This one doesn't have our name written on it. It's not the "revenge of deep impact". Although it reaches perihelion inside the orbit of earth, its' orbit is inclined 11 degrees to ours. It passes above our orbit on the way in and below our orbit on the way out. This time around all the pieces will pass at least 20 times the earth-moon distance from us. Looking at the hubble picture on APOD as it comes apart, you can see that it's not very solid, maybe between a nerf ball and a dust bunny. DT --- diveboss@xmission.com wrote:

Quoting Joe Bauman <bau@desnews.com>:

...

The only other time that I remember a comet breaking up, the pieces smacked Jupiter. Should any planet be thinking about ducking?

AFLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAC!

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