Comets Are Conscious Space Organisms Resembling Terrestrial Microbes!

“Comets are like cats: they have tails, and they do precisely what they want,” wrote David H. Levy, an amateur astronomer who discovered 22 comets, nine of them using his own backyard telescopes. 

David Levy’s bio on the Vatican Observatory website states that he is “one of the most successful comet discoverers in history.” With Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker at the Palomar Observatory in California, he discovered Shoemaker-Levy 9, the comet that broke up and spectacularly collided with Jupiter in 1994.

Evidently, David Levy knew a thing or two about identifying and tracking these enigmatic celestial visitors who come into the inner solar system from time to time. The reason why he thought comets are like cats is not because he heard them purr or saw them perform crazy antics in the sky, but because of their unpredictable nature. 

Comets are difficult to track, for they are often not found at their expected position in their orbit. Sometimes they change their orbital path. Some of them arrive at their perihelion positions (closest to the Sun) either too soon or too late.[1] The 1st century CE historian, Josephus, was certainly referring to a comet when he described a star, resembling a sword, which stood over the city of Jerusalem for an entire year, in 66 CE.[2]

Astronomers don't know when exactly a comet will start to brighten up and emit a lot of gases, how bright it will become, or when it will stop doing so and become almost invisible. For instance, in 2012, comet ISON became very active far, far, away from the Sun, but when it came into the inner solar system, it started losing brightness. 

Comets are quite moody and capricious that way. It’s almost as if they might be conscious space entities who have their own mysterious agendas and ways of working, about which we are quite clueless.  

While researching for my book Yuga Shift, I noticed something about comets that captivated me. The structure and variety of their tails are very similar to the flagella, which are used by a number of microorganisms for locomotion! And the way comets move through space while rotating on their axis and waving their tails is exactly the manner in which microbes move as well.

Comet Tails and Flagella

How do comets move through space? The current thinking is that a comet is nothing but a ball of ice and frozen gases with a covering of dirt. 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 comes 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 effects of solar radiation and solar wind.

I never really had any reason to doubt these oft-repeated explanations, or to even think of comets as conscious entities, until I saw a couple of images of comet tails, which sparked off a different line of thinking.

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.”[3]

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.”[4]

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 sophisticated telescopes, they were clearly depicted in an ancient Chinese comet atlas, which was found in a Han-era tomb that was sealed in 168 BCE. 

The 2000-year-old Chinese text known as the Mawangdui Silk Text records hundreds of comet sightings over three centuries, with two dozen renderings 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.

The images in the Mawangdui comet atlas make it quite obvious that the ancient Chinese astronomers, who lived more than two thousand years ago, were able to clearly see the dust tail striations of comets! What kind of advanced optical instruments could they have been using? Surely, they were not peering through a bamboo shoot, as many mainstream scientists would want us to believe! 

While looking at the comet atlas of the Mawangdui Silk Texts, another thought began to play on my mind. The comets with their striated tails seemed vaguely familiar, as if I had seen them before. “Is this how unicellular organisms with flagella look like? “ I thought to myself. I decided to refresh my memory of high school biology by doing some online research.

This is what I found. 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 is generally less than ten. 

A unicellular organism uses both the 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.

Here’s the part that made my eyes light up. There are essentially four types of flagella in algal cells, and a single cell may have one or more of these types.

1. Acronematic flagella or whiplash flagella is smooth and elongated without any hairs. 
2. Pantonematic flagella has a central filament with two rows of lateral hairs (called mastigonemes) attached to it like feathers. 
3. Pantocronematic flagella also has a central filament with two rows of hairs, but with a single terminal hair.
4. Stichonematic flagella has a central filament with a single row of hair.

Now, if we look back at the depictions of the comets in the Mawangdui comet atlas, we will find something astonishing: each and every comet tail depicted in the comet atlas corresponds to one of the flagella types of algal cells! In the diagram below, I have mapped the comet tails to the flagella types of algae.

I was amazed by this exact correlation, to say the least! It’s almost as if the ancient Chinese astronomers, instead of designing a powerful telescope to scan the sky for comets, had mistakenly invented a powerful microscope and were peering at the ground and describing unicellular organisms with flagella.

But obviously that wasn’t 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, 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.

