Creationist Comet Crock

A commonly encountered creationist argument for a young solar system is
the claim that all short-period comets would be burned up in a few
thousand years. This was the first evidence listed by Bob Bales in the
Bales-Stassen debate (debate-age-of-earth in vickers anon ftp archive).

The April 22, 1993 issue of Nature contains not one, but two, relevant
articles:

1. _Discovery of candidate Kuiper Belt object 1992QB1_ by Jewitt & Luu in
the refereed papers section describes the discovery of 2 presumed
comets in long period orbits beyond Neptune. Based on the amount of sky
they had to search, the authors consider the abundance of K-belt
objects to be consistent with the necessary supply of short-period
comets.

2. A news section article on comet observations suggests that there may
be more "dirt" in the snowballs than previously believed. This could
allow a hard crust to develop, which would make the comet appear to
burn out, but which would preserve volatiles which could later break up
the crust and reactivate the comet.

pdf
not an official spokesman for any organization