Like many people, I have always been fascinated by comets, but my interest went up a few notches when I was researching for my book Yuga Shift and realized that the turbulent periods of transition between the Yugas or World Ages are almost always accompanied by comet and meteor impacts originating from the Taurid resonant swarm – a dense swarm of comets and asteroids hidden in the core of the Taurid meteor stream.
That’s when I started becoming aware aware of the mysterious, inexplicable, and quite unpredictable nature of comets that has been a source of great puzzlement for astronomers. David H. Levy, an amateur Canadian astronomer who has discovered 22 comets, and is widely regarded as one of the most successful comet discoverers in history, had famously said, “comets are like cats: they have tails, and they do precisely what they want.”
There are good reasons why David Levy had made this observation. Comets are difficult to track, and they are often not found at their expected position in their orbit. Sometimes they change their trajectory, their speed, or both. As a result, they might arrive at their perihelion positions either too soon or too late.[1]
In 2024, the orbital period of Comet A3 Tsuchinshan ATLAS was drastically reduced after its perihelion passage on 27 September 2024, from one that was hundreds of millions of years long to a much shorter one in the range of a few hundred thousand years.[2] In 2017, observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope confirmed that Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object to travel through our solar system, "got an unexpected boost in speed and shift in trajectory as it passed through the inner solar system".[3]
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| Figure 1: An artist’s impression of Oumuamua, the first detected interstellar object in our solar system. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser, Public Domain Image. |
Moreover, astronomers can’t say for sure when a comet will start to brighten up, how bright it will become, what gases it will emit, and when it will stop outgassing and become almost invisible.
For instance, in early 2013, Comet C/2011 L4, also known as Comet PANSTARRS, had become very bright far away from the Sun, but, contrary to expectations, the rate of increase of brightness began to fall steadily after it was somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.[4] Comet ISON in 2013 had also experienced a significant slowdown in brightness.
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| Figure 2: Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) photographed with the TRAPPIST national telescope at ESOs La Silla Observatory on 15 November 2013. Credit: TRAPPIST / E. Jehin / ESO, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons |
The unpredictable nature of comets has confounded astronomers for a long time. It’s almost as if comets have their own secret agendas and ways of working, about which we are still in the dark.
While researching for Yuga Shift, I had noticed something about comet tails that had utterly captivated me. The structure and variety of their tails are identical to the flagella used by a number of microorganisms for locomotion – particularly algae. And the way comets move through space while rotating on their axis and waving their tails, is exactly the manner in which algae move as well.
Comet Tails and Flagella
How do comets move through space? The current thinking is that, a comet is a ball of ice and frozen gases with a covering of dirt, and the term “dirty snowballs” is often used to describe them.
When a comet approaches the Sun, the nucleus gets heated by solar radiation. As a result, the sub-surface ices begin to sublimate (i.e. they turn directly from solid to gas) and come out through the cracks on the crust. As the gases come out, they blow off bits of dust particles. The rocket-like outgassing of materials gives a comet the ability to move and accelerate on its own.
The gas and dust released by the nucleus of a comet forms the brilliant coma around the nucleus and, typically, two long tails - a yellowish-white, curvy, “dust tail” and a straight, bluish, “ion tail” - both of which point away from the Sun due to the effect of solar wind.
In general, the diameter of a cometary nucleus can vary from 100 m to more than 100 km, while the diameter of a coma can reach a thousand kilometers, and the tails can extend for millions of kilometers.
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| Figure 3: The dust tail and ion tail of Comet Hale-Bopp, 1997. Credit: ESO / E. Slawik, Public Domain Image. |
Comet Tail Striations
In some comets, the dust tail has distinct striations. These were first observed in Comet McNaught in 2007, which was one of the brightest comets visible from the earth in the past 50 years. NASA reported that, “Setting McNaught apart further still from its peers, however, was its highly structured tail, composed of many distinct dust bands called striae, or striations, that stretched more than 100 million miles behind the comet, longer than the distance between Earth and the Sun.”[5]
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| Figure 4: Comet McNaught over the Pacific Ocean, 2007. The dust tail has many striations. Credit: ESO / Sebastian Deiries, CC BY 4.0. |
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| Figure 5: The Structured Tails of Comet NEOWISE. This is a 40-image conglomerate, captured through the dark skies of the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia, China. Credit: NASA APOD 2020 July 22 / Zixuan Lin |
Similar striations were observed in the dust tail of Comet NEOWISE in 2020. NASA Science reported that, “Comet NEOWISE's impressive dust-tail striations are not fully understood, as yet, but likely related to rotating streams of sun-reflecting grit liberated by ice melting on its 5-kilometer wide nucleus.”[6]
What is really intriguing about these dust-tail striations is that, even though we have been able to detect these striations only in recent decades using highly advanced telescopes, they were clearly depicted in an ancient Chinese “comet atlas” found in a Han-era tomb that was sealed in 168 BCE.
The 2000-year-old comet atlas – a portion of the Mawangdui Silk Text - records hundreds of comet sighting over three centuries, with two dozen rendering of specific cometary forms. Each sighting noted the time of appearance, flight path, and disappearance, accompanied by a caption describing an event that corresponded to the comet's appearance, such as, “the death of the prince,” “the coming of the plague,” “the 3 year drought” etc.
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| Figure 6: The comet atlas in the Mawangdui Silk Text clearly depicts striations in the comet tails. Source: NASA, Public Domain Image |
The images in the Mawangdui comet atlas indicates that the ancient Chinese astronomers could clearly see the dust tail striations of comets. Which makes you wonder, what kind of advanced optical instruments could they have been using? Surely, they were not peering through hollowed-out bamboo shoots, as experts would have us believe.
