Comets Break Up

Just what causes a comet to break up in space and what are the after effects?
The comet was supposed to make another return in the fall of 1995. But during October of 1995, a new comet was located by numerous observers in the evening sky. But it wasn't a "new" comet as observers first thought, it was the comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3.

The comet didn’t get as close to Earth as astronomers had and was much dimmer than expected. Its brightness had increased several hundred times.

And no one knew why. The European Southern Observatory in Chile reported that the comet’s tiny nucleus had fractured into several parts. The most likely reason they could arrive at was stress. An example of that would be pouring hot water on glass when the glass was at a freezing temperature.