ASTRONOMY
How hard is it to find a comet?
Some comets can get close to Earth in their orbits around the Sun
It’s very difficult, especially now, because part of what we accomplished with Shoemaker-Levy 9 was to get the world interested in this problem of if there’s an asteroid or a comet that could collide with the Earth, and if there is, we’d better find it. Now there’s a lot of money being paid into searching the skies for asteroids or comets that could collide with Earth. We have actually found a couple within a few hours of their collisions with us – not a comet, but small asteroids. We missed the one that hit Russia a few years ago. We missed that one because it was very close to the Sun as it was approaching us and we never got to see it, and it collided with us very rapidly. It didn’t do any damage, except a lot of broken windows and the scratches that people got. I don’t think there were any fatalities and I think everybody was okay, but it did teach us that Earth is a target and we will be hit again. Let’s hope we’re not hit by any of the big ones.