While looking at this Chinese comet atlas, it occurred to me that the cometary tails look vaguely familiar, as if I had seen them a long time ago. “Isn’t this how the flagella of unicellular organisms look like? “ I thought to myself, and decided to refresh my memory of high school biology.
Here’s what I found out, in brief. Many unicellular organisms such as bacteria, algae, and protozoa use cilia and flagella for locomotion. The flagella are long, whip-like projections from the cell body, while the cilia are small, hair-like projections on the cell surface. While a cell may have hundreds of cilia, the number of flagella are generally less than ten.
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| Figure 7: Differences between cilia and flagella. Source: Adobe Stock |
A unicellular organism uses both cilia and flagella for locomotion. While the cilia execute a back-and-front beating, the flagella moves in a propeller-like manner to drive the organism forward, such that it forms waves on the flagella.
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| Figure 8: Motion of cilia and flagella. Source: Adobe Stock |
This is what made my eyes light up: there are four types of flagella in algal cells, and a single cell may have one or more of these types:
- Acronematic flagella is smooth and elongated without any hairs.
- Pantonematic flagella has a central filament with two rows of lateral hairs (called mastigonemes) attached to it like feathers.
- Pantocronematic flagella also has a central filament with two rows of hairs, but with a single terminal hair.
- Stichonematic flagella has a central filament with a single row of hair.
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| Figure 9: Different types of flagella in algal cells. Credit: Sketch by Bibhu Dev Misra |
In general, the acronematic flagella (i.e. the one without the lateral hairs) are also called whiplash flagella, while the other three types of flagella having lateral hairs are collectively called tinsel flagella.
Now, if we look back at the depictions of the comets in the Mawangdui comet atlas, we will notice something quite astonishing: each and every comet tail depicted in the Mawangdui comet atlas corresponds to one of the flagella types of algal cells!
In the diagram below, I have mapped the comet tails depicted in the Mawangdui comet atlas to the flagella types of algae.
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| Figure 10: The comets tails in the Mawangdui Silk Texts can be mapped to algal flagella types |
I was amazed by the exact correlation. It’s almost as if the ancient Chinese astronomers, instead of looking up at the sky, were peering at the ground with their telescopes and describing unicellular organisms with flagella! But, obviously, that’s not the case.
What this strange association implies is that, comets might actually have faint tail-like structures for locomotion, which become visible when a comet emits gases, and sunlight reflects off it, but otherwise remain invisible to us at such long distances. The gas and dust released by a comet may be coalescing around the cilia to form the brilliant coma, and around the flagella to form the comet tails.
That would explain why the coma and the tails of a comet have well-defined shapes that remain extremely stable over time, even as the comet hurtles through space. If the tails were formed only by solar wind, as per current reckoning, then it would have lacked any definite shape and would be in a constant state of flux. Imagine smoke coming out of a chimney that is being blown around by wind.
The whiplash flagella appears to correspond to the “ion tail” of a comet, which is straight and bluish in color and does not have any striations, while the tinsel flagella correspond to the curvy “dust tail” of a comet where the striations appear.
Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy), a long-period comet which came from the Oort cloud and spun around the Sun in 2015, displayed multiple “ion tails”, indicative of multiple whiplash flagella. The Mawangdui comet atlas also has a number of comets with multiple whiplash flagella.
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| Figure 11: The ion tail of Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) has distinct threads of ionized gas which change their wavy appearance over time. Credit: NASA, APOD, Jan 21, 2015 / Velimir Popov & Emil Ivanov (IRIDA Observatory) |
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| Figure 12: A cholera bacteria with multiple whiplash flagella. Source: Adobe Stock |
Comet Tails Wiggle and Change their Wavy Appearance
NASA had reported something interesting about the movement of the tails of Comet C/2014 Q2 (Comet Lovejoy).
“Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy), which is currently at naked-eye brightness and near its brightest, has been showing an exquisitely detailed ion tail...The effect of the variable solar wind combined with different gas jets venting from the comet's nucleus accounts for the tail's complex structure. Following the wind, structure in Comet Lovejoy's tail can be seen to move outward from the Sun even alter its wavy appearance over time.”[7]
I found it intriguing that the ion tails of Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) changed their wavy appearance over time. This is what you would expect if the tails were being used for locomotion. In unicellular organisms, the flagella rotates like a propeller which gives it a wavy appearance.
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| Figure 13: The wavy appearance of the flagella of the Pseudomonas bacteria. Source: Adobe Stock |
Comet C/2011 W3 (also called Comet Lovejoy, since it was discovered by amateur Australian astronomer, Terry Lovejoy) passed deep within the solar corona in December 2011. A team of researchers published a paper in the Science journal, where they said that the tail of Comet Lovejoy “wiggled”.
“What the researchers found most interesting about Lovejoy's close call (with the Sun) was the movement of its tail as it passed though parts of the corona—it wiggled, displaying major changes in intensity, direction, persistence and magnitude.”[8]
It gets more and more intriguing. Not only do the structure and variety of the tails of comets exactly resemble the flagella of algae, comets also wiggle their tails like algae, which changes their wavy appearance over time.
Comet Tail Disconnection Event
One of the most remarkable phenomena associated with comet tails is the “disconnection event”, in which the entire tail, or a part of it, is separated from the comet’s head and moves away from the comet. However, a comet soon regrows the disconnected tail.
A number of disconnection events have been observed over the years. On April 20, 2007, NASA’s solar observatory STEREO-A recorded comet Encke’s tail getting ripped off by a solar eruption. A piece of Comet Leonard's tail was pinched off and carried away by solar wind on Dec. 27, 2021, while a CME ripped off Comet Nishimura’s tail as it approached the Sun on September 2, 2023.
