Shoemaker - Levy 9 Â Â Â Â Â Over 200 million Megatons of dynamite collide with Jupiter. In July 1994 Shoemaker - Levy 9 collided with Jupiter. What is Shoemaker - Levy 9, and how was it discovered? What is Jupiter, and why did Shoemaker - Levy 9 collide with it? Can an event like this happen to Earth? I will answer these questions in this report. But let me start by telling you what Shoemaker - Levy 9 is. Â Â Â Â Â Shoemaker - Levy 9 is a comet, a small irregular mass made up of rocks and frozen gasses. Comets follow large orbits from around the Sun to the outer corners of our solar system. A comet is so fragile that if you could hold a piece of it in your hands you could pull it apart. Comets only become visible when they get close enough to the Sun for it's heat to vaporize the comet's gasses causing a long tail called the coma. The coma of a comet can be millions of miles long. The comets themselves are only between 20 and 750 kilometers wide. Like all other objects the comet follows the law of gravity. It's orbit is decided by the largest object in the solar system, the Sun.