It seems to me that the acronematic or whiplash flagella is what we know as the “ion tail” of a comet, which is straight and bluish in color, and does not have striations, while the stichonematic, pantonematic and pantocronematic flagella - which are collectively known as tinsel flagella – are 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 acronematic or whiplash flagella. As we have noted, there are a number of comets in the Chinese comet atlas with multiple whiplash flagella. 

Regarding Comet C/2014 Q2 (termed Comet Lovejoy, since it was discovered by amateur Australian astronomer, Terry Lovejoy), NASA reported that, 

“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.”[5]

I found it interesting that the ion tails of Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) changed their wavy appearance over time. This is exactly what you would expect if the tails were being used for locomotion. In unicellular organisms, the flagella rotate like a propeller, which gives it a wavy appearance. 

Comet C/2011 W3 (also called Comet Lovejoy, since it was also discovered by amateur Australian astronomer Terry Lovejoy) passed deep within the solar corona in December 2011. A team of researchers published a paper in Science journal, where they said that the tail of Comet Lovejoy “wiggled”! This article from Phys.org states,

“What the researchers found most interesting about Lovejoy's close call (with the Sun) was the movement of its tail as it passed through parts of the corona—it wiggled, displaying major changes in intensity, direction, persistence and magnitude.”[6]

Now, isn’t that startling? Not only do the tails of comets exactly resemble the flagella of algae, comets also wiggle their tails as they move, which gives their tails a wavy appearance.

And there’s more. 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.[7] Scientists studying the motion of the single-celled green alga called Chlamydomonas found that the body of the alga rotates in a corkscrew motion as it moves. This is what the press release by the University of Exeter (2021) tells us:

“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.”[8]

Needless to say, I became more and more intrigued as the similarities between comets and terrestrial microbes kept on piling up. Almost every aspect of the movement of unicellular organisms can be seen in comets. The study from the University of Exeter that I cited above also found that Chlamydomonas cells swim towards the light using their flagella. But how do they sense the light? As per the scientists,

“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.”  

So, let’s get this straight. A comet moves towards the Sun by wiggling its tail, and the comet's nucleus rotates as it moves. Chlamydomonas cells move towards the light by beating their flagella, and the cell rotates to allow the “red eye spot” to scan the environment. The correspondences are absolutely spot on! Incidentally, phototaxis is exhibited by many unicellular phototrophs (i.e. organisms which can make their own food using sunlight) such as green algae, dinoflagellates, cyanobacteria etc.

Could it be, I wondered, that comets are also capable of sensing light using an eye spot and move towards the Sun by means of phototaxis? Perhaps, comets are giant, conscious, space organisms who move around in outer space pretty much on their own, and are not gravitationally bound to the Sun?

But there is an issue with that line of reasoning. If comets move using phototaxis, then how do short-period comets, which have an orbital period of less than 200 years and have their aphelion near Jupiter or Neptune, have such stable orbits over time? Surely, phototaxis by itself cannot guarantee such stable orbits?

My surmise is that, in addition to having a “red eye spot” for sensing the light, comets may also possess “magnetoreceptors” inside their nucleus, using which they orient their orbits along the (solar) interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). We know that there are many types of terrestrial animals, such as migratory birds and sea turtles, which use magnetoreceptors for sensing the Earth’s magnetic field to orient themselves and navigate over long distances. 

Since the (solar) interplanetary magnetic field lines may have occasional bends and twists (just like the Earth’s magnetic field), a comet may not be found at the expected point in its orbit. Moreover, comets, being conscious organisms, might jump from one magnetic field line to another, thereby changing their orbit. They might increase or decrease their speed consciously, in response to internal or external stimuli, and arrive at their perihelion (closest to the Sun) positions either too soon or too late. Sometimes they might stop altogether, and appear at the same place for a long time, as observed by the 1st century CE historian, Josephus.

In other words, comets may not be like “cats”, as David H. Levy had suggested, but could very well be like unicellular organisms such as algae and bacteria. It is quite possible that they are not gravitationally bound to the Sun, but are moving around the Sun consciously, using a combination of phototaxis and magnetoreception, using their flagella-like tails as locomotory organs. Comets may also have an ability called gravitaxis, which makes marine algae and other types of organisms move towards or away from gravity. This could be why most short-period comets have their aphelion (farthest from the Sun) near the gas giants Jupiter and Neptune.

