Comets Cruise the Solar System Until they Collide or Evolve and Decay Into Main Asteroid Belt

Generally speaking, scientists believe that comets go round and
round the solar system until they run into something, something big
like a planet. Although recently we have noticed that some asteroids
and comets end up hitting each other, when they do - both of the
courses are altered. And sometimes one or both are completely
destroyed due to the impact.We watch the Levy Comet hit Jupiter, and
currently we are watching a comet headed towards the Sun in 2010. We
also watched a comet hitting an asteroid, demolishing the asteroid,
and in this case the Comet appeared to stay pretty close to its
original course. For those that think they can shoot down an asteroid
or a comet for that matter, this does pose a rather large problem. If
a comet and asteroid can collide at such a great speed, and one can
keep going, then we might have a problem using a kinetic missiles to
try to take out a comet.In fact, there was another great article on
SpaceWeather (dot) com entitled "Sun Diving Comet" posted on October
20, 2010 which stated - "A newly-discovered comet is diving toward the
sun. Chinese comet hunter Bo Zhou found it on Oct. 19th in SOHO
coronagraph images. The comet is faint now, but it should brighten in
the hours ahead as it heats up."There is another potential
eventuality, and there has been some discussion and research papers on
this - that is, when a Comet decays its orbit, or hits something which
slows it down - it might retire and then it reenters the asteroid belt
and like a racehorse is put out to pasture. Of course as it goes
through the asteroid belt it might hit an asteroid and knock it into a
new Earth-crossing orbit.Comets are very interesting things to study,
and so too are asteroids, and as long as NASA is planning a manned
mission to an asteroid, perhaps you might want to do some more
personal research on this topic. So, please consider all
this.References:1. "Comets: Creators and Destroyers" by David H. Levy,
Touchstone Publishers a division of Simon and Schuster, New York, NY,
(1998), pp. 256, ISBN: 978-0684852553.2. "The Threat of Comets and
Asteroids" by Gerrit L. Verschuur, Oxford Press, New York, NY, (1996),
pp. 237, ISBN: 0-19-510105-7.3. "Rouge Doomsday Comets and Asteroids -
the million megaton menace that threatens life on Earth," by Duncan
Steele (foreword by Arthur C. Clarke), John Wiley and Sons, New York,
NY, (1995), pp. 308, ISBN: 0-471-30824-2.4. Research Paper: "Evolution
of Comets Into Asteroids" by PR Weissman, WF Bottke Jr., HF Levinson,
published in Asteroids III pp. 669-686, 2002.5. ASD News Online -
Article on October 20, 2010 entitled; "When a Comet is Not a Comet -
Rosetta Finds Out - Two Asteroids in the Wrong Place at the Wrong
Time," (source; ESA).