NEW YORK: The comet being studied by Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft has massive sinkholes in its surface that are nearly wide enough to swallow Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza, research published Wednesday shows.
Scientists suspect the pits formed when material on the comet’s surface collapsed, similar to sinkholes on Earth, a study published in the journal Nature said.
The cavities on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which Rosetta has been orbiting since August, are enormous, stretching some 656 feet (200 meters) in diameter and 590 feet (180 meters) in depth.
In comparison, the Great Pyramid is 756 feet (230 meters) across and currently 455 feet (139 meters) tall.
The discovery is expected to help scientists piece together a better understanding of how comets formed and evolved.
“Finding the pits was a total surprise,” said space physicist Paul Weissman, with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Comets like 67P are believed to be rubble piles of boulder-sized mini-comets made of rock, organics and ices.
Gravity pins them together gently, with lots of open spaces in what eventually forms the comet’s body.
Why the pits begin collapsing is not yet known, but could be related to the heating a comet experiences as it travels closer to the sun. Several of 67P’s sinkholes, for examples, are pumping out jets of dust.
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