This brings up another intriguing question. The reason why the alga chlamydomonas - and phototrophic organisms in general - move towards the light is because they need the light for photosynthesis. Could it be that comets also make their own food utilizing photosynthesis? 

We know that unicellular organisms move their flagella using energy derived from ATP (adenosine triphosphate) molecules that are produced by the breakdown of glucose during cellular respiration. Could this be the case for comets as well? Are there metabolic reactions going on in the interior of comets that produce the energy needed for their movement and the gases they emit? 

Metabolic Activity inside Comets

Astronomers currently believe that the nucleus of a comet contains the frozen ices of many gases. When a comet approaches the Sun, the sub-surface ices sublimate due to solar radiation and come out of the cracks on the outer crust in the form of gases. 

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, which is ionized by UV radiation and swept into the ion tail. 

In 2014, the Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) released 21 different organic molecules, including ethyl alcohol and glycolaldehyde, a simple sugar. “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. The atmosphere of the comet around this time was brightest and most active.[9]

Comets also release small amounts of other gases such as methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulphide, cyanogen, formaldehyde, etc. ESA’s Rosetta mission discovered the amino acid glycine, which is commonly found in proteins, and phosphorus, a key component of DNA and cell membranes, in the coma of Comet 67P - Churyumov-Gerasimenko.[10] The current thought process is that comets may be reservoirs of primitive material in the Solar System, which are released when they get warmed up.

But there is a problem with this hypothesis. Firstly, scientists find it very difficult to explain how these substances and organic molecules were created and ended up inside a comet in the first place. Secondly, many of these gases are released by a comet before the temperature reaches the sublimation point (i.e., the temperature at when a solid directly turns into a gas). 

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 ~3 AU from the Sun (Mars is at 1.5 AU, Jupiter at 5.2 AU; 1 AU = distance between the Sun and Earth). 

However, nearly one-third of comets become active beyond the water ice sublimation boundary at 3 AU.[11] The Long-period Comet Hale-Bopp had a giant coma upon discovery at a distance of 7 AU (near Saturn's orbit) and continued to be active at much farther distances post-perihelion. 

The first volatile gases observed in distantly active comets (beyond 3 AU) were carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, cyanogen, and hydroxide (which comes from water molecules).[12] The question is, how are distantly active comets releasing carbon dioxide and other gases into their coma, over such large distances from the Sun?

Is it possible that the gases released by a comet are a byproduct of metabolic activities taking place within the core of a comet’s nucleus, and not due to the sublimation of frozen ices?

Imagine an old man with a flatulence problem goes to see a doctor, and the doctor tells him that a surgical operation is required to take out the “solidified gas deposits” present inside the man’s stomach, which were presumably formed when he was born. Would that person ever see that doctor again after enduring such a harrowing experience?   

I don’t think so, since everyone knows that the gases released by humans and all living organisms are a product of respiration and metabolic activity. Carbon dioxide is released by us during breathing, while many types of gases are generated during digestion – carbon dioxide, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, methane, etc., some of which can cause flatulence. 

It is possible, therefore, that the gases released by a comet are a product of metabolic activity taking place within the comet’s nucleus. Since comets resemble algae and other unicellular organisms, let us try to figure out what might be going on inside a cometary nucleus from that perspective.

Since unicellular phototrophs such as algae, euglena and cyanobacteria contain chloroplasts, they are able to produce their own food through photosynthesis. It is for this reason that they move towards the light by means of phototaxis. Perhaps, comets also contain chloroplasts, which allow them to produce glucose using carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight? 

In addition to chloroplasts, a comet nucleus is likely to contain reservoirs of water with dissolved carbon dioxide, since a recent study found pockets of carbon dioxide-rich liquid water inside salt crystals in a carbonaceous chondrite (which come from spent comets).[13]

When a comet approaches the Sun, at a certain point in its orbit when the light intensity is strong enough, the photosynthetic process may get triggered. 

6CO2 + 6H2O + Sunlight = C6H12O6 (glucose) + 6O2 

The oxygen produced during photosynthesis may not be released outside, but is used for aerobic cellular respiration, in which the glucose is broken down into water, carbon dioxide, and ATP molecules.

C6H12O6 (glucose) + 6O2 = 6CO2 + 6H2O + ATP

This would explain why comets emit such large quantities of water vapor and carbon dioxide, even when they are beyond the water ice sublimation boundary (3 AU). They are released as byproducts of aerobic cellular respiration. 

