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Two Comets Slam into Sun
NightWulf notes: "CNN has an article about two comets that slammed into the Sun this week, causing it to 'burp.' They have some cool images of collision as well as a quicktime video. Could this have been the cause of the large solar flares that have been occurring this week?" Update: 11/10 03:07 GMT by H : Hah. Cliff's feeling retro I guess, and posted this story from 1998.
No.
that'd be kinda hard since it happened SIX YEARS AGO in June.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
"June 4, 1998 Web posted at: 3:50 p.m. EDT (1950 GMT)"
Not exactly breaking news here. I'm pretty sure that since this article is 5 years old, the comets didn't cause the solar flares.
Paul Lenhart writes words!
In other news the movement of a butterfly's wings in the last century has been shown to have caused last month's hurricane.
Even the sun can't take the shoddy editorial standards of our favorite webrag. I think the CMEs and the aurora borealis are gentle reminders that we should check for misspellings, obvious dups, and incredibly decrepit links.
That CNN looks awful. Wait, a second, phone call. It's 1998 calling, they said they want their ugly web site back.
Are you sure it was this week? Positive? Could it have maybe been a couple of weeks ago? Oh, wait, make that 7 friggin' years ago! *sigh* Hey, Slashdot, it's been a rough week for ya, hasn't it?
"The sun, in an *apparently unrelated event* after the collision on Tuesday, spewed out a mass of solar gas from its interior, the scientists said."
If you're going to post old news, at least read it first.
Back when I was writing papers about impact catastrophes we used to show this movie to people. But when we did the mathematics we protty much could rule out any chance that the flares seen in the vide are related. The energy released in a solar flare is so many orders of magnitude greater that you have to start invoking exotic physics to have a chance of relating them...
OK this was 5 years ago, maybe the laws of physics have changed.
I doubt the comets made it anywhere near the surface of the sun to be concidered "crashing into it". Even from the videos they just seemes to dissappear far before they got close to the surface.
And that tiny little speck of rock, even IF it hit the surface, would not have caused a solar flare.
Here's a thread discussing the ep on bad astronomy.com
What the fuck? This article is from 1998. Is that a typo? Is this the Slashdot wayback machine?
Science called.... I...I don't know what it was trying to say... but I think it was crying.
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
Anyone know if /. posted this one 5 year ago?
I hope it wasn't in the story queue for 5 years.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
that's utterly lame. i hope these guys don't actually get paid to pick their asses and do nothing all day. or maybe this level of incompetence requires effort.
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And here I was getting ready to say it wasn't comets at all but two malfunctioning Halliburton motherships then I get to find out this shit is 5 years old.
/me folds up tinfoil hat
/me frowns
/me kicks rock
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
NightWulf and Cliff, you may think I'm crazy, but sell your dot-com stock now !!!
NO CARRIER
After all - F=1/2mv^2
So assuming a finger velocity of 10ms^-1 and a combined finger/button mass of 0.05Kg we still only acheive an energy output of approx. 2.5J.
Obviously this is far short of the 1.928 x 10 E10 joules produced by 1 Kg of Uranium 235. Hence we can rule out any relationship between buttons and terrestrial fission devices...
Ok, so that is a touch inflammatory - but if I see one more "mathematically proven" piece of opinion I am going to "go critical".
After 10 seconds of thought here is my analysis:
Comets have two tails, not one. One is the "dust tail", the other the "ion tail". The ion tail (generally CO2 ionised by UV radiation) is swept away from the surface of the sun by its "solar magnetic wind" and hence will be roughly perpendicular to the suns surface (and hence it's field force lines).
An ionic tail (possibly up to an astronomical unit in length) descending into the suns EM fields is going to be like sticking a fork in a powerpoint...
To quote Nasa: "Flares appear to be associated with rapid energy releases high above the photosphere"
Hypothesis complete. Completely unproven of course, but I will not rule it "in" or "out"...
Q.
