True or False Comets and asteroids travel on similar orbits.?

Question

true or false

Answer 1

False.

The significant difference between comets and asteroids is that asteroids tend to stick to the same region of the Solar System, whereas comets migrate from the outer solar system into the inner solar system and then back to the outer limits again.

To use an image to evoke this, it is the difference between a tethered goat and a migratory bird.

Study of both these phenomena has been relatively recent. The first asteroid, 1 Ceres wasn't discovered till 1801 and whilst comets have been known since antiquity, it wasn't until Sir Isaac Newton (1687) and Edmund Halley (1705) that any real understanding of them was developed.

ASTEROIDS

98% of all asteroids are in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and therefore in "concentric" elliptical orbits around the Sun. The effect of Jupiter's gravity confines them within distinct bands within the belt, separated by Kirkwood Gaps. So they are a much more orderly bunch than comets. There is no significant variation between perihelion and aphelion distances for asteroids, though this is less true for Trans-Neptunian Objects.

COMETS

Most comets are believed to originate in a cloud (the Oort cloud) at large distances from the Sun consisting of debris left over from the condensation of the solar nebula; the outer edges of such nebulae are cool enough that water exists in a solid (rather than gaseous) state.

Asteroids originate via a different process, but very old comets which have lost all their volatile materials may come to resemble asteroids. Omterestingly, 5 celestial objects are dually classified as both asteroids AND comets

Comets' orbits are constantly changing: their origins are in the outer solar system, and they have a propensity to be highly affected (or perturbed) by relatively close approaches to the major planets. Some are moved into Sun-grazing orbits that destroy the comets when they near the Sun, while others are thrown out of the solar system forever.

Aristotle's (incorrect) view that comets were an upper-atmosphere phenomenon prevailed for nigh on 2,000 years and delayed systematic study of their orbits as a result. Indeed, it was not until Edmund Halley (in 1705) found similarities between the comets of 1531, 1607, and 1682 and predicted that it would re-appear in 1758, that it was realised that some comets returned, and had periodic orbits which could be studied and predicted.

Up till then, it was believed that all comets were one-off phenomena, unpredictable and inexplicable.

In 1681, the Saxon pastor Georg Samuel Doerfel set forth his proofs that comets are heavenly bodies moving in parabolas of which the sun is the focus. Then Isaac Newton, in his Principia Mathematica of 1687, proved that an object moving under the influence of his inverse square law of universal gravitation must trace out an orbit shaped like one of the conic sections, and he demonstrated how to fit a comet's path through the sky to a parabolic orbit, using the comet of 1680 as an example.

NB A few comets. entering the solar system from outside it, perhaps four a century, are in hyperbolic orbits (another conic section).

Answer 2

False, because asteroids have been captured by the gravity of a planet. Comets travel on eccentric orbits through the Solar System, free of any one planet's influence.

Answer 3

Hi. False. Comets tend to come from random directions and originate in the Kuiper belt or the Oort cloud.