The 'megacomet' Bernardinelli-Bernstein is the find of a decade. Here's the discovery explained.

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Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein will be a spectacle for more than a decade to come, even though its discovery was a matter of luck.

The 'megacomet' Bernardinelli-Bernstein is the find of a decade. Here's the discovery explained. : Read more

 

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The space.com article says, "That story goes like so: The young solar system sported a ring of small, icy rubble surrounding the massive planets. But when the planets migrated through the solar system, their huge gravity kicked the frozen rubble around. Some flew out into interstellar space; some ended up in what scientists call the Kuiper Belt, where Pluto orbits; some ended up in the much more distant Oort Cloud where comets like Bernardinelli-Bernstein lurk. From there, as tides flow through the Milky Way and neighboring stars pass our solar system, gravity occasionally kicks a snowball inward on a planetary adventure. And there are plenty of Kuiper Belt objects that look like the new comet, Schwamb said, so finding a similar object coming in from the Oort Cloud suggests scientists have been on the right path, and that more discoveries are still to come. "Finding one large object like this probably means there's a few more out there to be found," Schwamb said."

My observation. The Oort cloud is theoretical to explain the observations of long period comets in the solar system. None will orbit the Sun for billions of years so the long age paradigm must have an answer here, even if presently the Oort cloud is not directly observed or imaged. An Oort cloud comet coming from 1,000 au distance or the inner edge, could take 32,000 years or more to orbit the Sun, assuming it was orbiting. That uses a circular orbit calculation, longer if highly eccentric. Good investigative reporting would ask some who, what, when, where, how, and, why questions about reporting like this and disclose as plain language summary.

For example, how many comets exist in the Oort Cloud today after some 4.5 billion years of possible comet ejections into the solar system? How many were said to be ejected from the solar system accretion disk and planet building and migration into the Oort Cloud to create this comet repository for later use in modern astronomy? What is the min and max times anticipated for comets to evolve from the Oort Cloud, travel to the solar system, and then return to the Oort Cloud, only later to be ejected back here again?

Another question. Just how much gas and dust mass is used in the Kuiper Belt region in the planet building models compared to the total amount of mass observed and measured there today? Disclose this in the investigative reporting.