How are comets formed?

Comets are some of the material left over from the formation of the planets. Our entire solar system, including comets, was created by the collapse of a giant, diffuse cloud of gas and dust about 4.6 billion years ago. read more

Most of the asteroids, made up of metal and rock, formed in the asteroid belt, and most of the comets, composed primarily of ices, ended up in the more distant Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. This more or less tidy situation was the result of the giant planets cleaning up and finding storage places for the asteroids and comets—the refuse created during the solar system's messy birth. read more

Astronomers think comets are leftovers from the material that initially formed the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. Some researchers think comets might have originally brought some of the water and organic molecules to Earth that now make up life here. read more

How Asteroids and Comets Formed Photo by: Iuliia KOVALOVA Up until about the middle of the twentieth century, astronomers still possessed an imperfect notion of how and where asteroids and comets originally formed. read more