First, the important stuff: No one is getting hit with a comet this week.
Now, the fun stuff: Twin comets are in the process of zipping past Earth. The first passed by Monday. On Tuesday morning, another one will pass closer to our planet than any comet since 1770. It’s the third-closest flyby in recorded history.
It doesn’t take much to break the record. Monday’s comet, the fifth-closest ever reported, was 3.3 million miles away from Earth at its closest point. Tuesday’s comet, dubbed P/2016 BA14, will be 2.2 million miles away — more than nine times farther from us than the moon — when it makes its close encounter.
Scientists initially thought P/2016 BA14 was an asteroid — a space body made up of metals and rocky material. Then they spotted its tail.
Scientists soon realized that the comet shared an unusually similar orbit with 252P/LINEAR, which is about 750 miles across and made its closest pass of the Earth early Monday. The researchers said they think Tuesday’s comet, which is about half the size of its twin, might have broken off of it at some point.
