[Regnum] The brightest comet of the 20th century, Comet Hale-Bopp, will not be able to leave the Solar System and will approach Earth again in 4390. This was announced on Sunday, November 30, by Nathan Eismont, a leading researcher at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and associate professor in the Department of Mechanics and Control Processes at RUDN University.
"The comet is currently quite far away—between Pluto and Sedna—but it won't be able to leave the solar system, so it will return to Earth again in 4390," he said in a conversation with TASS.
Eismont clarified that whether Comet Hale-Bopp will be able to leave the solar system in the future will only become clear after its return to our planet.
According to the scientist, in this situation, everything will depend on Jupiter, which, with the help of its gravity, can either throw the comet out of the Solar System or send it to the Sun, where it will burn up.
Jupiter has historically either thrown objects that approach it back onto the Sun or sent them to other systems with other stars, Eismont added.
On November 29, the Solar Astronomy Laboratory of the Space Research Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences reported that the brightness of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS decreased by more than a third as it approached Earth. According to scientists, despite this, 3I/ATLAS is the fourth brightest of the nearly 100 comets observable in the Earth's sky.
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