Striking the Earth’s atmosphere, a modest cometary fragment would produce a great radiant fireball and a mighty blast wave, which would burn trees, level forests and be heard around the world. But it might not make much of a crater in the ground. The ices would all be melted during entry. There would be few recognizable pieces of the comet left—perhaps only a smattering of small grains from the non-icy parts of the cometary nucleus.
