Large, Distant Comets More Common Than Previously Thought

Reviewing back...

-Elizabeth Landau

Comets are notoriously difficult to study, and they need more than 200 years to make one revolution around the Sun because they spend most of their time far from our area of the solar system. Many "long-period comets" will never approach the Sun in a person's lifetime. NASA's WISE spacecraft shared new insights about these distant wanderers. Scientists found that there are about seven times more long-period comets measuring at least 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) across than had been predicted previously. They also found...click here to continue!