

NASA, ESA capture comet collision with Sun - robmaceachern
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/nasa-esa-capture-comet-collision-with-sun/11518/

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teeja
Another case of overly dramatic science-journalism. The title says "comet
collision". Worse yet just before the video it says "The comet appears to
explode upon impact but most likely only made it to within touching distance."

Touching distance? This writer clearly does not understand the subject at all.
(Or else it's a crappy translation from an ESA item in a foreign language.)

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vecinu
This is The Weather Network's website, where every other week we are subjected
to headlines of 'apocalyptic storms' or 'catastrophic weather'.

This entire news organization (if it even can be called that) is a terrible
weather service, in my opinion. I cannot check the weather casually without
noticing some overly exaggerated headline talking about the end of the earth
tomorrow.

Frankly, I stopped visiting their website.

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astrowilliam
I went into a little more detail about this event here,
[http://spaceindustrynews.com/30-meter-comet-hits-sun-at-
same...](http://spaceindustrynews.com/30-meter-comet-hits-sun-at-same-time-as-
coronal-mass-ejection-results-are-explosive-video/3899/)

Basically this sungrazing comet disappears into the sun and the CME happened
at the same time. Though it looks like the comet created the CME, it in fact
did not.

Very cool to see though!

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joshuaheard
Sorry, it's not worth watching a 30-second commercial for a 15-second video.

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eksith
Hosts file solves this :
[http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm](http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm)

~~~
D9u
Cool... I've never heard of hosts (not a Windows user) but I use AdSuck from
Conformal. It's a DNS server that spoofs blacklisted addresses and forwards
all other queries, and is useful for blocking ads. I like AdSuck because
things like Ad Block Plus don't really block connections the way AdSuck does.

[https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/adsuck](https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/adsuck)

~~~
johnsoft
Linux and Macs have hosts files too, at /etc/hosts.

~~~
D9u
Ah... hosts.allow & hosts.deny... I was wondering about that. Thanks for
letting me know.

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monsterix
I think this is second or third such video of a heavenly body colliding with
the sun that I have seen. I am a bit curious why the impact from one side of
the sun (which is diametrically huge in comparison to the incoming projectile)
pushed out a large flare or material on the other side of it?

Is sun just a ball of _liquid+gases+plasma_ or there is a hard solid core in
the middle of it? For if there was a solid core at all, or even a molten
inelastic core, then perhaps the emission on the far side wouldn't have been
this big. To me, the the ejecta on the other side is almost equal to the
splash on the side the comet hit.

Any explanations?

~~~
carbocation
Yes, the article states that (a) it's unlikely that the comet actually hit the
sun (it probably burned up beforehand); and (b) there was a mass ejection
event on the other side of the sun coincidentally around the same time that
this comet was destroyed.

~~~
monsterix
From the video the comet seems to be headed straight towards the _center_ of
sun, and yes the ejection event seems to be strongly related to the event of
impact.

~~~
carbocation
Here's an animated gif (comet is at the bottom right within one of the
brighter mass ejection beams, I missed it the first time around):
[http://spaceweather.com/images2013/24aug13/deadcomet_anim.gi...](http://spaceweather.com/images2013/24aug13/deadcomet_anim.gif)

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serf
the headline made me imagine a comet going through a Sun Microsystems
building.

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dhughes
Is that Saturn in the upper left? I thought it was an icon or some artificial
marking it's so stereotypically Saturn shaped I didn't think it was really
Saturn.

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adestefan
It's Mercury being lit up by the Sun.

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Nux
Spectacular! Looking forward to see comet Ison!

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joering2
December right?

Unless I wasn't paying attention to entire vid, didn't they say that they are
not sure if its path will be bend and it will survive sun's rendevouz, or it
will be "swallowed" by it. But, if they don't know that, they cannot know if,
upon bending/surviving, it won't get on its path with Earth, right?

Wouldn't they know already?

~~~
D9u
The text of the page mentions comet ISON arriving in November.

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Canada
There's a group claiming comets are solid rock and their tails are electrical
in nature:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn_HqbMmn-4&list=FLvHqXK_Hz7...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn_HqbMmn-4&list=FLvHqXK_Hz79tjqRosK4tWYA)

The video is certainly interesting. Here's a longer one:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wtt2EUToo&feature=c4-overv...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wtt2EUToo&feature=c4-overview&list=UUvHqXK_Hz79tjqRosK4tWYA)

(I'm no expert on this topic, I don't feel I can judge these claims one way or
the other)

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brownbat
Look at the light coming off the far side of the sun post-impact.

It's almost unbelievable how an object "tens of meters" in diameter can affect
an object nearly 1.4 Billion meters in diameter.

Just startling.

(Note, comets average 20k mph, so we're still talking maybe 2/1000th's of a
percent of c, right? It's not like it's a relativistic bomb or anything... yet
billions of meters away, a light burst nearly instantaneous upon impact.)

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cokernel
The comet only appears to explode because of a coronal mass ejection. The
article attributes the coronal mass ejection to "an explosion on the other
side of the star" and suggests that the timing was coincidental. It's
unfortunate that the video does not make this clear.

~~~
burntsushi
Wow. I thought the article was downright misleading:

    
    
        Friday, August 23, 2013, 10:31 AM -	NASA and the European Space Agency's 
        Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has managed to capture a comet 
        colliding with the sun, **appearing to explode as it approaches.**
    

Upon seeing your comment, I scrolled down and looked a little closer:

    
    
        At approximately the same time, the sun let out a large coronal mass 
        ejection (CME), looking as if the comet triggered the event.
        
        In fact, the CME was caused by an explosion on the other side of the star. 
        The icy space body was simply too small to have any impact.

~~~
biot
Whoever wrote the opening paragraph should have used the word "seeming". While
"seeming" and "appearing" are synonyms, the ambiguity might confuse those who
are unaccustomed to reading the entire article.

~~~
burntsushi
> the ambiguity might confuse those who are unaccustomed to reading the entire
> article.

Indeed. I clicked to watch the video of a comet exploding---not read about it!