The ATP molecules provide the necessary energy to comets to power their journey through space by moving their cilia and flagella. This could be why comets not only emit more gas but also move faster as they draw closer to the Sun. The photosynthesis process will be at its peak when a comet reaches perihelion, i.e., the closest point to the Sun in its orbit. 

When comets move far away from the Sun and are not able to photosynthesize, they can 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 case of the Interstellar Comet Oumuamua, which accelerated away from the Sun at a tremendous pace, and yet showed no signs of a coma or tails.

Comets may also have the ability to switch to anaerobic cellular respiration, which can be carried out in the absence of oxygen, in order to generate ATP molecules from the glucose stored within the nucleus. In anaerobic respiration, the stored glucose is broken down into ethanol, carbon dioxide and ATP. 

C6H12O6 (glucose) + Enzymes = 2C2H5OH (ethanol) + 2CO2 + ATP

Anaerobic respiration releases much less energy than aerobic respiration, since glucose is partially broken down. This method may be used by a comet when it has run out of its internal storage of oxygen. This can explain why Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) was releasing large amounts of ethanol: it had switched to anaerobic cellular respiration. 

Some of the other gases seen in the spectra of comets are carbon monoxide, cyanogen, formaldehyde, ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulphide, etc. Each of these gases is produced by different species of algae and bacteria as byproducts of metabolic activities. 

Carbon Monoxide: Studies show that “the chemical processes associated with the biosynthesis and degradation of the photosynthetic pigments in algae produce large amounts of carbon monoxide (CO)”.[14]

Formaldehyde: It has been isolated from nearly every marine algal species, which indicates that formaldehyde formation takes place within algae.[15]

Cyanogen:  Cyanogen gas (commonly called cyanide) has been observed in the coma of many comets, including Comet Hartley 2 and the Interstellar Comet Borisov. It is thought to be produced when a gas called hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is broken apart by sunlight.[16] As per a recent study (2020), HCN is produced by cyanobacteria.

“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.”[17]

Ammonia: Cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, can convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia through a process called nitrogen fixation. Since nitrogen is present in interstellar clouds[18], certain types of comets may be able to convert it into ammonia, in order to make amino acids. Amino acids such as glycine have been detected in the atmosphere of Comet 67P.[19]

Methane: A class of bacteria called methanogens produces 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 byproduct of anaerobic respiration. 

Thus, all of the gases commonly seen in the spectra of comets are generated as a result of aerobic or anaerobic cellular respiration or other metabolic activities by different types of unicellular organisms, such as algae, bacteria, protozoa, etc. 

This provides a strong basis to argue that comets are conscious space organisms carrying out cellular respiration and a variety of internal metabolic activities. The gases generated as a byproduct of these metabolic activities are released by a comet, which coalesces around the cilia and flagella to create the brilliant coma and the tails of the comet. The ATP molecules provide the necessary energy for a comet to move through space by moving its cilia and flagella, which is why comets have been seen to accelerate even when they don’t display signs of outgassing.

This is a far better explanation of the observational data than the current hypothesis, which posits that comets are lifeless, “dirty snowballs”. This doesn’t tell us how all of these gases and organic molecules ended up within comets, why comets move around the Sun, why these gases and complex organic molecules are released, how is it that comets can brighten up even when they are very far from the Sun (beyond the water-ice sublimation boundary), or how they accelerate when they don’t release any gases. 

If you still harbor doubts, there is yet another thing which a comet does that is a sure-shot indication that it is conscious: comets can reproduce! That’s right, comets produce more of their own via binary fission (or budding) and multiple fission.

Binary and Multiple Fission

Comets have an uncanny ability to fragment into multiple smaller comets. There have been 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 were composed of the solidified ices of various gases and complex organic molecules, and if the nucleus were to break apart in space due to tidal forces 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 when they cross the orbit of Jupiter and start to brighten up. The smaller comets 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. 

Let us look at a couple of instances of fragmenting comets, which have been 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, estimated to be about 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. [20]

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 a 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.[21]

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/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 the case of budding is much smaller than the parent cell. 

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.

The observational data suggest that comets can undergo both binary fission/budding and multiple fission. In the case of Comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami, which 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 fissions of one of the daughter comets in 2016, which created the trail of comet fragments behind the core of Comet 332P. 

