How big is the comet that is headed for earth in october?

Question

ok i know there is a report from an astonomer that a comet is going to hit earth in late october i know that it is not going to happen (they say) i was just wondering how big it was?

Answer 1

No such comet.

Answer 2

There are no asteroids or comets currently predicted to hit the Earth, according to NASA-JPL's Near Earth Object web site:

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/

Answer 3

And, where might I ask you heard this?

Answer 4

I don't think we'd be worried about gas prices if we were going to get hit with a comet in a few months.

Answer 5

If there was a comet that was on a collision course with Earth in less than 4 months we would be able to see it in the sky without telescopes or binoculars.  Everyone would be able to see it, it would be as noticeable as Hale-Bopp was in 1997.

It would be BIG news, photos and articles about it everywhere (even if the "collision" part was being suppressed).

There is only one comet visible to Earth right now, comet C/2007 W1 discovered in November 2007.

On June 15th it will be 41 degrees south of the sun and will be in the morning sky.  On June 24th it reached perihelion (closest approach to the sun), at .85 AU from the Sun and .24 AU from Earth (this is the closest it gets to the Earth).

From this point on it is receding from the Earth and the sun.

Answer 6

even if there was a comet heading towrds earth. the comet would burn up befor it reached earths surface. nothing major to worry about.

Answer 7

its a hoax there is no such comet

Answer 8

as big as the universe!

Answer 9

You wouldn't by any chance be refering to this old news item from 2006 that appeared in the Russian "newspaper" Pravda would you?

http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/0...

The "collision" obviously didn't happen.  I haven't been able to dig up whether there was a bright-ish comet in the sky then or whether the astronomer "Nikolai Fedorovsky" was a spoof character or any other particular tag for the story to hang on.  Basically every other hit on Google was refering back to the Pravda article.

Someone once told me a line about the two main Soviet newspapers, Pravda ("Truth") and Izvestia ("News"), that basically goes: "There is no truth in News and no news in Truth"

Comets, by the way, are typically around the size of a city (at least the "downtown" area not including any suburbs) say around 10 km or so.