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Why do comets exist?

Updated: 8/9/2023
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12y ago

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Comets are called 'comets' because of a Greek origin. The words was derived from the Greek word 'kometes' or 'stars with hair,' and was then changed in Latin to 'cometes,' which is where the English spelling is derived from.

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9y ago
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11y ago

The word 'comet' came into the English language from the Latin word cometa, which itself came from the ancient Greek word komētēs meaning 'long-haired (star),' from komē 'hair'.

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Comet mean ball of ice and dust moving in a large elliptical orbit around the Sun and going out past the planets.

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14y ago

No it is not called a comet. An asteroid caught in our gravity well becomes a meteorite as it burns up in our atmosphere. A comet is a chunk of dirty ice that comes from the Ort cloud and orbits our sun until it hits something or finally melts.

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12y ago

Comets are believed to be the "left-over" matter from the formation of the Solar system. All of the material near the center of the system collapsed to form the Sun, while heavier elements farther out came together to form the planets. Far out from the sun, much of the remnants clumped together in a region called the Oort Cloud.

Periodically, a chunk of frozen matter is disturbed from the Oort Cloud and falls toward the Sun. As the Sun heats it, the material of the comet, which is similar to a snowball with a few rocks, begins to melt and vaporize, and the sunlight causes the vapor to glow. This is the tail of the comet.

Sometimes, a comet will hit a planet, such as the Shoemaker-Levy comet that smashed into Jupiter. Some scientists, notably Luis Alvarez, theorize that a comet striking the Earth 65 million years ago may have killed off the dinosaurs.

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15y ago

Comets are believed to be the "left-over" matter from the formation of the Solar system. All of the material near the center of the system collapsed to form the Sun, while heavier elements farther out came together to form the planets. Far out from the sun, much of the remnants clumped together in a region called the Oort Cloud.

Periodically, a chunk of frozen matter is disturbed from the Oort Cloud and falls toward the Sun. As the Sun heats it, the material of the comet, which is similar to a snowball with a few rocks, begins to melt and vaporize, and the sunlight causes the vapor to glow. This is the tail of the comet. Sometimes, a comet will hit a planet, such as the Shoemaker-Levy comet that smashed into Jupiter. Some scientists, notably Luis Alvarez, theorize that a comet striking the Earth 65 million years ago may have killed off the dinosaurs.

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14y ago

A comet is part of the solar system because they have there own orbits to the sun just like planets.

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Q: Why do comets exist?
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