How specific asteroids and comets make repeat appearances after so many years of space is an endless and ever expanding vacuum.

Question

I feel like the answer can only be “ping pong” with another gravitational body, but that seems far too coincidental.

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

Interestingly the comets don’t fly that far away from sun. Orbital period of Halley’s comet is like 75 years and the furthest it goes is just around Neptune.

Or the Hale-Bop comet (seen in 1995) will return in around year 4400 and max distance will be just 10x the distance of Neptune (2 light days). Voyager 1 is already half that much away from us.