Solar system might be filled with dark comets orbiting the sun

Several near-Earth objects move around in our solar system. But not all of them are asteroids, instead up to 60 per cent of them might be dark comets, a study says. The study conducted by the University of Michigan adds that some of them might even contain or at one point contained ice. Previous studies have suggested that these cosmic bodies might have been responsible for bringing water to Earth. The latest study also highlights the same possibility.

The study stressed that asteroids moving around in the asteroid belt located between Jupiter and Mars have subsurface ice. Aster Taylor, a U-M graduate student in astronomy and lead author of the study says the path which was possibly used to deliver ice to the near-Earth solar system has also been identified in the study.

One of these dark comets might have come from the Jupiter family of comets, the ones with an orbit that takes them closer toJupiter.

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"We don't know if these dark comets delivered water to Earth. We can't say that. But we can say that there is still debate over how exactly the Earth's water got here," Taylor said. "The work we've done has shown that this is another pathway to get ice from somewhere in the rest of the solar system to the Earth's environment."

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What are dark comets?

Dark comets are a combination of both asteroids and comets. While asteroids are rocky bodies with no ice, comets are icy bodies. Asteroids orbit closer to the sun, making any ice on it change directly into gas, also known as sublimation. Comets have a fuzzy coma, and any ice that sublimates carries dust with it, creating a cloud around the comet. They are also not accelerated by gravitation but by the sublimation process.

Researchers examined seven dark comets and, based on the above analysis, say that between 0.5 and 60 per centof all near-Earth objects could be dark comets. They don't comae and are propelled by nongravitational accelerations.

"We think these objects came from the inner and/or outer main asteroid belt, and the implication of that is that this is another mechanism for getting some ice into the inner solar system," Taylor said.

As part of the study, Taylor and his team also worked to discover where do the dark comets come from.