On April 12, 2024, Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks (12P) also called "devil's comet", experienced “a disconnection event, in which the comet's dusty tail was temporarily blown away by the solar storm before later regrowing.”[9]
This is an extraordinary phenomenon! If a comet tail is formed simply due to outgassing, why would it get disconnected and carried away by solar wind, as if it were a physical structure?
Although many theories have been proposed to explain this phenomenon – such as ion production effects, pressure effects and magnetic reconnection – there is no convincing explanation as of now. YF Li et al. state in their recent paper, “From the above discussions we can see that further work is needed to understand the DE (Disconnection Event) triggering mechanisms.”[10]
But what if comets actually possess physical tails, similar to the flagella of unicellular organisms such as algae? Do algae demonstrate a similar behavior? You bet they do! Not only do algal cells deflagellate i.e. detach their flagella in response to certain stimuli, they also regrow their flagella once the external stimuli is removed.
Many studies have been done in this area. This paper titled, "Isolation of Chlamydomonas flagella", published in the journal Current Protocols in Cell Biology states that,
“Chlamydomonas can be synchronously deflagellated by treatment with chemicals, pH shock, or mechanical shear...Upon a rapid drop from neutral pH to pH 4.5, Chlamydomonas cells will synchronously and rapidly (within seconds) shed their flagella. After ~60 sec, the pH is returned to neutral and the cells begin regenerating their flagella, which re-grow to nearly full-length in about an hour.”[11]
Thus, the extremely mysterious tail “disconnection event” of comets can be also explained using the analogy of the deflagellation of algal cells. That’s not all though. There’s more.
Comet Nucleus Rotates
It has been known for a long time that the nucleus of a comet rotates as it moves. Small comets rotate rapidly, while larger ones rotate slowly.[12] Algae move in a similar manner. Scientists studying the motion of the single-celled green alga called Chlamydomonas found that the body of the alga rotates in a corkscrewing movement, as it moves. As per a press release by the University of Exeter (2021):
“A team of researchers from the University of Exeter’s flagship Living Systems Institute has discovered how the model alga Chlamydomonas is seemingly able to scan the environment by constantly spinning around its own body axis in a corkscrewing movement. This helps it respond to light, which it needs for photosynthesis...In the new study, the researchers first performed experiments which revealed that the two flagella in fact beat in planes that are slightly skewed away from each other.”[13]
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| Figure 14: Chlamydomonas, the green alga, is a favorite subject of scientific research. Source: Adobe Stock |
As I continued to down this line of thinking, more and more similarities between comets and terrestrial microbes, specifically algae, began to crop up. And so I wondered: what about the movement of comets around the Sun? Can that be explained as well using this analogy?
Phototaxis, Gravitaxis and Magnetoreception
The study done by the University of Exeter that I cited above found another interesting propensity of algae: Chlamydomonas cells swim towards the light using their flagella, using light sensors on their body. As prototrophs, they need the light for photosynthesis. As per the scientists in the study,
“Chlamydomonas cells are able to sense light through a red eye spot and can react to it, known as phototaxis. The cell rotates steadily as it propels itself forwards using a sort of breaststroke, at a rate of about once or twice a second, so that its single eye can scan the local environment.”
Amazing, isn’t it? A comet moves towards the Sun by wiggling its tails, and its nucleus rotates as it moves. Chlamydomonas cells move towards the light by beating their flagella, and the cell rotates as it moves to allow the “red eye spot” to scan the environment. The correspondences are spot on.
Perhaps, comets also move by means of phototaxis? That would explain why they change their trajectory and speed so often, even when they are not close enough to any large planet to be influenced by their gravity. Comets may not be gravitationally bound to the Sun at all, and move on their own accord by means of phototaxis.
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| Figure 15: Phototaxis in the green alga Volvox rousseletii. Source: Wikimedia Commons CC BY 2.0 |
Of course, this leads to another question: if comets move by means of phototaxis, then how do short-period comets (orbital periods less than 200 years), with their aphelion near Jupiter or Neptune, have relatively stable orbital periods? Even though the orbital periods of short-period comets also fluctuate, the variation is not significant. For instance, orbital period of Halley’s Comet has varied between 74 and 80 years since 240 BCE.
Can phototaxis, by itself, guarantee such stable orbits? Since long-period comets from the Oort cloud have wildly fluctuating orbital periods, they are not of any concern in this regard.
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| Figure 16: Short-period comets have orbital periods of less than 200 years and are believed to originate from the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. Credit: Bibhu Dev Misra |
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| Figure 17: Long-period comets have orbital periods of more than 200 years, and they originate from the spherical Oort cloud. These comets can enter the solar system from any random direction. Credit: Bibhu Dev Misra |
In addition to phototaxis, marine algae and other unicellular organisms have another ability called gravitaxis, by means of which move towards or away from gravity. This is how algae move in circular patterns near the air-water interface.
Short-period comets could be using a combination of phototaxis and gravitaxis for their orbital motion. They move towards the Sun by means of phototaxis and move back towards the gas-giants Jupiter and Neptune by means of gravitaxis. That would allow them to move in reasonably stable orbits.
