An international team of researchers confirmed on April 12 that a comet discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2010 is the largest comet discovered by NASA to date, with a width of more than 80 miles and a mass of 500 trillion tons, 100,000 times that of the average comet.
Comet Big Mac C/2014 UN271 has a diameter of more than 80 miles.
The Comet "Big Mac" is reportedly called C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), and its nucleus is 50 times larger than that of most known comets, more than 80 miles in diameter and 500 trillion tons in mass.
NASA said the comet is currently less than 2 billion miles from the sun and poses no threat to Earth.
Xu Wentao, the study's lead author, said the giant comet is currently speeding through space at 22,000 miles per hour, with an elliptical orbit of up to 3 million years.
The discovery of the Big Mac comet helps reveal the origins of the solar system.
The researchers believe the comet most likely originated in the Oort Cloud. This is the most distant region of our solar system, where trillions of comets are thought to exist.
The team hopes that the discovery of the Big Mac Great Comet will help shed light on the mysterious Oort cloud, and the role of the Oort cloud in the evolution of the solar system.
Text/Nandu reporter Chen Lin