Author(s)

N. Chandra Wickramasinghe^1,2,3,4

¹Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology, University of Buckingham, Buckingham, UK.
²Centre for Astrobiology, University of Ruhuna, Matara, Sri Lanka.
³National Institute of Fundamental Studies, Kandy, Sri Lanka.
⁴Institute for the Study of Panspermia and Astroeconomics, Gifu, Japan.

The discovery of a giant comet (C/2014 UN271) at a distance of 29 AU in October 2014 and the later discovery in September 2021 of a dramatic brightening episode offers an ideal opportunity for verifying the predictions of a “biological” comet. The eruptions of the comet at a heliocentric distance of 20 AU are plausibly explained as due to high pressure venting of the products of microbial metabolism in radioactively heated subsurface lakes. The standard non-biological model of comets is woefully inadequate to account for eruptions at such large distances from the sun where surface temperatures are as low as 60 K.

Comets, Cometary Activity, Bacteria and Viruses, Panspermia

Wickramasinghe, N. (2022) Giant Comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) Provides New Evidence for Cometary Panspermia. International Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 12, 1-6. doi: 10.4236/ijaa.2022.121001.