Comets necessarily obey the same physical laws as every other object. ... If one considers only two bodies -- either the Sun and a planet, or the Sun and a comet -- the smaller body appears to follow an elliptical path or orbit about the Sun, which is at one focus of the ellipse. ... Another quantity that is conserved is called angular momentum. ... Comets simply are bodies which in general have more angular momentum per unit mass than do planets and therefore move in more elongated orbits. ...

... no comet has been observed with an orbit that indicates that it came from interstellar space, . ... From this he proposed that comets reside in a vast cloud at the outer reaches of the solar system. ... Unfortunately, since the individual comets are so small and at such large distances, we have no direct evidence about the Oort Cloud. ... T he Kuiper Belt is a disk-shaped region past the orbit of Neptune roughly 30 to 100 AU from the Sun containing many small icy bodies. ... Small Bodies .. ...

... 22.Reference Frames . ... To derive the motion of a penny dropped inside an airliner moving at 600 miles/hr (about 1000 km/hr)--should we calculate it with respect to the interior of the airliner, or with respect to the ground? ... And if a similar penny is let go inside an orbiting spaceship--should its motion be calculated relative to the interior of the spaceship, or relative to the Earth outside? ... How do observations differ in the two frames--the airliner cabin and the Earth? ...

Cosmic Research, Vol. 42, No. 5, 2004, pp. 435­488. Translated from Kosmicheskie Issledovaniya, Vol. 42, No. 5, 2004, pp. 453­508. Original Russian Text Copyright © 2004 by Veselovsky, Panasyuk, Avdyushin, Bazilevskaya, Belov, Bogachev, Bogod, Bogomolov, Bothmer, Boyarchuk, Vashenyuk, Vlasov, Gnezdilov, Gorgutsa, Grechnev, Denisov, Dmitriev, Dryer, Yermolaev, Eroshenko, Zherebtsov, Zhitnik, Zhukov, Zastenker, Zelenyi, Zeldovich, Ivanov-Kholodnyi, Ignat'ev, Ishkov, Kolomiytsev, Krasheninnikov, Kudela,