Then there is magnetoreception. We know that many types of terrestrial animals, such as migratory birds and sea turtles, use magnetoreceptors for sensing the earth’s magnetic field to orient themselves and navigate over long distances. Studies indicate that even microbial organisms possess magnetoreception. As per this paper titled, “Magnetoreception in Microorganisms”, published in Trends in Microbiology (2020),
“While an old report alleged the existence of microbial algae with similar behavior (i.e. magnetoreception), recent discoveries have demonstrated the existence of unicellular eukaryotes able to sense the geomagnetic field, and have revealed different mechanisms and strategies involved in such a sensing.”14
Comets may possess “magnetoreceptors” inside their nucleus, using which they orient their orbits along the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). Since the interplanetary magnetic field lines have occasional bends and twists (just like the earth’s magnetic field), a comet may not be found at the expected point in their orbit. Moreover, comets being conscious organisms, might jump from one magnetic field line to another, thereby changing their trajectory. They might increase or decrease their speed consciously, in response to certain internal or external stimuli.
In other words, comets may not be like “cats”, as David H. Levy had quipped, but could very well be like unicellular organisms such as algae and bacteria. It is possible that they are not gravitationally bound to the Sun, but are moving around the sun consciously, using a combination of phototaxis, gravitaxis and magnetoreception, using their flagella-like tails as locomotary organs.
What started off for me as an intriguing connection between the structure of comet tails and algal flagella, led to me to start looking at comets in an entirely different way. They appear to be conscious space organisms, moving in the vast “cosmic ocean” of outer space within the meteor streams, in the same manner that marine plankton – algae, bacteria and other microorganisms - drift with the ocean currents.
In other words, comets could be “space plankton”, performing the same kinds of functions in outer space that marine plankton perform in the oceans of the earth – which is to maintain the chemical balance of the Solar System to facilitate its proper functioning, and support the growth and evolution of life in planetary systems such as ours.
In case you are not yet convinced that comets could possibly be conscious let me drop a bombshell: comets can reproduce in the same manner as unicellular organisms!
Binary and Multiple Fission
Comets have an uncanny ability of fragmenting into many smaller comets. There are at least 25 instances over the past couple of centuries when a comet has been seen to fragment into smaller comets. In some cases, two or more comets have been discovered in nearly the same orbit, and calculations have indicated that they were once a single comet.
If a comet nucleus was composed of the solidified ices of various gases and complex organic molecules, as astronomer suppose, and if the nucleus were to break apart in space due to tidal forces - something which often happens when a comet gets close to the Sun - then its interiors would have been instantly vaporized and dissipated!
But that’s not what happens in reality. Comets routinely fragment into multiple smaller comets during their perihelion passage, or after they enter the inner solar system and start to brighten up. The smaller comets formed by this fragmentation continue to move around the Sun in the same orbit as the parent comet.
What this means is that, comets don’t “fragment” into smaller comets. They replicate. They have the ability to spawn more of their own, which is an intrinsic characteristic of living organisms.
Replication in Comets
Let us look at a couple of instances of fragmenting comets, recorded in recent years.
In September 2016, the Comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami, which orbits the Sun once every six years, fragmented into building-sized cometary nuclei, when it was just outside the orbit of Mars. The Hubble Space Telescope captured sharp images showing a large, bright speck of light - the solid core of Comet 332P, around 490 meters long - trailed by a parade of smaller bluish-white dots.
Interestingly, observations made earlier in 2015 by the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii showed that there might be another chunk of rock (i.e. cometary nucleus), very close to the nucleus of Comet 332P and of almost the same size, suggesting that the parent of 332P may have split nearly in half at some point in the past. [15]
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| Figure 18: Comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami fragmented into building-size cometary nuclei, which trail the main comet nucleus. Images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/ESA and D. Jewit (UCLA), Public Domain Image |
In April 2020, the Hubble Space Telescope captured the fragmentation of the solid nucleus of Comet Atlas into as many as 30 separate pieces. Each of these fragments was roughly the size of a house. Astronomers saw the individual comets flashing on and off like twinkling lights on a Christmas tree.
“Most comets that fragment are too dim to see. Events at such scale only happen once or twice a decade,” said the leader of a second Hubble observing team, Quanzhi Ye, of the University of Maryland, College Park.[16]
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| Figure 19: These two Hubble Space Telescope images of comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS), taken on April 20 (left) and April 23, 2020, show the breakup of the solid nucleus of the comet into as many as 30 separate fragments. Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI and D. Jewitt (UCLA), Public Domain image. |
A well-known group of comets formed through fragmentation is the Kreutz family of sungrazing comets. Sungrazing comets come very close to the Sun at their perihelion. The Kreutz sungrazers are believed to be the fragments of the giant comet observed in 371 BCE, which may have fractured into two pieces on the 326 CE perihelion passage, and then underwent further fragmentation into hundreds of pieces on the 1106 CE perihelion passage. Other sungrazing comet groups are the Meyer group, Kracht group and the Marsden group.
The manner in which a comet nucleus fragments into two or multiple nuclei, corresponds exactly to the processes of binary fission or budding, and multiple fission, in unicellular organisms!
In binary fission, the chromosomes inside the nucleus replicate and segregate, followed by the development of a new cell wall in the middle of the cell which splits the original cell into two equal-sized daughter cells. The process of budding in yeast is similar to binary fission, except that the daughter cell in case of budding is much smaller than the parent cell.
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| Figure 20: Binary fission in Euglena, a type of algae. Source: Adobe Stock |
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| Figure 21: Budding of yeast, in which a small daughter cells buds off from the parent cell. Source: Adobe Stock |
In multiple fission, the cell encloses itself in a protective covering called a cyst. The nucleus then divides rapidly within the cyst to form a large number of daughter nuclei. Cytoplasm surrounds each daughter nucleus to form daughter cells. When the cyst ruptures, the daughter cells are released. While binary fission takes place in favorable conditions, multiple fission takes place when conditions are not favorable.
