I only "do" email at my office, so I've been out of the loop since last Wednesday. Regarding the comment, "things that small should not be spherical": I understand that the mass is not sufficient to compel a spherical geometry, but why shouldn't they be spherical? Isn't a spherical shape as likely as any other shape? Anyone have a thought? -----Original Message----- From: Patrick Wiggins [mailto:paw@trilobyte.net] Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 11:11 PM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Re: Comet picture Considering the felines that control of my place (remember that while dogs have owners, cats have attendants), I'm starting to think it looks like a large hair ball... The comet's seeming spherical size and its "craters" were topics discussed in the press conference that followed the release of the images. Things that small should not be spherical or have craters. No one seemed to have an answer for the shape except to speculate that the part in shadow is not round. No one wanted to call the holes craters. Instead they called them eroded areas or pits. Patrick Chuck Hards wrote:

Look at how rough it appears, even at over 300 miles distance! It actually looks to me like a big, dirty snowball that's partially melted. To stand on the surface might be like standing on a giant sponge. Are those craters, or eroded areas (pits)?i

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