Clip: Season 51 Episode 12 | 55s | Video has closed captioning.
Worlds that exist close to the warmth of the sun, like the rocky worlds of Mars, Earth and our moon, have relatively little ice, because they lie inside what is known as the ice line.
Aired: 10/23/24
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- You can't see the ice line, but you can see its effects.
- When small bodies that are primarily composed of ice cross inside of the ice line, the ice within them begins to vaporize.
- [Narrator] Sometimes icy rocks are ejected from the frigid outer regions of the solar system and pulled towards the sun.
These are known as comets.
- Comets are basically dirty snowballs, mostly water, ice, with a little bit of dust.
And as they come into the inner solar system, they get heated up by the sun.
- [Narrator] As comets cross this invisible ice line, their ice starts turning into gas.
- And that's what forms these long tails that we can see when you look at a comet, and those tails stream away from the sun as the comet moves in towards it.
- [Narrator] Inside the ice line, ice is rare, but there are places where it can hang on.
(mysterious music)
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