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Over the period 1864–1866 the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli computed the orbit of the Perseid meteors, and based on orbital similarities, correctly hypothesized that the Perseids were fragments of Comet Swift–Tuttle. The link between comets and meteor showers was dramatically underscored when in 1872, a major meteor shower ...
The theme increased in popularity from the 1950s onward, possibly as a result of nuclear anxiety following World War II, [4] and received additional boosts in popularity in 1980 with the publication of the Alvarez hypothesis, which states that the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was caused by an asteroid impact that created the ...
The asteroid and comet belts orbit the Sun from the inner rocky planets into outer parts of the Solar System, interstellar space. [ 16 ] [ 17 ] [ 18 ] An astronomical unit , or AU, is the distance from Earth to the Sun, which is approximately 150 billion meters (93 million miles). [ 19 ]
The finding is unexpected because comets, not asteroids, are typically considered to "sprout jets and plumes". According to one of the scientists, "The lines are becoming more and more blurred between comets and asteroids." [103] Findings have shown that solar winds can react with the oxygen in the upper layer of the asteroids and create water ...
[4] [6] It gained prominence following the publication of Russian science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev's 1946 short story "Explosion"; [4] [5] [7] inspired by the similarities between the event and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Kazantsev's story posits that a nuclear explosion in the engine of a spacecraft was responsible.
Comets are commonly divided between short-period and long-period comets. Short-period comets, with an orbital period of less than 200 years, originate in the Kuiper belt , beyond the orbit of Neptune ; while long-period comets originate in the Oort Cloud , in the outer reaches of the Solar System. [ 13 ]
0-201-32819-4 Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets , is a 1997 book by University of Arizona Planetary Sciences professor emeritus John S. Lewis that describes possible routes for accessing extraterrestrial resources, either for use on Earth or for enabling space colonization . [ 1 ]
[4] [16] [20] The earliest fictional example, according to science fiction scholar Gary Westfahl, is arguably George Allan England's 1912–1913 serial Darkness and Dawn, a post-apocalyptic story where the exact cause of destruction is never specified but there is a crater hundreds of miles wide and deep in the former Midwestern United States.