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Comet Lovejoy Plunges Into the Sun and Survives

Posted by timothy on from the part-of-brian-aker's-career-path dept.

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).

5 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. You can all thank Dr. Reyga... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    for a successful demonstration of Metaphasic Shields.

  2. Better title: by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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
  3. Energy Depleted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The comet's fuel reserves were low; flew into a star to recharge.

  4. Re:we are all doomed! by Colonel+Korn · · Score: 5, Funny

    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)
  5. Re:Misleading title by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's quite a bold statement!