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Comet Lovejoy Plunges Into the Sun and Survives
boldie writes with a link to NASA's account of comet Lovejoy's close encounter with the sun. Excerpting: "This morning, an armada of spacecraft witnessed something that many experts thought impossible. Comet Lovejoy flew through the hot atmosphere of the sun and emerged intact. ... The comet's close encounter was recorded by at least five spacecraft: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and twin STEREO probes, Europe's Proba2 microsatellite, and the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. The most dramatic footage so far comes from SDO, which saw the comet go in (movie) and then come back out again (movie)."
Here are larger QuickTime versions of the comet's entrance (22MB) and exit (26MB).
for a successful demonstration of Metaphasic Shields.
That wasn't a comet it was Kirk and company in a Klingon Bird-of-Prey trying to get back to the 23rd century.
"The Sun somehow survives close call with badass comet Lovejoy. Meekly vows to be more respectful next time."
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The comet's fuel reserves were low; flew into a star to recharge.
It's going to come back and smash into the earth in 2012.
Quite possible as, quoting TFA:
"There is still a possibility that Comet Lovejoy will start to fragment,"
No telling which directions those pieces might fly off.
Absolutely. When a single object slowly fragments due to thermal gradients, it ignores conservation of momentum and sometimes even conservation of mass. It's possible this ~100-500 m radius comet will launch a 50000 m chunk at us with a velocity of over half the speed of light!
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
I'm pretty sure it was shouting, "Hot hot hot hot!"
I'm fairly certain comet love joy won't be taking on any more dares for a while.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
That's the weirdest combination of terrible and excellent science education ever. Congrats.
"What," said Trillian in a small quiet voice, "does sundive mean?"
"It means," said Marvin, "that the ship is going to dive into the sun. Sun... Dive. It's very simple to understand. What do you expect if you steal Hotblack Desiato's stunt ship?"
"How do you know..." said Zaphod in a voice that would make a Vegan snow lizard feel chilly, "that this is Hotblack Desiato's stuntship?"
"Simple," said Marvin, "I parked it for him."
"The why... didn't... you... tell us!"
"You said you wanted excitement and adventure and really wild things."
If DNA was still alive he'd have to do a lot of rewriting.
It's actually an aerobraking alien spacebattleship. We're so fucked.
Hey that line about "comet Lovejoy plunging into the sun.."
I just used it on some bird in the pub, and it worked!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
And here I thought it was turtles.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
That's quite a bold statement!
May not be the smartest thing you have done. But I suppose it is the coolest thing you have done.
Oh great. A big ball of ice passes through fire, survives, catches on fire, and now it's coming for us. Ice on fire. How do we even stop that?
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
So, a snowball really does have a chance in hell.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.