Warning: Use of undefined constant referer - assumed 'referer' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /usr/home/essaywo/public_html/essays on line 102

Warning: Use of undefined constant host - assumed 'host' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /usr/home/essaywo/public_html/essays on line 105

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /usr/home/essaywo/public_html/essays:102) in /usr/home/essaywo/public_html/essays on line 106

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /usr/home/essaywo/public_html/essays:102) in /usr/home/essaywo/public_html/essays on line 109
Comets - School Essays

Comets

A comet is generally considered to consist of a small, sharp nucleus
embedded in a nebulous disk called the coma. American astronomer Fred L. Whipple
proposed in 1949 that the nucleus, containing practically all the mass of the
comet, is a “dirty snowball” conglomerate of ices and dust. Major proofs of the
snowball theory rest on various data. For one, of the observed gases and
meteoric particles that are ejected to provide the coma and tails of comets,
most of the gases are fragmentary molecules, or radicals, of the most common
elements in space: hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. The radicals, for
example, of CH, NH, and OH may be broken away from the stable molecules CH4
(methane), ...

Want to read the rest of this paper?
Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay
and over 50,000 other term papers

fade very slowly with time, as
would be expected of the kind of structure proposed by Whipple. Finally, the
existence of comet groups shows that cometary nuclei are fairly solid units. The
head of a comet, including the hazy coma, may exceed the planet Jupiter in size.
The solid portion of most comets, however, is equivalent to only a few cubic
kilometers. The dust-blackened nucleus of Halley's comet, for example, is about
15 by 4 km (about 9 by 2.5 mi) in size. ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays.
Write better papers. Get better grades.

Already a member? Login

CITE THIS PAGE:

APA
MLA
Chicago
Turabian

Comets. (2005, February 25). Retrieved May 29, 2025, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Comets/22809

"Comets." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 25 Feb. 2005. Web. 29 May. 2025. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Comets/22809>

"Comets." Essayworld.com. February 25, 2005. Accessed May 29, 2025. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Comets/22809.

JOIN NOW

Join today and get instant access to this and 50,000+ other essays

PAPER DETAILS

Added: 2/25/2005 07:07:38 AM
Category: Science & Nature
Type: Free Paper
Words: 275
Pages: 1

Save |

Report

SHARE THIS PAPER

SAVED ESSAYS

Save and find your favorite essays easier