Electric comets - discharges within the coma

[flyingcloud]

http://www.spaceweather.com/


COMET AND CME: A comet dove into the sun on May 11th and seemed to trigger a massive eruption--emphasis on seemed. Watch the movie, then scroll down for further discussion.

A comet goes in; a CME comes out. Coincidence? Probably, yes, the sequence was coincidental. The comet disintegrated as much as a million kilometers above the stellar surface. There's no known way that the wispy, vaporous remains of a relatively lightweight comet could cause a billion-ton cloud of hot plasma to fly away from the sun at 400 km/s (the observed speed of the CME). Moreover, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed the eruption that did propel the CME into space. There's no comet in the field of view of this must-see movie.

[Dotini]

http://www.spaceweather.com/


COMET AND CME: A comet dove into the sun on May 11th and seemed to trigger a massive eruption--emphasis on seemed. Watch the movie, then scroll down for further discussion.

A comet goes in; a CME comes out. Coincidence? Probably, yes, the sequence was coincidental. The comet disintegrated as much as a million kilometers above the stellar surface. There's no known way that the wispy, vaporous remains of a relatively lightweight comet could cause a billion-ton cloud of hot plasma to fly away from the sun at 400 km/s (the observed speed of the CME). Moreover, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed the eruption that did propel the CME into space. There's no comet in the field of view of this must-see movie.

http://spaceweather.com/images2011/12ma ... kvr6buikn6
Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, 3rd time is science.

cheers,
Dotini

[Siggy_G]

COMET AND CME: A comet dove into the sun on May 11th and seemed to trigger a massive eruption--emphasis on seemed. Watch the movie, then scroll down for further discussion.

I studied numerous sequences from SOHO last year, and I saw several "coincidences" related to comets and CMEs. I've posted this under other threads (haven't searched for them at the moment) and I think there are TPODs on the subject as well. I remember someone responded that perhaps the comet did interfere with the Sun's magnetic field and hence caused solar wind disturbances. Why on Earth should a tiny (a grain compared to the Sun) neutral iceball do that...?

There's no known way that the wispy, vaporous remains of a relatively lightweight comet could cause a billion-ton cloud of hot plasma to fly away from the sun at 400 km/s (the observed speed of the CME).

True - that is, no known or accepted way within the astrophysical community.

[Maol]

http://spaceweather.com/

COMET AND CME: A comet dove into the sun on May 11th and seemed to trigger a massive eruption--emphasis on seemed. Watch the movie, then scroll down for further discussion.

A comet goes in; a CME comes out. Coincidence? Probably, yes, the sequence was coincidental. The comet disintegrated as much as a million kilometers above the stellar surface. There's no known way that the wispy, vaporous remains of a relatively lightweight comet could cause a billion-ton cloud of hot plasma to fly away from the sun at 400 km/s (the observed speed of the CME). Moreover, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed the eruption that did propel the CME into space. There's no comet in the field of view of this must-see movie.

Bonus: The bright comet pictured above had a dim companion. Can you find it?

"There's no known way that the wispy, vaporous remains of a relatively lightweight comet could cause a billion-ton cloud of hot plasma to fly away from the sun at 400 km/s ...."

Oh. Really?

[davesmith_au]

Just a note to those who link to stories which appear on spaceweather.com. Spaceweather.com do not provide "permalinks", as such. If you link to their story today, as "spaceweather.com" (as in the post above) then tomorrow, when people access the link they won't see the story you have linked. Spaceweather.com archive their stories by date, so you have to bring up the archive to see the story.

When viewing a main page story to which you wish to link, on the right-hand side there is a heading "archives" with three drop-down boxed, month, day, and year, under which is the select button "view". Click on the "view" button, and it brings up the same page as an archive. Copy the url now in your browser, and use it as the link url for the story.

When you do this, the markup should look like this:

Code: Select all

[url=[highlight]http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=12&month=05&year=2011[/highlight]]spaceweather.com[/url]

instead of:

Code: Select all

 [url=[highlight]http://spaceweather.com[/highlight]]spaceweather.com[/url]

hence the link for the story above (which should still work next week/next year) becomes spaceweather.com

Cheers, Dave.

[Maol]

Well, shame on me. Who knew? I may never do it again.

At the risk of further presumptuousness and to ask, somewhat rhetorically, how can it be that smart folks can’t intuitively understand the effect of a bunch of conductive shrapnel in a plasma field will result in a spark discharge?

[601L1n9FR09]

FS3, howdy!


- the "snowy dirtball" (LOL) is made up of such a dense material that the impact of "Deep(LOL) Impact" wasn't that "deep" at all...

- or the probe that was meant to cause that "impact" on Tempel 1 was destroyed before he actually could hit home by exactly that flash of light that we all saw on the pictures from 2005.

FS3
Before I worked up the nerve to er..."contribute" to this forum, ( I tend to shoot myself in the foot a lot), I saw the POD on the lack of a crater and reacted in exactly the same way. I was very amused at the idea of the crater being filled in rapidly and especially the ejecta coming down to fill it in. I mean what is escape velocity on something that small? Even if the comet were is comprised of slush (LOL) is there enough gravity to pull material into the crater? I went with the comet being so solid an object that the crater didn't form to begin with. I think I emailed some one about it and got a reply. I like your idea that the impactor never reached the surface as much or even better.

[601L1n9FR09]

Maol,
These coincidental "comet in CME out" events seem to happen quite frequently.
I especially like how you got the clip to play in the post field.
String the last half dozen or so together and it would make a great POD

[Sparky]

May I offer an alternative perspective to the comet in CME out observation. What if the comet is just the visible link in a circuit that connects the sun to the far solar charge.?

The comet, acting as a resistor in that circuit, dives into the sun and effectively shorts the circuit. The double layer at that point overloads and explodes.