University of Iowa Iowa City IA 52242 Dec. 16, 1999 Mutel and
co-author John Fix, professor of astronomy and dean of the
College of Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville,
presented their findings at the annual meeting of the American
Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco. In their paper, they
described their examination of more than 2,700 photographic
images taken with the Iowa Robotic Observatory (IRO), located
south of Tucson, Ariz., between Sept. 24, 1998 and June 11,
1999. "We failed to find evidence that small comets exist,"
Mutel said. "At the same time, no such search can entirely
disprove their existence. But if the small comets do exist, they
are present in far smaller numbers than previously predicted."
The small comet theory, developed by fellow UI professor Louis
Frank and UI research scientist John Sigwarth, holds that about
20 snow comets weighing 20 to 40 tons each disintegrate in the
Earth's atmosphere every minute. Frank, an internationally known
experimental space physicist,