why poeple still don't know that a comet could hit Earth.?
969142
It's okay; I've got a really big umbrella.
1151361
I don't think the science channel said it was going to hit. It said that there was a "chance" that it could hit.\nCurrently the odds are about a 1 in 300 chance of it hitting the earth on march 16 2880.\nHowever since we are talking about almost 900 years in the future it is really hard to predict the asteroids exact path.\nMany things affect the orbit of asteroids (gravity of planets, the solar wind, even the thermal emission of the asteroid itself)\nIt will take many years to measure the path of the asteroid more precisely. and then we will have a better idea of how close it is going to get.\neither way, we are talking 900 years in the future, so there is no need to panic. Even if further calculations show it will hit, we have plenty of time to come up with ways to prevent this.\nso go out lay down in the sun with a nice cool drink, soak up some rays, and worry not about such things.
902786
Imagine how hard it is to try to teach High Schoolers anything about the planets when one of them has a name like this! But anyway, go to NASA's website. There is a place there where you can find anything worth seeing at any location. It will even tell you when stuff like the Space Station will fly overhead. And most telescopes come with locating software if you ever get that involved. I hope you will. It seems like we never learn much about space, but it has taken a long time to get as far as we are now.
487630
ok there are solar flares that reach us but earth's magnetic field sort of protects us.\nso what we need is a combo of some sort\nso how about we go for\nEarth's magnetic pole flipping\nSolar flare(big) or solar increase\nMeteor\nComet\nput them all in the blender and mix\n\nso at the same time the magnetic pole flips\nthe field will drop to zero(not sure on how long)\nat this time a solar flare hits us making the entire sky look like the northern lights(very beautiful at sun set)\nbecause the atmosphere starts to ionize.\nand on the night side a comet heading straight for earth\nbut the comet is over taken by a large meteor that smashes the comet creating a lot of small comets of ice and rock and one mostly untouched meteor about 150-200km or larger in diameter. the meteor can crash in the middle of the pacific right on top of hawaii taking it out and creating a large tsunami that kills most of the people in the costal areas. then the ice covered meteors from the comet will at some time over the next 48 hours end up taking out most of the major urban centers of the world and the farms as well.\nalso the ensuing earthquakes can completely teraform the landscape in to a more mountainous terrain.\nand the electro magnetic serge caused by the solar flare launches all of the armaments across the globe at random GPS co-ordinates.(nuklear, chemical, biological, ETC...)\n\nhows that for a disaster waiting to happen.
1061904
You have confused.space air will not touch the earth.
460102
Depends on the size of the comet, many just disintegrate on the atmosphere. A really big one could create:\nShift in the orbit, heat from the explosion, smoke and dust from the explosion covering the Sun. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions from shift in magnetic field due to orbit shift. Basically extinction of many forms of life, possibly even human.
499596
A comet is like a dirty snowball, full of rocks and chunks of gravel. As it swings around the Sun on its long elliptical orbit, the comet begins to heat up and vaporize. At the same time, the solar wind is streaming out at the comet. It can't hold back the main mass of the comet because it has so much momentum. The particles vaporized off the comet may become electrically charged and begin to repel one another. So the 'halo' of particles will spread out and trail behind.\n\nSometimes a comet will break up entirely if the ice all vaporizes, and then there is nothing left but the rocks and gravel. The meteor showers we have every year...? The Perseids and Leonids and others? They are what is left of big old comets that used to come by every so often. When they hit our atmosphere, they burn up and we see flashed of light.\n\nThey have spread out over a much larger area than they used to cover, because of the ice vaporizing and the vapor expanding. But it is still a good thing that they didn't hit us while they were all in one piece. We couldn't do anything to stop it.\n\nIn the old days, people used to pray, "From the Norsemen (the terrorists of their day) and the comet, Dear Lord, deliver us!" They prayed better than they knew. Maybe we should start praying like that again.
721740
***Assuming the same amount of kinetic energy in both objects (roughly the same mass and velocity)*** the asteroid will do more damage. Look to Shoemaker-Levy 9 to understand why.  \n\nModels predicted (and were borne out by observations) the the fluffy stuff comets are made of will start to spread out as it decelereates, resulting in increasing drag, causing more deceleration and more spreading, and by the time it reaches about 1 earth atmosphere worth of air will essentially splatter like a snowball on cement. (I once calculated the tidal forces that disrupted SL-9, and came to the conculsion that they have about the same cohesion as cigarette ash!) SL-9 did exactly these.  Splattered all over the top of Jupiter's atmosphere making spots thousands of miles across that then disappated over the next several days.\n\n\nCheck out\nhttp://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001105.html\nand\nhttp://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/\n\nThe comet would make a loud boom that would literally be heard around the world, and probably cause a massive fire right beneath, but a large fraction of the energy would be dissipated as sound.\n\nA denser mass will plow straight through the atmosphere and deposit almost all of its kinetic energy in the crust of the earth.  Many times its own mass will be hurled into the air as debris, much of it superheated, and come raining down over a large chunk of the earth, and at the same time deposit a great deal more dust in the atmosphere impacting climate more and longer.
