Answer:
The comet ventured too close to Jupiter's mighty gravitational pull two years ago and was pulled apart into a score of large fragments and thousands of small ones. As each fragment hits Jupiter's dense atmosphere, it is stopped as if it had hit a brick wall. In an instant, its initial speed of 130,000 miles per hour is reduced to zero, and practically all of its gigantic kinetic energy is converted to heat -- so much heat that a titanic explosion results. In the case of each of the largest fragments, this is equivalent to 250 million megatons of TNT. (The largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated produced a blast equivalent to about 58 megatons.)
Step-by-step explanation: