Talk:Comet

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There's another comet article at Comets, which needs to be intregrated with this one. --Zundark, 2001 Oct 14

Drat, should have checked before I wrote all that stuff. :) I'll get to work on it. -BD

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This page could really use a ordinary picture of a comet, preferably one showing two tales. And maybe a picture of the Jupiter impact. Should be something we could use at NASA. I just can't ever find what I want there. Rmhermen 17:04, Mar 5, 2004 (UTC)

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"Some modern Freemasons claim that Stonehenge and similar ancient observatories were used to evaluate whether comets would hit the earth."

Why "modern Freemasons" nobody else can believe it ? This need some explanatio/sources IMO. Ericd 12:10, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

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Hmm. Gonna get meself in more @hit here.

Not everyone was surprised by the discovery of X-rays. One astronomer named Jim McCanney actually predicted them. He did so as early as 1981 in a scientific paper first published in the journal Kronos. McCanney even urged NASA officials to look for X-rays when the agency was preparing a fly-by of Comet Giacobini-Zinner in 1985. At the time, NASA's ISEE-3 satellite had already completed its original mission, and was being reprogrammed for comet study. The spacecraft had X-ray equipment on board, and McCanney urged NASA to use it. Instead, NASA shut down the equipment to conserve power. NASA's experts concluded that there was no point in leaving the X-ray detector on, since there couldn't possibly be X-rays coming from a cube of ice.[1]

Noting that McCanney is clearly what Wikipedians in good standing (which I am not) class as a cuckoo, I have two simple questions: was such an article published; did NASA get requests to check for X-rays? Kwantus 05:39, 2005 Feb 1 (UTC)

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Should there be something about near-earth comets that may pose a collision danger? According to the Near-Earth object article, at least 49 near-earth comets have been identified... (2005, Jul 6)

Request for references

Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles cite their sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. The Fact and Reference Check Project has more information. Thank you, and please leave me a message when you have added a few references to the article. - Taxman 17:36, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

Proposed Edition

The text that follows is my proposed edition to this article. If anybody has a problem with it, identify it before I make the changes to the article.

For other uses, see Talk:Comet (disambiguation).

A comet is a small astronomical object similar to an asteroid, hypothesized to be composed largely of ice. Unlike asteroids, comets typically move in highly elliptical orbits, the aphelia of which may be many times more distant than Pluto's orbit. Often described as "dirty snowballs", or, after the "Deep Impact" mission, "snowy dirtballs", comets are commonly believed to be composed largely of frozen carbon dioxide, methane and water with dust and various mineral aggregates mixed in.

Comet Borrelly exhibits jets, yet is hot and dry.

As late as 2002, no conclusive evidence of water had been discovered on any comet. NASA's Deep Space 1 team, working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, obtained high-resolution images of the surface of comet Borrelly. They announced that comet Borrelly exhibits distinct jets, yet has a hot, dry surface. NASA remains confident the water is hidden just beneath the "crust". The assumption that comets contain water and other ices led Dr. Laurence Soderblom of the U.S. Geological Survey to say, "The spectrum suggests that the surface is hot and dry. It is surprising that we saw no traces of water ice."[2]

Comet Wild 2 exhibits jets on lit side and dark side, stark relief, and is dry.

This surprise was echoed in 2004, when comet Wild 2 was visited by NASA's Stardust spacecraft. Claudia Alexander, a program scientist for Rosetta from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who has has modeled comets for years, reported to space.com about her astonishment at the number of jets, their appearance on the dark side of the comet as well as the light side, their ability to lift large chunks of rock from the surface of the comet and the fact that comet Wild 2 is not a loosely-cemented rubble pile. In addition, no ices were identified on Wild 2.[3]

Comets are believed to originate in a hypothetical and as yet unobserved cloud (the Oort cloud) at large distances from the sun consisting of presumed debris left over from the condensation of a hypothetical solar nebula; the outer edges of such nebulae are assumed to be cool enough that water would exist in a solid (rather than gaseous) state. Asteroids are believed to originate via a different process, but close inspection of comets has revealed no water ices or volatiles, and show that comets appear to be very much like asteroids.

Hmm, well, what was wrong with my edits? I think I presented both POVs correctly. If you wish, you may add a reference to the section in the introduction but having so much disputed information in the intro seems to push it off balance. Also, the scientific community at large still believes comets are made mostly of ice and at the beginning it say "are believe to originate" etc. which is good enough. I think my edition is more balanced, however, you of course are entitled to disagree. User:Sasquatch

I checked the page again and saw that the information I put in was kept mostly intact, only moved. I still think the thrust of it, that data suggests comets have very little, if any, ices or volatiles, should go in the opening paragraphs. The opening paragraph still gives the reader the impression that comets are made of these ices and volatiles, but observations show ices and volatiles are present in miniscule amounts if they're present at all. I'm going to move some stuff over here from my talk page to support this. Plautus satire 14:33, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