Insert Signature Here
and the bartender says.. yep, 7 year old stories, bartenter jokes, sunday night, no beer, butterflys compeating with elephants. need an engine for my truck, at least they had fish at buffet for dinner, think I will try the radio, lets...(/.)...try...a...little...harder... for...a...real...time...story. Besides would'nt a comet have to be like the size of Jupiter to even reach the sun? And 100xJupiter to make a splash that would do something? I thnk these went pfft a few million miles out.
I eat my grapes at room temperature, cuz the cold ones hurt my teeth
Everyone know that light from CNN takes over 5 1/2 years to reach slashdot. So while you are only seeing the story appear now, the event actually occurred in 1998...
Too bad this isn't any more current than the story. Have they found the WMDs yet?
Rank Presidents by th
I was wondering when Armageddon was gonna come out! Go Bruce Willis, j00 r0x04!
This sig no verb.
Also have you seen the new iMacs? They come in pretty colors!
Heh. I have to wonder if the submitter actually noticed that this was from 98 and just submitted it in order to see if it'd get past the editors...
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Wow, two comets !!! Well, they probably are part of one commet which broke apart, perhaps when it passed Jupiter, -perhaps- even some pieces hit Jupiter and caused the mysterious black spots which have been observed just recently. So, things get really connected on a cosmic scale (or better solar scale).
..looks like most of the CDs I own. Big splotch here, bit splatter there...
"Derp de derp."
The space agency also said the solar gas was directed away from Earth and does not pose a danger to Earth or orbiting astronauts and satellites.
The solar fart, the fart to end all farts, the fart to end humanity, its the type of fart that could crumble the walls at a sewage plant.
have you seen the QUICKtime movies on that 'ol CNN
site (it might be a "ugly" site, but it's FAST)!!!
AWESOME.
if you look at the movie you can see the two
comets swirling towards the sun from the right
and hitting it on the left, then the sun emits on
the left and a while later on the other site.
to me it looks like the comets PAST THRU THE SUN!
!they acctually flew thru part of the sun!
me thinks since is very reasonable since the
sun is made of very hot matter PLASMA so to
speak meaning that the only thing holding
the sun together is gravity. the PLASMA moleculs
are ionised (no electron) so they acctually
don't want to stick together like "ordinary"
matter. the sun is definitely sumething very
flimsy!!!
i'm just wondering now if the comets really went
thru the sun and out the other side and did it
transmute maybe some stuff the comet
is made of? which would be an alternative means
to explain fusion from hydrogen to uranium other
then from a supernova!!!
the sun:
like a beauty parlour: you go in ugly (say plain
'ol hydrogen and come out all fancy/dandy (say
oxygen)!?
anyways, keep your eyes peeled!
And it is still true today. It doesn't look like there is any correlation between the comets and the burp.
yeah okay. it's really hot near the sun, but
don't forget they (comets) are being accelerated
towards the sun and they are acctually really really
cold! also they are entering a high gravity field
REALLy REALLY STRONG. this gravity field can
reach as far as neptun (big planet) and pluton
to make them spin around it.
now what does this have to do with the comets?
well we KNOW in high gravity field time tends to
slow down also stuff travellng at very fast
speeds tend to slow down in time.
it's like these mesons or suemthing the sun
emits that acctually shouldn't reach the
surf of the earth but they do, because they are
travelling at near light speed!
so travelling really fast AND beeing in a high
gravity field (that is accelerating you even more)
should get you sume reasonable time to get ALL
the way TO the sun surface and maybe even THRU it!
there's another point but i won't tell you.
i'll just hit it: entropy!
the comets are def. responsible for those two
flares!!
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Thank you for providing such a wonderful example of the difference between professional and amaterr.
So it's sort of like the drop of detergent in the greasy pan when "Dawn(TM) takes grease out of your way" only when the photosphere surface tension of the grease gives way and uncovers the fluid underneath, it is hot solar plasma/gas that swallows the soap, belches, and melts your face off before retreating back below its greasy solar dishpan surface?