712157
It will happen, but exactly when isn't known. Take a look at this website for current risks for those objects that do come relatively close to Earth ==>http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/
248773
Yes. Because:\n1. Interstellar comets contain organic matter.\n2. It is statistically very unlikely that Earth is the only place where live can occur, because within one galaxy there are billions of stars in the "green zone" (the zone where life can exist) and many (if not most) of these would have terrestrial planets. Multiply that by billions of galaxies and the chances that Earth is unique are staggering.\n\nHere are two reasons I would not accept:\n1. "Intelligent life has visited Earth." People have great imaginations but most people are also nutcases. Nobody has definitely proven any encounters such that they would be taken as scientific fact.\n2. "Life on Earth started on another planet." Even though it is possible, it is speculatory.
148286
The earth DOES go through an arm of the asteroid belt that extends very close to earth's orbital path that's why we get spectacular metior showers every november.  \n\nnow that that is out of the way.\n\n  yes sometimes satelites and or the spacestation do get hit.  in fact they are more often getting hit than not.  they are under nearly constant bombardment however like was earlier said most of what hits them is smaller than grains of sand.  if they were to get hit by something largish though depending on where it hit exactly and how it is very likely that it would cause MAJOR damage.  ultimately resulting in the satelites decaying orbit and eventuall reentry.  this sort of thing happens all the time.  personally i'm waiting for hubble to take a right good one right in that pretty little mirror it's got.  that will be one great big and expensive I TOLD YOU SO!\n\nas for the space stasion.  some of its components are like 15 years old.  most of us don't even have cars that old.  we are talking potential for irreparable damage and Cascade FAILURE. any # of things could happen including but not limited to Explosive Decompression.
171161
There's a catalog of comets you can see and when they're due at this website:\n\nhttp://www.skyhound.com/sh/comets.html
1063458
Shoemaker 1, tonight!\n\nVery comprehensive calender of comets below:\n\nhttp://www.aerith.net/comet/future-n.html\n\nBut for a simple answer, look at this website, it seems that today (7th June) we will see  the brilliantly named 102P/Shoemaker 1, which you can read about at the second of the two below links, and the third link is wikipedia's little info page on it (the important info is in the table at the right-hand side of the page)\n\nhttp://cometography.com/current_comets.html\nhttp://cometography.com/pcomets/102P.html\n\nSo get that telescope out! :-) Hope that helps
474682
They, like us, are probably unaware of the existence of beings on other planets. The universe is infinitely large, so if there is life elsewhere(there probably is), then the distance is likely too great to travel in a lifetime.
713331
It's sounds like pretty average conditions though I don't know what upper comet means but you neglected to mention is there was snow. There has to be a nice thick layer of snow to ride.
937478
the orbit of a comet like all  things in space will follow  an elliptical path with the sun at one of the foci\n\nSo is this just a math exercise or are you actually trying to plot out a comets orbit in space. if it is a math exercise it is quite easy and you can probably do it in your head (or with a pen and paper if you suck at math like I do)\nif you are plotting points in space it is a bit more difficult but not that hard. there are many computer programs to do it because there are alot of calculations and alot of observations needed to pin down the numbers\n\ndo a google search\nor start here\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipse\n\nhttp://www.math.rutgers.edu/~cherlin/History/Papers1999/weiss.html\n\nhttp://wsx.lanl.gov/WebPub/scifair_comet.pdf
767745
there are many theoretical plans to protect ourselves from impact with an asteroid. one of the most radical would be the idea that everyone has heard of, just blow it up in space. that idea consists of breaking the asteroid into to halves which pass on opposite sides of the earth. another way would be to use rocket booseters and simply push the asteroid to one side. we dont need to move it much just alter its path slightly so that it doesnt come in contact with the earth. another interesting method would be to use giant sails to catch the solar wind and like the previous idea, alter the path of the asteroid enough to not come in contact with the earth.