This proposed version puts way too much emphasis on the issue of water detection, especially considering that the general consensus in the scientific community is pretty clear. Deep Impact was only a month ago, that's not enough time to claim that comets are now commonly called "snowy dirtballs" rather than "dirty snowballs" (a phrase that goes back decades). In general, there are too many weasel-words being used here. I think Sasquatch's version cleared up all these problems nicely. Bryan 06:27, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to move some stuff over from my talk page that demonstrates again and again astronomers changing their views about specific comets being made primarily of ices or volatiles. Plautus satire 14:33, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Creationism section

Although contrary to my previous position on this issue, having come across this at least three times in my WikiTravels (recently on Talk:Oort cloud), it is clear a significant number of creationists believe the fact comets are around (and according to them have no natural source) confirms young earth creationism. As such I think a "Creationism" section outlining the argument, linking its primary source Walt Brown, and a short rebuttal is appropriate. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 18:37, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

As discussed in that talk page, this is not really needed in the Oort cloud article and in this one. It fits just fine in the article about the author, Walt Brown, but is not "mainstream" enough IMO to have its own space here. Awolf002 20:31, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Alrighty, you won't get an argument from me. It does get tiresome to address these issues and have nothing to point to, in order to say, its there and has been addressed. I guess I should indeed do something about that in Walt Brown. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 00:26, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Done. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 01:44, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Pulp fiction

"Deeply implausible"? It was written in 1877! And I suppose a meteor shower rendering people blind is plausible? I'm deleting. Trekphiler 04:37, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Improvement drive

Asteroid deflection strategies has been nominated on WP:IDRIVE. Support it with your vote if you want it to be improved.--Fenice 22:45, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Etymology

I am including information about the origin of the word "comet" (Gr. "kometes", Aristotle.) CurtLindsay 2005.02.03 22:08 PST.

Comet symbol

Do we really need to have it in the opening sentence? it hardly seems important enough, many users will see it just as a question mark, and I'm not even sure it's very commonly used anyway - I've never seen it myself before, in the literature or elsewhere. I'm sure it could be included lower down though. Worldtraveller 12:59, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree with that. There seems to be a tendency to use the lead as a bin for anything miscellaneous, which is roughly the opposite of what it should be. It's also very misleading, since I would read it as saying that the symbol in question is a question mark- we need some cunning way of saying otherwise. Mark^{your words} 13:10, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, put it into the last section of the intro paragraph. I would have done that already, but I just see a question mark, so I can not tell if I mess things up moving the text. Awolf002 13:12, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I suggest keep, the symbol is widely known, and for users read it as a question mark, it's their own problem, they should configure their computer properly first. — Yaohua2000 19:34, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

No-one's suggested deleting it. Mark^{your words} 20:17, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I suspect we could interpret Worldtraveller's deletion of the character as a suggestion that it should be deleted. :) Bryan 21:03, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

To help editors, at least, we could replace the character with its HTML unicode entity: ☄ (☄). Bryan 19:14, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

THE COMA IS LIGHT!!!

The statement saying that the comas would be made from dust and gases is more than funny. Think about how fast would such a comet consume if it would liberate dust and gases behind it. No, people! Comets don't leave dust and gases behind it. THE COMETS PRODUCE LIGHT, due to one of the natures laws veritable for all the quickening bodies: ANY BODY PRODUCES ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD IN OPPOSITE TO ITS ACCELERATION. The properties of this field depends on the properties of that body and its movements. I can not find, the frequency of the light produced by the comets, yet, but I am convinced that it is an universally phenomenon. This theory says that even all the planets (mostly Mercury) has an opposite tail to the Sun, but this one is probably made from microwaves because the acceleration of the planets is smaller than comets. Even the radioactivity of the atomics kernels is due to this universally phenomenon! abel 15:46, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

This is the wrong place to propose new (and unorthodox) theories (dubbed original research in WP). Please, find a venue on a different web site for this type of discussion. Awolf002 22:53, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for response. But NOT EXIST other place to propose new theories! And this text is JUST DISCUSSION for THIS place. abel 06:02, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Not quite. This place/text is meant for discussing the article and possible improvements. So, when proposing such an improvement one should follow accepted policies, and your suggestion runs into WP:NOR. Therefore, I think you want to find a different website altogether to discuss your ideas. Awolf002 01:00, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

This is the most obsurd thing I have ever heard except for the folks that thought there was a space ship behind Hale-Bopp.

Wikipedia:Version 0.5 Nominations

This article was selected for inclusion in Version 0.5 due to its quality and its importance; however, is it possible for the reference numbering to be fixed? Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 06:27, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Confirmation of water

Deep Impact confirmed that Tempel 1 at least has large amounts of water ice below the surface, though not much on it, since it would obviously be vaporised by the sun. I'm rewriting some things to reflect this.--Planetary 23:58, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

what is the next big one?

I realize it's not 100% possible to predict, but when will be the next great or significant comet to look out for? I don't want to miss it. Or I wonder how long I have to wait. (I live on Earth.)--Sonjaaa 02:15, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Halley will be back in 2061, other then that, I don't know.--Planetary 02:45, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

That's actually a good way of putting it. The short-period comets, those with orbital periods less than 200 years or so, we can more or less predict their positions, but of them, only Halley consistently puts on a good show. Most of the really bright comets are long-period comets, that have never appeared before within human history, and we have no idea when one is coming until someone notices it. Shimmin 02:53, 19 August 2006 (UTC)