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Scientists are speculating whether ISON, a comet that has spent 4.5 billion years at the edge of the solar system, will implode from the heat of strafing the sun on Thursday.
Astronomers call ISON a relic from when our solar system was
formed, adding that it has been travelling to meet the Sun for
over a million years, and will only ever be seen once in history.
This “comet of the century” is expected to provide clues on the
formation of the planets.
"The reason we study comet ISON to begin with is it's a relic," Carey Lisse, a senior research scientist with Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, said during a NASA news conference on Tuesday.
"It's a dinosaur bone of solar system formation. You need comets in order to build the planets. This comet has been in a deep freeze half way to the next star for the last 4.5 billion years. It's just been coming in over the last few millions years and possibly even started around the dawn of man."
This is the comet’s first trip into the inner solar system, NASA scientists said, adding that it means the comet is still made of pristine matter from the earliest days -- its top layers never having been lost, and so dubbing the celestial body “a time capsule from the solar system's birth.”