What this shows very clearly is that comets are conscious space organisms capable of reproducing just like terrestrial unicellular organisms!

The tendency of comets to reproduce by means of binary fission or budding solves yet another mystery about comets: Why are so many cometary nuclei bi-lobed?

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.[22] 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 very simple. A bi-lobed nucleus implies that the comet is in the process of undergoing binary fission or budding! Sometime down the line, the bi-lobed nucleus will split up into two daughter cometary nuclei of equal size (binary fission) or unequal size (budding).

I think anyone who looks at this data with an unbiased mind will realize that there is a huge amount of evidence in favor of the contention that comets are space organisms, moving in the vast “cosmic ocean” of outer space, within the meteor streams, Oort cloud and the Kuiper Belt of our Solar System, in somewhat the same manner that marine planktons – which include algae, bacteria and other microorganisms - drift with the ocean currents.

Concluding Thoughts

Many of the unsolved mysteries about comets can be easily explained once we start thinking of them as conscious space organisms that resemble the different types of microbes on our planet. I have looked at several connections in this article, and let me summarize the key points here:

1. The tail structures of comets are remarkably similar to the flagella of terrestrial microorganisms. The "ion tail" of a comet corresponds to the acronematic or whiplash flagella, while the "dust tail" of a comet, where the striations appear, corresponds to the stichonematic, pantonematic and pantocronematic flagella, collectively known as tinsel flagella. 

2. Comets may also possess cilia-like structures on the nucleus. 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. 

3. Comets appear to use their cilia and flagella to move through space. They have been seen wiggling their tails as they move, which gives their tails a wavy appearance that changes over time. 

4. The nucleus of a comet rotates as it moves, in the same manner that the body of the alga, chlamydomonas, rotates as it moves.

5. Comets appear to be moving in their orbits around the Sun using a combination of phototaxis (light), magnetoreception (magnetic field) and gravitaxis (gravity), using their flagella-like tails as locomotory organs.

6. When a comet moves towards the Sun, it kicks off the processes of photosynthesis and cellular respiration, as in unicellular phototrophs. Comets are likely to contain chloroplasts within their nucleus, along with reservoirs of water with dissolved carbon dioxide.

7. The large quantities of water vapor and carbon dioxide released by comets could be the byproducts of aerobic cellular respiration. The ethanol released by some comets could be a byproduct of anaerobic cellular respiration. 

8. 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.

9. Most of the gases emitted by comets in small amounts such as carbon monoxide, cyanogen, formaldehyde, ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulphide etc. could be byproducts of cellular respiration or other metabolic activities, since all these gases are produced by different types of unicellular organisms.

10. 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.

11. The reason why many comets have a bi-lobed nucleus is probably because these comets are in the process of undergoing binary fission or budding.

This is a long list of correlations, which, taken together, strongly suggest that comets are not “dirty snowballs” as suggested by astronomers, but conscious space organisms, whose physical make-up and behavior is very similar to terrestrial microbes, particularly marine planktons. 

Since marine planktons serve a very important role in maintaining the oxygen and carbon dioxide balance of the ecosphere, and support the entire food chain, it is likely that comets perform an important role in maintaining the chemical balance of our Solar System, and support the growth and evolution of life in planetary systems such as ours.

Of course, such an idea leads to a fundamental overhaul in the way we think about our universe, since the dominant paradigm today is to view the cosmos as an inert, lifeless zone characterized by random occurrences and energetic reactions, without any underlying rhyme or reason. Not everyone subscribes to these ideas, though. 

Astrobiologists, Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, have been arguing for decades that comets brought the first life forms to the earth in the form of dormant bacteria and desiccated DNA and RNA molecules.  In a paper titled, “The astrobiological case for our cosmic ancestry” (2010), Chandra Wickramasinghe wrote: 

“Astronomy continues to reveal the presence of organic molecules and organic dust on a huge cosmic scale, amounting to a third of interstellar carbon tied up in this form. Just as the overwhelming bulk of organics on Earth stored over geological timescales are derived from the degradation of living cells, so it seems likely that interstellar organics in large measure also derive from biology. As we enter a new decade – the year 2010 – a clear pronouncement of our likely alien ancestry and of the existence of extraterrestrial life on a cosmic scale would seem to be overdue.”[23]

The radical idea that “interstellar organics derive from biology” should have evoked a lot of interest in scientific circles, but, unfortunately, such thoughts are anathema to many modern astronomers, who seem to abhor the words “consciousness” and “life” like nature abhors a vacuum.  

