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Will a Comet Skim the Earth’s Atmosphere in 2016?

-- | April 8, 2016

Question: I’ve been dealing with a false prophet who says that a comet is coming and is going to skim the earth, as if to skip off of it, like a stone skipping on water. Is this even possible? She says it will skip off of the earth and keep going into space. Please let me know if this is even possible? Thanks so much. — Andrew

Answer: The scenario you describe is physically possible, but the actual event described by this “false prophet” is misrepresented. A pair of comets, known as 252P/LINEAR and P/2016 BA14, passed close to Earth on March 21 and 22, 2016. The closest that they came was within 2.2 million miles of the Earth, or about 9.6 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Comets have on a couple of occasions passed closer to Earth, and as was the case with the most recent comet passage we survived.

Jeff Mangum

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