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| Figure 22: Multiple fission occurs in many eukaryotes such as algae and protozoa. |
The process of comet fragmentation is identical to what happens in binary fission / budding and multiple fission.
In the case of Comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami (that I discussed earlier), the parent comet underwent a binary fission sometime in 2015, which created two roughly equal-sized daughter comets. This was followed by the multiple fission of one of the daughter comets in 2016, which created the trail of comet fragments behind the core of Comet 332P.
On the other hand, the fragmentation of Comet Atlas into 30 separate pieces in April 2020 was a case of multiple fission.
To me, this was the most convincing evidence that comets are conscious space organisms that are capable of reproducing just like terrestrial microbes. A comet formed of the frozen ices of gases simply cannot behave like this.
The tendency of comets to reproduce by means of binary fission or budding solves yet another long-standing enigma about comets: Why are so many cometary nuclei bi-lobed?
Bi-lobed Cometary Nuclei
The Rosetta mission had found that the nucleus of Comet 67P has a bi-lobed structure i.e. it has two large lobes –a head and a body – connected by a narrow neck.[17]
In fact, of the seven comets astronomers have seen at high resolution, five (including 67P) are bi-lobed. It has been a paradox to astronomers as to why the bi-lobed structure is so common, since such a shape would be inherently unstable against the tidal forces that act on the comet’s nucleus as it moves through space.
The answer is simple. A bi-lobed nucleus implies that the comet is in the process of undergoing binary fission or budding. If the two lobes are of equal size it must be undergoing binary fission, and if they are of unequal size then it is undergoing budding. Sometime down the line, the bi-lobed nucleus will split up into two daughter cometary nuclei.
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| Figure 23: Comet nuclei imaged from spacecraft encounters or ground-based radar. Source: Researchgate / S.Eggl |
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| Figure 24: Euglena cell forms a bi-lobed structure when it undergoes binary fission. Source: Adobe Stock |
Dormant Comets
Sometimes comets enter into a dormant state, and remain in that state for a long time before becoming active again. Dormant comets are quite common within the solar system. For instance, the “centaurs” are a class of small bodies which revolve around the sun in slightly elliptical orbits, between the outer planets. Many centaurs – such as Chiron and 29P - occasionally outburst and develop a comet-like coma, which is why they have been classified both as asteroids and comets.
This mirrors the way in which unicellular organisms like algae and bacteria and get into a dormant state when conditions are not favorable. Small algae are sometimes found in abundance during a short period of the year and remain dormant during the rest of the year, when they form a cyst. This allows them to endure harsh environmental conditions like extreme temperatures, lack of light, or nutrient scarcity. The dormant algae are revived when conditions become more favorable.
These three correlations – the ability of comets to replicate using binary or multiple fission, to enter into a dormant state like algae and bacteria, and the existence of bi-lobed nucleus –left me with no doubt that comets are, indeed, conscious space organisms and behave like space plankton.
That left me with one remaining question, and it’s a big one: What is the reason for a comet’s outgassing of different types of gases?
At this point, the answer popped up in my mind effortlessly. The gases must be the end products of metabolism. There must be various metabolic reactions going on in the interior of a comet’s nucleus that generate the energy needed for their movement as well as the gases they release.
Metabolic Activity inside Comets
Our information about the gases released by comets comes from studying the spectra of different comets. The dominant gases in the coma are water vapor and carbon dioxide, followed by carbon monoxide.
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| Figure 25: Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy), a long period comet, released significant amounts of ethyl alcohol and organic molecules. Credit: John Vermette CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons |
In 2014, the Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) released 21 different organic molecules, including ethyl alcohol. “We found that comet Lovejoy was releasing as much alcohol as in at least 500 bottles of wine every second during its peak activity,” said Nicolas Biver of the Paris Observatory, France. Lovejoy passed closest to the sun on January 30, 2015, when it was releasing water at the rate of 20 tons per second.[18]
Some comets release small amounts of other gases such as methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulphide, cyanogen etc. Currently interstellar object 3i/Atlas is not only releasing carbon-dioxide, water and carbon monoxide into its coma, but significant quantities of nickel and iron vapor as well.
ESA’s Rosetta mission discovered the amino acid glycine - which is commonly found in proteins and phosphorus, and is a key component of DNA and cell membranes - in the coma of Comet 67P - Churyumov-Gerasimenko.[19] So, comets not only emit gases, but they also release metallic vapor and complex organic molecules which are the building blocks of life.
The current thought process is that, comets are reservoirs of primitive material in the Solar System which are stored in the nucleus as frozen ices and they are sublimated and released when they get warmed up by the Sun.
But there is a big problem with this hypothesis. Firstly, there is no explanation as to how the frozen ices of these gases, metals and organic molecules ended up inside a comet in the first place. Secondly, many of these gases, metals and organic molecules are released by a comet long before the temperature reaches the sublimation point (i.e. the temperature when a solid directly turns into a gas) or fusion point.
Most comets develop a coma and tails when they are somewhere between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. Scientists believe that this happens because frozen water begins to sublimate at at 3 AU from the Sun (Mars is at 1.5 AU, Jupiter at 5.2 AU; 1 AU = distance between Sun and Earth).
However, nearly one-third of comets become active beyond the water-ice sublimation boundary at 3 AU.[20] For instance, the Long-period Comet Hale-Bopp had a giant coma upon discovery at a distance of 7 AU (near Saturn's orbit). The coma consisted of dust, CO and water vapor. While CO is a volatile and sublimates at large distances from the Sun, how did water vapor appear in the coma at 7 AU?
Besides, how is interstellar comet 3i/Atlas – which is currently flying between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars - releasing large amounts of nickel and iron atoms? At such distances, temperatures are simply too low to vaporize the metallic grains that contain nickel and iron atoms. What’s going on?
