the object took 291 years to orbit the sun at an average distance of 43 AU. Since, the discoveries of that object over three dozen additional objects had been found as of the end of 1996. Some astronomers estimate that there are over 30,000 icy objects bigger than 100 kilometers in diameter in the Kuiper belt. The total mass of the belt is believed to be hundreds of times bigger than the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Comets are one of the more exciting things to study in astronomy because of a number of reasons. One of these reasons is because they are unpredictable. Comets can suddenly brighten or fade away in just a few hours. They can also lose their tail, or even develop more tails. Another thing is they can split into pieces, so multiple comets can be observed traveling together. Another reason why comets are interesting to study is because they have some of the oldest and untouched objects in the solar system. The comets composition represent how things were originally, and also what made the sun and the planets how they are today. Studies have recently shown that comets are what formed life on Earth. Collisions between Earth and comets in earlier times brought water to the Earth, which resulted in oceans forming. After the oceans were formed, it enabled life to begin. However, as easily as comets can begin life, they just as easily can end it. The way that the dinosaurs became extinct was from collisions from comets. Most of the comets that are seen from Earth only come by once every few millions of years. Some do, however, come back within around 200 years. These types of comets are called short-period comets. These comets, which have shorter orbits, are believed by scientists to come from the Kuiper belt. The reason why this is believed is because there are some small, icy objects that orbit near and beyond Pluto that have been detected. Since the orbits of short-period comets are shorter, they pass the Sun more ofte...
