4 ms·
Look at the light coming off the far side of the sun post-impact. It's almost unbelievable how an object "tens of meters" in diameter can affect an object near
by brownbat 13y ago
Look at the light coming off the far side of the sun post-impact.
It's almost unbelievable how an object "tens of meters" in diameter can affect an object nearly 1.4 Billion meters in diameter.
Just startling.
(Note, comets average 20k mph, so we're still talking maybe 2/1000th's of a percent of c, right? It's not like it's a relativistic bomb or anything... yet billions of meters away, a light burst nearly instantaneous upon impact.)
- cokernel 13y agoThe comet only appears to explode because of a coronal mass ejection. The article attributes the coronal mass ejection to "an explosion on the other side of the star" and suggests that the timing was coincidental. It's unfortunate that the video does not make this clear.
- burntsushi 13y agoWow. I thought the article was downright misleading: Friday, August 23, 2013, 10:31 AM - NASA and the European Space Agency's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has managed to capture a comet colliding with the sun, **appearing to explode as it approaches.** Upon seeing your comment, I scrolled down and looked a little closer: At approximately the same time, the sun let out a large coronal mass ejection (CME), looking as if the comet triggered the event. In fact, the CME was caused by an explosion on the other side of the star. The icy space body was simply too small to have any impact.
- biot 13y agoWhoever wrote the opening paragraph should have used the word "seeming". While "seeming" and "appearing" are synonyms, the ambiguity might confuse those who are unaccustomed to reading the entire article.
- burntsushi 13y ago> the ambiguity might confuse those who are unaccustomed to reading the entire article. Indeed. I clicked to watch the video of a comet exploding---not read about it!