On the other hand, since biologists should be more open to the idea of life in outer space and more equipped to detect its signatures, my belief is that, if the study of comets (and other cosmic phenomenon) is carried out by cross- functional teams of astronomers and biologists, we would learn more about comets in the next five years than we have in the past fifty. 

References

[1] “Comet”, Enclyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/science/comet-astronomy/The-modern-era
[2] Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 6.5.3, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2850/2850-h/2850-h.htm
[3] “New insights on comet tails are blowing in the solar wind”, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, News Release Nov 2, 2018,  https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/new-insights-on-comet-tails-are-blowing-in-the-solar-wind/
[4] "The Structured Tails of Comet NEOWISE", NASA Science, Jul 22, 2020, https://science.nasa.gov/structured-tails-comet-neowise
[5] NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, 2015 January 21, https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150121.html
[6] Bob Yirka , "Comet Lovejoy's wiggle offers glimpse of Sun's variable coronal magnetism", Phys.org June 7, 2013, https://phys.org/news/2013-06-comet-lovejoy-wiggle-glimpse-sun.html
[7] ROTATION PERIODS OF HALLEY'S AND OTHER COMETS, Lunar and Planetary Institute, NASA Astrophysics Data System, https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc1987/pdf/1560.pdf
[8] "Research shows how single celled algae rotate as they swim towards the light", University of Exeter, https://news-archive.exeter.ac.uk/homepage/title_844738_en.html
[9] William Steigerwald, "Researchers Catch Comet Lovejoy Giving Away Alcohol", NASA Oct 23, 2015, https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/researchers-catch-comet-lovejoy-giving-away-alcohol/
[10] Rosetta’s comet contains ingredients for life, ESA 27 May, 2016, https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_s_comet_contains_ingredients_for_life
[11] M. Womack, G. Sarid, and K. Wierzchos, "CO and Other Volatiles in Distantly Active Comets", Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2017 February 9, Volume 129, Number 973.
[12] Ibid
[13] Ritsumeikan University. "Carbon dioxide-rich liquid water in ancient meteorite." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 April 2021, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210421151254.htm.
[14] H.L. Crespi, J.J.Katz, "Carbon Monoxide in the Biosphere: CO Emission by Fresh-Water Algae", National Service Center for Environmental Publications (NSCEP), US EPA, 1972.
[15] Yang, M.H,, Blunden, G., Tyihak, E., Formaldehyde from marine algae  [1998],  Biochemical systematics and ecology, ISSN:0305-1978, https://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search.do?recordID=US201302886278
[16] Sergio Prostak, "Astronomers Detect Cyanide Gas in Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov", Sci News Sep 28, 2019, http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/cyanide-gas-interstellar-comet-2i-borisov-07637.html
[17] Manthos Panou and Spyros Gkelis, "Cyano-assassins: Widespread cyanogenic 2 production from cyanobacteria", biorxiv.org January 6, 2020, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.04.894782v1.full.pdf
[18] Lisa De Nike "Astronomers Detect Molecular Nitrogen Outside Our Solar System", The JHU Gazette June 21, 2004, https://pages.jh.edu/gazette/2004/21jun04/21detect.html
[19] "Rosetta’s comet contains ingredients for life", ESA 27 May, 2016, https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_s_comet_contains_ingredients_for_life
[20] Calla Cofield, "Hubble Telescope Snaps Best-Ever Views of a Comet's Disintegration", Space.com  September 16, 2016, https://www.space.com/34092-comet-disintegration-hubble-telescope-photos.html
[21] "Hubble Watches Comet ATLAS Disintegrate Into More Than Two Dozen Pieces", NASA Apr 28, 2020, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/hubble-watches-comet-atlas-disintegrate-into-more-than-two-dozen-pieces
[22] Ana V. Aceves, "Comets Break Up and Make Up", Sky&Telescope June 13, 2016, https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/comets-break-up-and-make-up/
[23] Chandra Wickramasinghe, “The astrobiological case for our cosmic ancestry”, International Journal of Astrobiology, 2010, Vol.9, No.2, pp. 119-129.