

This spectrum revealed that Chiron contains carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane, which were part of the cloud of materials that existed before the solar system formed.

Other chemicals such as propane and ethane were probably formed later when the chemicals oxidized, the same chemical process that turns iron into rust.

By analyzing the light from Chiron (shown), the scientists were able to find that it contained water ice, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, acetylene, carbon dioxide, methane, ethane and propane. Some of these compounds formed from the cloud of materials that predate the solar system

Dr. Pinilla-Alonso says: ‘Based on our new JWST data, I’m not so sure we have a standard centaur.

‘Every active centaur we observe with JWST shows some peculiarities. But they can’t all be outliers. There must be something that explains why they all seem to behave differently, or there must be something in common between them all that we can’t see yet.”

In the future, the researchers plan to monitor Chiron using the FWS to learn more about the layers of ice and rock that make up this strange body.

These observations could help researchers figure out what all centaurs have in common and why Chiron seems to behave so strangely.