Comets and Asteroids are actually the same thing?

Question

If you see a close up image of a comet then you can see that it looks extremely similar to a asteroid. i watched this special called"Thundebolts" and it said that comets and asteroids could be the same thing, they just have different orbits. What do you think?

Answer 1

I saw the video if you're referring to, and it is interesting and entertaining. But I'm not so sure that I agree with many of the assumptions that they make. It is an interesting theory, however. Some of their assumptions require great leaps of logic (and already known and proven theories) that borders on the same leaps of faith required by theology. This theory may be true for it may be false - I suppose that is why physicists are still looking for the Grand Unified Field Theory which would be the answer to "everything". There are some plausible arguments that are constructed in this video. One issue for Quantum physics, is the differentiation between electromagnetism and gravity.

Answer 2

Comets and asteroids are often grouped together since they are all basically the same thing: small pieces of rock and/or ice that aren't part of a major planet.

Comets
Comets are objects composed mostly of ice and dust that grow tails when they approach the sun. All comets have a nucleus, which is the hard rock/ice object. When a comet nucleus nears the sun, solar energy begins to heat the ice and vaporize it. The gas flies off the comet, sometimes violently enough to break the nucleus apart, and throws dust up with it. The gases form a cloud around the nucleus called the coma. Some of the gas is stripped of electrons and blown back by the solar wind. This forms a bluish colored ion tail. The dust particles are pushed away from the comet by solar radiation, forming a dust tail that can be many millions of miles long. The dust tail is the easiest to see with the unaided eye, but occasionally the ion tail is visible as well. Each time a comet passes close to the sun, it loses more of its ice. Eventually, after many passes, the comet may no longer have enough material to form tails. Its surface will be covered by dark dust and it will look more like an asteroid.

Comets come from two places in the Solar System: the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt. The Oort Cloud is a spherical halo of comets surrounding the Solar System at a distance of around 50,000 Astronomical Units. (One Astronomical Unit equals the distance from Earth to the Sun.) Comets from the Oort Cloud have long orbital periods and can enter the solar system from many different directions. The Kuiper Belt is a ring of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune (30-100 AU). It lies (more or less) in the plane of the solar system and is a reservoir for the short period comets that we see. The first Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) were discovered in the early 90s, and they captured the interest of astronomers because they are probably the oldest, most pristine material in the solar system. Studying KBOs is difficult because they are distant and very small, but more have been discovered over the last few years as telescope and instrument technologies have improved. Astronomers now know of a few hundred KBOs, including a large object called Quaoar which is half the size of Pluto. Quaoar is the largest solar system object discovered since Pluto and Charon, and it reinforces the idea that there might be other large KBOs that are still undiscovered.

Asteroids
Asteroids are the small rocky objects in the Solar System. The largest asteroid is Ceres, which is 933 kilometers (580 miles) across. The smallest asteroids that we've observed in detail are only tens of meters in size, but there are probably a great number of small rocks in space that are currently too small for us to detect. Many asteroids, including all of the largest asteroids, orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter in the Asteroid Belt. The Trojan asteroids share Jupiter's orbital path, but stay 60 degrees ahead or behind Jupiter. Near-Earth Asteroids orbit the sun in the vicinity of the rocky terrestrial planets and pose the greatest threat to Earth. We think that the total mass of all the asteroids combined is less than that of the Moon.

The asteroid population is amazingly diverse - each one seems different! Some asteroids such as Mathilde are very light and are probably "rubble piles" made up of lots of small particles loosely held together. Other asteroids are metallic (for example Kleopatra) or pieces of solid rock (Eros, visited by the NEAR spacecraft, is an example) . Sometimes asteroids have small moons or travel in equal-sized pairs. Most asteroids have unusual shapes because they have experienced many collisions and do not have a strong enough gravity to pull themselves back into a sphere. Asteroids are not visible to the unaided eye, but some can be seen with small telescopes or even binoculars.

Answer 3

You are partly correct.

Comets are not just ice, as people used to think, and as suggested by some above. They are a conglomeration of ice, dust and rocks. When after many trips around the sun they have lost most of their water and dust, you get left with the rocks, aka asteroids or meteoroids depending on size.

Many asteroids outside the asteroid belt are now thought to be leftovers from spent comets.

Answer 4

Asteroids are rocky things which generally are found between Mars and Jupiter.

Comets are snowballs that orbit out into the Kuiper belt, from past Pluto...

Comets have trails of gasses pushed away from the sun by solar wind. they are spectacular. Asteroids are dark and foreboding.

Answer 5

Comets come from farther out in the solar system and are made out of material that doesn't survive too well in the inner solar system, such as ice, frozen ammonia, frozen methane, etc, although they may also contain rocky material as well.
Asteroids spend more time in the inner solar system and most of their volatile components have evaporated away, so they are mostly rocky and/or metallic material.

Answer 6

i saw a video in class today and it said asteroids were rocks left over from planet building and comets were big balls of dirty ice which could have created our oceans, but no one knows exactly

Answer 7

asteroids are different from comets because comets are made up of ice

Answer 8

No there is a big difference. Google NASA