SUMMARY: Researchers with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory believe that comets may break up several times before being consumed by the Sun, often taking several orbits to fully come apart. The team analyzed photographs of the region around the Sun and found that comets passed by in clusters or in parallel paths. The pieces are so small that should have disintegrated had they passed the Sun on an earlier trip. This means that the parent comet must have broken up after it passed the Sun.


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