My proposition is that, all the gases released by comets are the byproducts of metabolic reactions taking place within the comet’s nucleus, and not due to the sublimation of frozen ices. This can be understood by looking at the metabolic reactions that occur within various unicellular organisms. Let’s get going.
Water Vapor, Carbon-Dioxide and Oxygen
Unicellular phototrophs such as algae, euglena and cyanobacteria contain different types of photosynthetic pigments – such as chlorophyll, carotenoids and phycobiliproteins – to harvest different wavelengths of light for photosynthesis. The color of different types of algae depend on the pigments they have. Here’s an excerpt from the Encyclopaedia Brittanica:
“Chlorophylls absorb red and blue wavelengths much more strongly than they absorb green wavelengths, which is why chlorophyll-bearing plants appear green. The carotenoids and phycobiliproteins, on the other hand, strongly absorb green wavelengths. Algae with large amounts of carotenoid appear yellow to brown, those with large amounts of phycocyanin appear blue, and those with large amounts of phycoerythrin appear red.”[21]
It’s likely that comets also contain photosynthetic pigments that determine their color. A number of comets in recent years – including 3i/Atlas – have displayed a green glow which suggests that the dominant pigment is chlorophyll. Scientists had speculated that the green glow may be due to diatomic carbon molecules in the coma, but no such molecules have been detected in the coma of 3i/Atlas.
Many comets have a yellowish, reddish or bluish glow which could be due to high levels of carotenoids and phycobiliproteins.
Recently, 3i/Atlas did something very intriguing. When it was first spotted it appeared reddish, but later it developed a green glow. What happened there? Is that something that happens in algae as well? Yes, it does!
Algae can change their color in response to environmental conditions like light, temperature, nutrient availability etc. They can produce different photosynthetic pigments which can alter their dominant pigment, and thereby their color.
What probably happened in case of 3i/Atlas is that, initially its dominant pigment was phycoerythrin which made it appear red, but as it moved closer to the Sun it started producing chlorophyll (in order to absorb the red and blue wavelengths), which gave it a greenish glow.
Let’s move on to the reasons for cometary outgassing. In addition to the photosynthetic pigments, a comet nucleus will also contain reservoirs of water with dissolved carbon dioxide. Not only do algal cells contain water and carbon-dioxide, a recent study found pockets of carbon dioxide-rich liquid water inside salt crystals in a carbonaceous chondrite (which come from spent comets).[22]
When a comet approaches the Sun, at a certain point in its orbit when the light intensity gets strong enough, photosynthesis will get initiated to produce glucose and oxygen.
6CO2 + 6H2O + Sunlight = C6H12O6 (glucose) + 6O2
In case of plankton, all the oxygen that is produced by photosynthesis is not released into the atmosphere. A portion is used for cellular respiration, and the rest is released. In aerobic cellular respiration, the glucose produced during photosynthesis is broken down into water, carbon dioxide and ATP molecules (which provides the energy for cellular activities). A similar reaction must be occurring within comets as well.
C6H12O6 (glucose) + 6O2 = 6CO2 + 6H2O + ATP (energy molecules)
Comets will produce oxygen, water and carbon-dioxide as outputs of its most important metabolic reactions – photosynthesis and aerobic cellular respiration. And what are the dominant gases in the coma of a comet – water and carbon-dioxide!
This explains why comets emit large amounts of water vapor even when they are beyond the water-ice sublimation boundary (3 AU). It is released as a byproduct of aerobic cellular respiration (and not sublimation).
Since comets move through space, where oxygen is scarce, they are would not want to release the oxygen produced during photosynthesis, and, instead, use it for cellular respiration. But, if there is a surplus of oxygen, comets should release oxygen as well.
ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft had detected molecular oxygen in high abundance in the coma of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.[23] This was an extremely surprising discovery, since molecular oxygen is highly reactive and readily breaks apart to bind with other atoms and molecules.
As per Kathrin Altwegg, the principal investigator in the study, “It’s also unanticipated because there aren’t very many examples of the detection of interstellar O2. And thus, even though it must have been incorporated into the comet during its formation, this is not so easily explained by current Solar System formation models.”
The ESA scientists also found that,” the amount of molecular oxygen detected showed a strong relationship to the amount of water measured at any given time, suggesting that their origin on the nucleus and release mechanism are linked.”
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| Figure 26: The nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko imaged by Rosetta’s camera on 3 August, 2014. Credit: ESA, Public Domain Image. |
The entire mystery unravels when we realize that comets are the celestial counterparts of marine plankton. On earth, the only sources molecular oxygen are photosynthetic organisms. So, the molecular oxygen in the coma Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko strongly indicates that comets can photosynthesize.
The fact that ratio of molecular O2 and H2O remained surprisingly stable for Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, even as it moved towards the Sun, also makes sense in this context. As a comet moves towards the Sun, the rates of both photosynthesis and cellular respiration will increase, thereby maintaining a stable O2 / H2O ratio.
Cellular respiration also generates the crucial ATP molecules, which provide the necessary energy to comets to power their journey through space by moving their cilia and flagella. When comets are far away from the Sun and are not able to photosynthesize, they probably use the stored ATP molecules to continue their journey. This could be why many comets can accelerate even when they are at vast distances from the Sun and the coma and tails are not visible.
In other words, outgassing is not necessary for cometary acceleration, as was particularly evident in the case of the Interstellar Comet Oumuamua, which accelerated away from the Sun at a tremendous speed, and yet showed no signs of a coma or tails.
