An artist’s impression of exocomets orbiting the star Beta Pictoris. I do so love an ostentatious comet. As I wrote in a recent “The Universe” column, when these dusty ice balls are billions of ...

I do so love an ostentatious comet. As I wrote in a recent “The Universe” column, when these dusty ice balls are billions of kilometers from the sun, they’re frozen solid. But as they near our star on ...