https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ppen-if-a-massive-comet-crashed-into-the-sun/
Comet Lovejoy re-emerging after its trip through the sun’s corona (Image: NASA/SDO)
Most comets that brush past the sun end their lives in a whimper. But according to new calculations, a big enough comet that plunges into the sun should go out with a bang.
For the past few years, NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory has discovered comets at a rate of three or more a week as they pass very close to the sun. The smaller of these sungrazers don’t usually make it far. “If you’re a loosely packed snowball, then going to the sun is something you should probably try to avoid,” says Karl Battams, NASA’s sungrazer expert at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC.
It isn’t the sun’s outer layer, or corona, that melts these comets as they graze its edge. The corona, though very hot, is too thin to transfer much heat. Instead, the intense glare of solar radiation sublimates ices into gas that escapes into space or causes the comets to crack apart.
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Comet Lovejoy re-emerging after its trip through the sun’s corona (Image: NASA/SDO)
Most comets that brush past the sun end their lives in a whimper. But according to new calculations, a big enough comet that plunges into the sun should go out with a bang.
For the past few years, NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory has discovered comets at a rate of three or more a week as they pass very close to the sun. The smaller of these sungrazers don’t usually make it far. “If you’re a loosely packed snowball, then going to the sun is something you should probably try to avoid,” says Karl Battams, NASA’s sungrazer expert at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC.
It isn’t the sun’s outer layer, or corona, that melts these comets as they graze its edge. The corona, though very hot, is too thin to transfer much heat. Instead, the intense glare of solar radiation sublimates ices into gas that escapes into space or causes the comets to crack apart.
MORE AT SITE