Ethyl Alcohol
In the absence of oxygen, many unicellular organisms, including algae, switch to anaerobic metabolic pathways such as “mixed acid fermentation” and “anaerobic respiration” to generate ATP molecules. It is quite likely that comets also switch to anaerobic metabolism when it runs out of its internal store of oxygen.
In mixed acid fermentation, glucose is converted into a variable mixture of products including several organic acids (lactic, acetic, formic, succinic), ethanol, and gases (carbon dioxide, hydrogen), and ATP molecules.
In anaerobic respiration, the stored glucose is broken down into ethanol, carbon dioxide and ATP molecules.
This explains why Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) was releasing large amounts of ethanol: it had switched to mixed acid fermentation or anaerobic cellular respiration, due to lack of an internal supply of oxygen. Anaerobic metabolism also accounts for the different types of organic molecules found in the coma of comets.
Carbon Monoxide
Carbon Monoxide (CO) is found in the coma of many distantly active comets. It is released routinely, in large amounts, by the short-period comet 29P/Schwassmann–Wachmann (orbital period 14.66 years). This is a big mystery, since CO is highly volatile and sublimates at very low temperatures, and if it came from subsurface ices, then all of it would have sublimated by now. This means, CO is being produced internally within the nucleus.
Once again the answer comes from unicellular organisms. A study titled, “Carbon Monoxide in the Biosphere: CO Emission by Fresh-Water Algae” found that, “the chemical processes associated with the biosynthesis and degradation of the photosynthetic pigments in algae produce large amounts of carbon monoxide (CO)”.[24]
Incidentally, Carbon Monoxide has been detected in the coma of 3i/Atlas, which changed its color from red to green – most likely by producing more chlorophyll.
Cyanogen
Cyanogen gas (commonly called cyanide) has been observed in the coma of many comets, including Comet Hartley 2 and the Interstellar Comet Borisov. Cyanogen is produced when a gas called hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is broken apart by sunlight.[25]
As per a recent study (2020) titled, “Cyano-assassins: Widespread cyanogenic 2 production from cyanobacteria”, HCN is produced by cyanobacteria (commonly called blue-green algae).
“The production of HCN was examined in 78 cyanobacteria strains from all five principal sections of cyanobacteria…Twenty-eight (28) strains were found positive for HCN production...HCN production could be linked with nitrogen fixation, as all of HCN producing strains are considered capable of fixing nitrogen.”[26]
Ammonia
Cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae, can convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia, through a process called nitrogen fixation. Since nitrogen is present in interstellar clouds27, comets may be able to convert it into ammonia, in order to make aminoacids. As I mentioned earlier, aminoacids such as glycine have been detected in the atmosphere Comet 67P.[28]
Methane
A class of bacteria called methanogens produce methane and water as a byproduct of anaerobic respiration. They are found in regions low in oxygen (anoxic) such as wetlands, landfills etc.
Hydrogen Sulphide
Sulfate reducing bacteria, which live in the coastal waters, produce hydrogen sulphide as a by-product of anaerobic respiration.
And finally, I will address the issue of the nickel and iron vapor that are currently being released by Interstellar comet 3i/Atlas.
Nickel and Iron
Both nickel and iron are abundant in comets. In recent times it has been found that, iron and nickel atoms are present in the atmospheres of comets throughout our Solar System.
Jean Manfroid, who led a new study on Solar System comets published in Nature (2021) said, “It was a big surprise to detect iron and nickel atoms in the atmosphere of all the comets we have observed in the last two decades, about 20 of them, and even in ones far from the Sun in the cold space environment."[29]
The emission of nickel and iron vapor by 3i/Atlas might have caught everyone by surprise, but it is by no means an exception.
But why do comets contain so much nickel and iron, and how do they release these gases so far away from the Sun, since at distances of ~3 AU, where temperatures are just too cold to vaporize the metallic grains that contain nickel and iron atoms.
Not surprisingly, the answer can be found by studying the behavior of unicellular organisms, particularly algae.
Microalgae are very efficient in removing heavy metals such as Iron, Nickel, Zinc etc. from aquatic environments, which is why they have been studied extensively for bioremediation of urban wastewater systems. One of the studies focusing on the removal of Nickel and Zinc found that,
"Research has shown that living algae are capable of both adsorption (i.e. sticking to the surface) and absorption of metals...The data obtained from these experiments showed sorption of both Ni(II) and Zn(II) by the algae community during the growth phase. The algae released a portion of the previously sorbed metals during the chilled phase."[30]
Another study titled, "Iron Uptake Mechanisms in Marine Phytoplankton" states that,
"Oceanic phytoplankton species have highly efficient mechanisms of iron acquisition, as they can take up iron from environments in which it is present at subnanomolar concentrations. In eukaryotes, three main models were proposed for iron transport into the cells..."[31]
It has been also observed that under certain stress conditions, such as a heat shock, algae can release iron from its internal store.
Extending this scenario to comets, we can surmise that comets adsorb and absorb heavy metals like Iron and Nickel in their growth phase, but when they find themselves in stressful conditions such as heat shock, or in chilled environments, they release nickel and iron atoms into their coma.
Which is probably why 3i/Atlas is emitting nickel and iron atoms at nearly 3 AU from the Sun. At such distances, it is in a “chilled environment”, and has also been subjected to a few “heat shocks” in the form of CMEs from the Sun.
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| Figure 27: An image of interstellar Comet 3i/Atlas captured by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini South at Cerro Pachón in Chile. Credit: International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / Shadow the Scientist, CC BY 4.0 |
Thus, most of the important gases, metallic vapor and organic molecules commonly found in the coma of comets can be explained as the by-products of various metabolic reactions taking place inside a comet’s nucleus. While I have not accounted for every single gas and organic molecule found in the coma of comets, this study gives me the confidence that further study will reveal that to be the case as well.
