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<blockquote data-quote="paradox42" data-source="post: 3124457" data-attributes="member: 29746">IMO trancejeremy is right- a tail alone is too diffuse to provide the effect you're looking for. In Shoemaker-Levy's case, it wasn't a tail that struck Jupiter, it was pieces of the comet itself that had broken up due to tidal forces on approach to the planet. The tail of a comet is made up of tiny chunks of dust and ice spread out over millions of km; it looks like thick smoke or mist in full sunlight, but it's really a lot more sparse than any cloud that shows up in the atmosphere on Earth.An ELE would probably require that the &quot;near miss&quot; be near enough that part of the comet breaks off, and thus that part would fall as the comet itself was passing- it wouldn't be out behind it very far or stick around as part of the tail. If there was a significant delay before the final chunkfall, the most likely scenario would be that the chunk gets into an unstable orbit for a while as a sort of tiny moon. In that case it could fall any time, though another near miss by the original comet could certainly provide the orbit perturbation necessary to cause it to finally impact.On the note of the effects of an event like this on a fantasy world, have you checked out Malhavoc Press's When the Sky Falls? It's an Event book specifically designed to detail the impact of a meteorite or comet on a standard D&amp;D world. It even includes the possibility of a magically-reactive impactor and what that might do to the world, not to mention suggesting where such an impactor might have come from and why it came to be. It's by Bruce Cordell, and compares favorably with his other stuff, so that gives you some idea of the quality of ideas and presentation contained therein.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="paradox42, post: 3124457, member: 29746"] IMO trancejeremy is right- a tail alone is too diffuse to provide the effect you're looking for. In Shoemaker-Levy's case, it wasn't a tail that struck Jupiter, it was pieces of the comet itself that had broken up due to tidal forces on approach to the planet. The tail of a comet is made up of tiny chunks of dust and ice spread out over millions of km; it looks like thick smoke or mist in full sunlight, but it's really a lot more sparse than any cloud that shows up in the atmosphere on Earth. An ELE would probably require that the "near miss" be near enough that part of the comet breaks off, and thus that part would fall as the comet itself was passing- it wouldn't be out behind it very far or stick around as part of the tail. If there was a significant delay before the final chunkfall, the most likely scenario would be that the chunk gets into an unstable orbit for a while as a sort of tiny moon. In that case it could fall any time, though another near miss by the original comet could certainly provide the orbit perturbation necessary to cause it to finally impact. On the note of the effects of an event like this on a fantasy world, have you checked out Malhavoc Press's [b]When the Sky Falls[/b]? It's an Event book specifically designed to detail the impact of a meteorite or comet on a standard D&D world. It even includes the possibility of a magically-reactive impactor and what that might do to the world, not to mention suggesting where such an impactor might have come from and why it came to be. It's by Bruce Cordell, and compares favorably with his other stuff, so that gives you some idea of the quality of ideas and presentation contained therein. [/QUOTE]

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