Scientists eager for possible debut of new meteor shower this weekend
We've seen comets split before. One out of every 100 periodic comets — and perhaps even more — might break apart eventually, according to William Reach, an astronomer at the SOFIA Science Center at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. fell apart, and big chunks of it slammed into Jupiter. But even if SW3's ongoing disintegration looks somewhat similar, the process is"almost certainly not the same," Reach told Space.com.
Scientists aren't entirely sure what causes comets to break up. It could be one or a combination of several factors. Shoemaker-Levy 9 crumbled under the strain of Jupiter's powerful gravitational pull, for example. But some other comets might break apart when volatile compounds within them such as water heat up and transition from the solid phase to gas.
In any event, SW3 is breaking up. And, for the last several decades, Earth's orbit has been bringing our planet ever closer to crossing the resulting cloud of debris. This year, finally, seems to be the year that we cruise through it. If that is indeed the case, much of the comet debris will fall intoAstronomers certainly hope this happens; they're keen to get a rare up-close look at shards of a celestial object.
"By flying through it, even just by knowing that it exists, that shows that the particles survived," Reach told Space.com."We don't actually know that. Some of them are icy, and they don't survive."
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