Scientists have discovered two metals in comets on the border of the solar system

A new study by Belgian scientists has found that iron and nickel are present in the comas of comets throughout

solar system, even those locatedon its outer borders. A separate study by astrophysicists in Poland, who also used ESO data, reports that nickel vapor is also present in the icy interstellar comet 2I/Borisov. This is the first time that heavy metals usually associated with hot environments have been found in the cold coma of distant comets.

Astronomers know that heavy metals exist industy and stony bowels of comets. But, since solid metals do not usually gaseous at low temperatures, scientists did not expect to find them in the coma of cold comets that are very far from the Sun. Pairs of nickel and iron have been found even in comets observed at a distance of more than 480 million km from the star. This is three times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

ESO / L. Calçada, SPECULOOS Team / E. Jehin, Manfroid et al.

Belgian scientists have found approximately equalthe amount of iron and nickel in the atmosphere of comets. Material in our solar system, such as those found in the sun and in meteorites, typically contains about ten times more iron than nickel.

Heavy metals are also present in comainterstellar comet 2I / Borisov. Polish scientists observed this object with the X-shooter spectrograph on the VLT ESO. They found that the 2I / Borisov cold coma contains nickel gas.

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Coma - a cloud of dust and gas that surrounds the corecomets. Together, the "coma" and "nucleus" form the "head" of the comet. As the comet approaches the Sun, the "head" increases, and sometimes a "tail" appears. The comet's coma has an almost spherical shape and usually stretches from 100 thousand to 1.4 million km from the nucleus.

2I/Borisov is the first interstellar comet withheliocentric eccentricity of the orbit ε > 3. The object is not gravitationally bound to the Sun. The estimated speed when going to infinity is about 30 km/s.