NASA Hubble Telescope Made A Startling Discovery Of An Asteroid With 6 Tails – ‘We Were Literally Dumbfounded When We Saw It,’ Researcher Says

NASA's Hubble Space telescope has just spotted a startling discovery! A 1,400 feet wide asteroid with six comet-like tails - looks like a rotating lawn sprinkler from the space - was found in the asteroid belt of Mars and Jupiter.

"I'm trying not to use the word 'freak,'" according to lead investigator of a paper about the six-tailed comet like asteroid David Jewitt of UCLA, "but that's what it is. It is definitely freakish."

"We were literally dumbfounded when we saw it," David Jewitt added during the press release.

Comets have tails not asteroids, which makes this discovery really astounding. The blue striking tails that people see from outer space are commonly associated with comets or "dirty snowballs' that usually originate outside of the solar system.

"Even more amazing, its tail structures change dramatically in just 13 days as it belches out dust," Jewitt said. "That also caught us by surprise. It's hard to believe we're looking at an asteroid."

The tails are actually dust and gas trails the ice in the nucleus of the comet is being melted from being too close to the sun. However, asteroids or space rocks originate from the asteroid belt and the possibility of ice to survive is unlikely.

"This thing should just be a rock," Jewitt explains of the six-tailed asteroid. "Imagine if you went in your backyard and a rock suddenly started spouting this stuff off."

Then why was there an asteroid with tail orbiting around the space? A question that can't be answered by the experts.

Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute in Germany created a computer model where it proposes that the tails from the asteroid might have been formed due to separate dust ejection occurrence with irregular intervals happened on April 15, July 18, July 24, Aug. 8, Aug. 26 and Sept. 4 this year.

However, the model did not clarify the cause of the random dust ejections. As of the moment, Jewitt is guessing that the radiation pressure coming from the sun caused the asteroid to spin rapidly, thus if it spins fast enough, it could have fallen apart. A probable reason why the asteroid produced a comet-like tails before it finally shatters.

Nonetheless, Jewitt maybe wrong, "I am open to the possibility that this explanation is completely wrong," he claims. "It is possible that there is an explanation we haven't thought of yet, and that might be even more interesting."

"In astronomy, where you find one, you eventually find a whole bunch more," Jewitt claims. "This is just an amazing object to us, and almost certainly the first of many more to come."

Scientists in Hawaii who used the Pan-STARRS telescope first discovered the asteroid known as P/2013 P5 in August this year. On September 10, the Hubble Space Telescope took a closer look at the asteroid showing its six comet-like tails. The Hubble Telescope last photographed P/2013p5 on September 23, again.

There is a possibility that the asteroid that's been around since the solar system was formed may break up soon, that is if Jewitt's theory is correct.

"Do I think it will happen? Yes," according to Jewitt. "But I don't think it will break up tomorrow. It's been around for more than 1 billion years; what's another 100,000 years to this little guy?"