Do Comets go Poof?

lwbecker2 writes "IEEE Computing in Science and Engineering Magazine has a free story online about scientists try to solve the mystery of where all the missing comets are going. Do they go Poof? Interesting information on the modelling and simulation of the Universe including the use of Mathematica and Beowulf clusters."

Comments

A theory, based on the Leonids

[rebill]

Quoting a webpage from NASA in 2001:

Leonid meteor storms happen when Earth passes through clouds of dusty debris shed by comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle when it comes close to the Sun every 33 years. This year our planet is heading for close encounters with four such clouds. They bubbled off Tempel-Tuttle in 1699, 1766, 1799 and 1866.

The same article goes on to mention that, in 1998, we passed through a cloud shed by that comet in 1333. Unless Tempel-Tuttle is picking up new material when it is at the apogee of it's 33 year orbit, then we are witnessing a comet slowly go *poof* - the material is not vanishing into oblivion, though - it is being left behind as space pollution.

The same goes for the Perseids (comet Swift-Tuttle), and every other meteor shower that the Earth plows through each year.

It's too bad that the original article did not mention this - was the real-life data overlooked, or did the model take this into account, and it still shows that 99% of the expected comets are missing?