Concluding Remarks
The hypothesis that comets are “dirty snowballs” is unable to account for many things about cometary behavior. The list of anomalies is very long, and keeps getting longer with every new comet that arrives in the solar system.
In fact, if astronomers were to create a giant frozen ball made of the ices of various gases, organic molecules and metallic grains, give it a coating of organic matter, and release it into space, it will not behave anything like a comet. It will simply move in a straight line with uniform velocity until all the ices sublimate – and sublimation will happen really fast as soon as the sublimation temperatures are reached. There won’t be any change of direction or acceleration, no movement towards or away from the Sun, no coma or any long, well-formed, intricate tails, and certainly no replication. The metallic vapor will not be released, nor the organic molecules (since most organic molecules do not sublimate).
On the other hand, almost everything that we know about comets can be explained by comparing them to marine plankton like algae, bacteria and other microorganisms. The correlations are absolutely stunning, and make a very strong case that comets are conscious space organisms, that behave like space plankton. It is very likely that comets perform the same job in the solar system that plankton do in the oceans – which is to maintain the chemical balance of the solar system and allow the evolution of life in planetary systems like the earth.
This is, obviously, a radically new way of looking at comets, and in order for this idea to be explored further, there needs to be a fundamental overhaul in the way we view the universe. We have to stop thinking of the cosmos as an inert, lifeless space characterized by random occurrences and energetic reactions, and instead, allow, pockets of consciousness to exist and thrive within this environment. That won’t be easy since deeply ingrained ideologies are difficult to let go of.
We also need to involve marine biologists in the study of comets, and I have little doubt that if the exploration of comets, meteors and associated phenomenon is carried out by cross- functional teams of astronomers and marine biologists, we would understand more about comets in the next five years than we have in the past fifty.
Before ending this article, let me summarize the key correlations between comets and marine plankton such as algae and bacteria.
1) The tail structures of comets are remarkably similar to the flagella of algae and other microorganisms. The "ion tail" of a comet corresponds to the “whiplash flagella”, while the "dust tail" of a comet, where the striations appear, correspond to the “tinsel flagella” which have lateral hairs.
2) The gas and dust released by a comet may be coalescing around the cilia to form the brilliant coma, and around the flagella to form the comet tails. That is why the coma and the tail have definite, complex, shapes that remain extremely stable over time, even as the comet hurtles through space.
3) Comets use their cilia and flagella to move through space. Comets have been seen wiggling their tails as they move, which gives their tails a wavy appearance that changes over time.
4) The tail “Disconnection Event” of comets - in which the tail gets separated from the comet’s head and moves away, and is replaced by a new one – corresponds to the deflagellation of algal cells. Algae detach their flagella in response to certain stimuli, and regrow their flagella once the external stimuli is removed.
5) The nucleus of a comet rotates as it moves, in the same manner that the body of the alga, Chlamydomonas, rotates as it moves.
6) Comets may not be gravitationally bound to the Sun and move in their orbits using a combination of phototaxis (light), magnetoreception (magnetic field) and gravitaxis (gravity), using their flagella-like tails as locomotary organs, similar to unicellular organisms.
7) The fragmentation of a comet nucleus into two or more comets, corresponds exactly to the processes of binary fission (or budding) and multiple fission in unicellular organisms.
8) The reason why many comets have a bi-lobed nucleus, which is an inherently unstable structure, is probably because these comets are in the process of undergoing binary fission or budding.
9) Comets have a tendency to enter into a dormant state from time to time, which is something microbes do as well.
10) Like unicellular phototrophs, comets may contain different types of photosynthetic pigments – such as chlorophyll, carotenoids and phycobiliproteins - which not only allows them to photosynthesize by harvesting sunlight, but also gives them their specific colors – green, red, blue, yellow etc.
11) Like algae, comets could be producing different photosynthetic pigments which alter their dominant pigment, and thereby their color.
12) Just like unicellular organisms, the various gases and organic molecules released by a comet are byproducts of their internal metabolic activity, such as photosynthesis, aerobic and anaerobic respiration, biosynthesis and degradation of photosynthetic pigments, nitrogen fixation etc. This is why comets emit water vapor even when they are beyond the water-ice sublimation boundary.
13) Like algae, comets absorb and adsorb heavy metals like Nickel and Iron from the surrounding, and release these atoms when they are in a “chilled environment” or in stressful conditions such as a “heat shock”.
14) The ATP generated from cellular respiration provides the energy to comets to power their journey through space by moving their cilia and flagella. This is why comets can accelerate even when they don’t display signs of outgassing.
This is a long list of correlations, and I can only hope that this study will enthuse scientists and researchers to undertake further exploration of this new approach to understanding comets.
Note: An older version of this article was published on MysteriousUniverse (https://mysteriousuniverse.org/)
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[22] Ritsumeikan University. "Carbon dioxide-rich liquid water in ancient meteorite." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 April 2021, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210421151254.htm.
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[30] Ellen Fielding, Robert W. Nairn, Robert C. Knox, "Sorption and Release of Nickel and Zinc Using a Mixed-Algae Community Collected from a Mine Drainage Passive Treatment System", Journal of Environmental Engineering, 25 Nov 2021, Volume 148, Issue 2, https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)EE.1943-7870.0001953
[31] Robert Sutak, Jean-Michel Camadro, Emmanuel Lesuisse, "Iron Uptake Mechanisms in Marine Phytoplankton", Frontiers in Microbiology, 05 November 2020, Volume 11 - 2020, https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.566691
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