Deep Impact space collision reveals comets to be fluffy balls of powder

This is a great discovery announced today for all of us. Comets are not what we thought. If true as reported this makes us alot safer from these objects What do you think ?

This Is The Report

This is big. Really big. You just don't know how mind-bendingly big it is. No, not that big! But its still big. Most of the article I can't quite visualize but I know what it means. Good find. Been looking for the comet-lander articles for weeks, without much.

Good find

Thats interesting..Big Powderpuffs, orbiting the sun..
Although, I am inclined to believe that every comet has it's own personality.
And they may ALL be different..
Lots of factors come into play here..
Number of trips around the sun, number of collisions with other bodies..

Percentages of each compound that made up the comet originally...

Take a look at how different the planets are...And the indiviidual moons..so many varieties...It may appliy to Comets as well..
You know what they say about comets?

You seen one, You've seen one..

I was never that worried about a comet hitting earth. Now asteroid, which tend to be mostly iron, those worry me a bit.

I think the most interesting thing is that comet seem to be formed from small ice crystals and a slow process of collecting due to gravity. This would actually implies that comets formed over a very very very long time.

Now the things that I'm curious about is where all that water/ice/oragnics came from that its not equally infused with other elements.

Originally posted by Harry55
This is a great discovery announced today for all of us. Comets are not what we thought. If true as reported this makes us alot safer from these objects What do you think ?

This Is The Report

All it proves is that this particular comet is composed of fine particles of dust and ice that are held together extremely loosely. This does not even come close to proving that *all* comets have identical structure.

The comet studied by the Deep Impact probe, Tempel 1, has a volume equivalent to that of a sphere 4.2 miles across and the physical dimensions of 8.9 by 2.7 by 2.7 miles. It has a mass between 10 and 250 billion tons. An object of that size would most likely strike land and obliterate all live on this planet. If it burst in the atmosphere the effect would be identical.

By way of comparison, the explosion over Tunguska, Siberia is presumed to have been caused by an air burst of an object just 260 feet wide. This explosion flattened an 800 square mile area with a blast equivalent to 10 megatons of TNT.

If an object 720 feet wide airbursts it is expected to release a blast equivalent to 500 - 600 megatons of TNT. The largest blast ever created by humans was in the 50 megaton range.

We aren't safe from comet impacts. Comets are still incredibly massive and still travel in the upper 10s of thousands to lower 100s of thousands of miles per hour.

[edit on 7-9-2005 by boredom]