If a largish object were to hit a comet, it would at least make a crater and fling out a lot of material from that crater. That would create lots of new meteoroids. If the object were large enough, then it could fragment the comet into multiple pieces. read more
Shutterstock With the Delta Aquarid meteor shower going on right now, and the crowd-favorite Perseid meteor shower hot on its heels, the next few weeks are going to be the prime-time to watch some shooting stars light up the night sky. read more
The Perseid meteor shower, which appears every year in mid-August, occurs when Earth passes through a trail of debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle. In 1973, based on calculations about the object's orbit using limited observations, astronomer Brian Marsden at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics predicted that Comet Swift-Tuttle could collide with Earth in 2126. read more