Behind the Star of Bethlehem described in the Bible is There could be a comet which passed at an extremely close distance from Earth, approximately the same distance that separates it from the Moon.
This is the hypothesis of NASA researcher Mark Matney, who published a study conducted independently of the agency in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association.
According to Matney, the close proximity would explain why the object appeared to remain stationary in the sky. for several hours.
“A comet could remain stationary in the same place (says the NASA researcher) if it was virtually on a collision course with Earth. That’s exactly what you’d expect from an object flying very, very close to Earth.”
Matney relied on ancient reports from China that mentioned a “broom star,” a commonly used term the comets due to their tails, which appeared in the spring of 5 B.C. BC appeared. C
Chinese records seem to indicate that the strange star remained in the same constellation for 70 daystoo long for a comet. This led some astronomers to suspect that the object was actually a nova, the explosion of a small star.
However, Matney argues that the description supports his theory of a comet originating from the Oort cloud, a cloud of comets at the outer edge of the solar system, and passing very close to our planet.
However, other astronomers caution that the reports may not be very reliable.
“In general (says astrophysicist Ralph Neuhuser from the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (Germany)) the older the data, the less information is preserved.”
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