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).

Comments

Re:Misleading title

[bocin]

How does the heat from the core bypass the "surface" and heat the photosphere to 1mil. kelvin? Is there any observable evidence to support the theory that the core is so dense and hot? No. The current cosmological model has left the lab and gone off into the imaginary realms of mathematics. This semi-mystical approach toward truth is as far-fetched as the old idea that the sun was a big piece of coal! There is, however, evidence to indicate that the sun is a positive anode discharging into the negatively charged space around it. Gravity Sucks. Electricity Rules!!