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Two Comets Slam into Sun

Posted by Cliff on from the solar-belching dept.

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.

2 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Good Gawd.... by szyzyg · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  2. ooohhh - maths.... that must be true... by quinkin · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I guess I can pretty much rule out big red switches controlling a terrestrial nuclear fission device too...

    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.

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