(ORDO NEWS) — The inhabitants of Ancient Egypt had a unique opportunity to observe a very country comet, which after some time split into two different parts.Â
Several thousand years passed before the fragments of the cosmic body returned back. It is reported by Forbes.
To date, there is no written evidence that the Egyptians could see a space object. Scientists, in turn, argue that this was exactly the case.Â
At the same time, they note that the division into fragments took place about 5 thousand years ago. Specialists’ speculations are based on the fact that the pieces of the comet returned back in 1844 and 2020. After that, their orbital path back in time was analyzed.
Quanzhi Ye took advantage of observations from the Hubble Space Telescope to find out that ATLAS (C / 2019 Y4), discovered last year, may in fact be part of a larger object.Â
The same goes for another fragment, recorded back in 1844. It is worth noting that a comet from the 19th century will still fly past our planet in a few decades. In turn, ATLAS completely collapsed when it flew away from the Sun at a distance of almost 160 million kilometers.
Quanzhi Ye notes that if comet ATLAS was indeed one of the fragments of a large object, then the question arises as to how it was able to survive the flight around the Sun five thousand years ago and why the destruction occurred now.
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