2025 could be a record year for the discovery of new dark comets. In 2023, astronomers discovered 7 dark comets in the solar system relatively close to Earth. In December 2024, astronomers discovered 7 more dark comets and found that they come in two types. This year, the Vera Rubin Observatory will begin its work, which can detect a large number of dark comets in the solar system. Astronomers believe that these comets could play an important role in delivering water and components necessary for life to our planet, writes Space.

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In addition to planets, their satellites and asteroids, the solar system is filled with a huge number of comets. They have remained virtually unchanged since their appearance at the dawn of the history of the Solar System and are objects consisting of rock and ice.. It is believed that the chemical composition of comets can tell us about the processes that led to the appearance of water and life on Earth. Perhaps it was comets that brought organic molecules and water to Earth.

Comets differ from asteroids in that they have gaseous tails.. They are formed when the ice on comets melts under the influence of the sun's heat and flies into space.. In this case, sublimation of ice occurs when it goes from a solid state directly to a gaseous state..

When comets eject gas into space, it changes their orbits and causes them to accelerate. It's called non-gravitational acceleration. Although dark comets do not have gaseous tails, they also have non-gravitational acceleration.

In 2023, astronomers discovered that 7 asteroids in the solar system are actually dark comets. They were named dark because they do not have a tail, which reflects sunlight.. Last December, astronomers discovered 7 more dark comets and found out that they come in two types.

Some dark comets are closer to Earth, have a size of 10 meters and circular orbits. Other dark comets are much farther from Earth, have elliptical orbits and can be up to 1 km in size.

Astronomers' calculations show that there are a lot of dark comets in the solar system that have not yet been discovered. But the Vera Rubin Observatory, which will begin work this year, will help with this. Located in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the observatory has the largest camera ever built. It will scan the entire sky of the southern hemisphere almost every night. The observatory is capable of finding much smaller objects than can be detected with existing telescopes.

As Focus already wrote, physicists have proposed a new way of flying in space, which will reduce the flight time to the nearest star by 1000 times. A new method of moving in space will make it possible to fly to the nearest star not in thousands of years, but in just a few decades.

Focus also wrote that in January comet C/2024 G3, discovered last year, will fly closest to the Sun. This comet will approach our star for the first time in 135 thousand years and may become the brightest this year.