Written by Armand H. Delsemme
Last Updated


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Written by Armand H. Delsemme
Last Updated

Cometary models

As previously noted, the sandbank model of the cometary nucleus fell into disregard by the late 1950s and early 1960s and was supplanted by the dirty snowball (or icy conglomerate) concept. Much circumstantial evidence supported the latter, but confirmation was lacking until 1986, when the Giotto spacecraft returned detailed, close-up photographs of Comet Halley’s nucleus. Yet, while these photographs corroborated the general idea of the model, they revealed that “dirty snowball” was in fact a misnomer because snow (even when dirty) is suggestive of something white or at least gray in colour. In actuality, the cometary nucleus proved to be pitch black owing to the large amount of very fine, black sootlike particles intermixed with the volatile ices (see above).

Many variations of the icy conglomerate model have been proposed since the early 1980s, as, for example, the fractal model, rubble-pile model, and icy-glue model. These names, however, suggest only slightly different types of accretion of primordial particles; they all share common features—namely, irregular shape, heterogeneous mixture, and very low density because of cavities and pores. The existence of a crust or dust mantle of a different nature had already been proposed before the 1986 spacecraft encounter with Comet Halley for two reasons. First, cosmic-ray processing of the outer layers had been described by Leonid M. Shul’man of the Soviet Union (1972) and later advocated by Fred Whipple and Bertram Donn of the United States, while the outgassing of the outer layers by solar heat had also been assumed since the proposal of Whipple’s model (1950). Second, detailed models of the formation and disruption of such mantles due to solar-radiation processing of the upper layers had been studied by Devamitta Asoka Mendis of the United States (1979) and M. Horanyi of Hungary (1984).

An average heuristic model for the elemental abundances of the cometary nucleus was developed by the American astronomer Armand H. Delsemme in 1982. Delsemme computed the H∶C∶N∶O∶S ratios from ultraviolet and visual observations of atomic and molecular species in bright comets detected during the 1970s and deduced the abundances of metals from the chondritic composition of cometary dust. In this model, hydrogen was depleted by a factor of 1,000 with respect to solar or cosmic abundances, and carbon was depleted by a factor of 4 in the gaseous fraction. The results of the 1986 study of Comet Halley confirmed the average chemical model and showed that the carbon missing in the gas was actually present in the dust. Except for hydrogen (and presumably helium), it appears that all elements are roughly in cosmic proportions in comets in spite of their extremely low gravity (10−4 times that of Earth). This emphasizes the pristine nature of comets. Unlike most bodies of the solar system, comets obviously have never been severely processed by any heating episode since their formation. If the accretion of comets occurred at very low temperatures, near absolute zero, the water ice in a newly formed comet must be amorphous. Idealized models show that the transition to cubic ice might be the cause of sudden flare-ups between 3 and 6 AU.

Origin and evolution of comets

All observed comets make up an essentially transient system that decays and disappears almost completely in less than one million years. Since they all pass through the solar system, planetary perturbations eject a fraction of them into deep space on hyperbolic orbits and capture another fraction on short-period orbits. In turn, those that have been captured decay rapidly in the solar heat. Fortunately, there is a permanent source of new comets that maintains the steady state—namely, the outer margin of the Oort cloud. As explained above, these so-called new comets are those Oort-cloud comets whose perihelia have been brought down into visibility—i.e., into the inner planetary system where they display their spectacular decay through comas and tails. Comets within the bulk of the Oort cloud are unobservable, not only because they do not develop comas and tails but also because they are too far away.

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