pcmcgeer (06/02/82)
The spelling was Kohoutek, so you're reasonably close. Actually, the author of the original piece is distressingly correct: Halley's comet may well turn out to be very disappointing in 1985/86. It's dying. To see how a comet can die, let's examine one. A comet is fundamentally just a ball of dust and gases trapped inside ice. As the comet approaches the sun, some of the ice melts away, releasing some of the trapped gas and dust. Light pressure and the solar wind push the gas and dust away from the sun, creating the comet's "tail" (not really a tail as it always points away from the sun - a consequence of how it's made. Thus, it leads the head of the comet back into cometary belt space). Note that very little of the now-released dust and gas refreeze to the comet head: said dust and gas will not be on the same orbit. So a comet loses mass each orbit, the lost mass travelling in a similar orbit as a shower of micro-meteorites. Eventually, this is all that will reamin of the comet. In 2062, it may be all that remains of Halley's.