Posted on 03/14/2010 7:18:57 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
At first glance it looks like aliens are using the sun for target practice. A string of bullet-shaped streaks of light appear to be shooting straight toward the sun. These are the proverbial snowballs in Hell, plunging 300 miles per second toward a fiery end in the sun's atmosphere... The wayward comets are called sungrazers. They are a class of comet that likes to live dangerously. Sungrazers can skirt within a few thousand miles of the sun's roiling photosphere. Many are torn apart or evaporate as they streak along at a blazing 1 million miles per hour. As their orbits are perturbed, surviving sungrazers can collide with the sun on a subsequent passage. The first recognized sungrazing comet was detected during a total solar eclipse in May 1882... The most recent, comet Ikeya-Seki in 1965. Once solar observing satellites were lofted into orbit the sungrazers were easily detected. SOHO, with its coronographs, has cataloged over 1,000 sungrazers in spectacular passages... Because the sungrazers are so short-lived and many seem to follow similar orbits, they must have come from parent bodies that broke apart. In fact the majority belong to a hypothesized "mother comet" that disintegrated perhaps as long as 2000 years ago. The fragments whip around the sun as gravitational perturbations nudge the low point (perihelion) of their elliptical orbits closer to the sun.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
Because the sungrazers are so short-lived and many seem to follow similar orbits... the majority belong to a hypothesized "mother comet" that disintegrated perhaps as long as 2000 years ago.
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The Kreutz Sungrazers are a family of sungrazing comets, characterized by orbits taking them extremely close to the Sun at perihelion.About 83% of the sungrazers observed with SOHO are members of the Kreutz group.
I think being launched into to Sun would be an awesome way to go!
The result will hit us on the solstice in... 2012!!!!
(just saw 2012 today for the first time — funniest movie I have seen in quite some time).
>>I think being launched into to Sun would be an awesome way to go!<<
Have it done at night so you won’t get burnt.
That's a great idea! After dark, the damn thing is probably cold until it lights back up in the morning. I might make it to the surface!
??After dark, the damn thing is probably cold until it lights back up in the morning. I might make it to the surface!<<
THAT’S the spirit! — 12 hours there and back!
Thanks sonofstrangelove.
The limit to that approach is defined by the immutable speed of dark.
Interesting ping
Summer or winter ?
>>Summer or winter ?<<
Based on the movie, I will say winter — that seems to be the one the ancients get their robes in a bunch about...
HMMMMMM
. . . a la the ice queen of Narnia?
LOL.
>>The limit to that approach is defined by the immutable speed of dark.<<
Which is measured in the photosruind scale (you can only measure escape velocity).
Kaze = Wind
Oh and bring me some Jimmy Dean sausage back please.
Ali G asked Buzz Aldrin about going to the Sun in the winter.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xLN5-1QGRM
That was FABULOUS — Buzz was great in Frasier and clearly has the deadpan delivery and response than anyone would want.
What a trooper!
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