• Question: do comets effect the earth

    Asked by Gracie to Stefan, Anna on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Stefan Lines

      Stefan Lines answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      Hi Gracie.

      Comets can and do hit the Earth, but not very often at all. They have very long and eccentric (not circular) orbits that takes them around the sun and back out very far (further than Pluto). It is expected that a comet would hit Earth once every 30 million years, which is much rarer than an Asteroid strike (once every 500,000 years).

      They also often look fantastic in the night sky when they go past us, as they have a tail which is produced from the ices in it that start evaporating as it gets close to the sun.

    • Photo: Anna Scaife

      Anna Scaife answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      Hey Gracie – one event which is thought possibly to have been caused by a comet or an asteroid was the “Tunguska Butterfly”. In that case people don’t think the comet actually hit the surface of the Earth but exploded in the atmosphere over a forest in Russia in 1908. It flattened 80 million trees over an area of about two thousand square kilometres! (The flattened trees form a butterfly pattern – hence the name).

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