Two Comets Slam into Sun

NightWulf notes: "CNN has an article about two comets that slammed into the Sun this week, causing it to 'burp.' They have some cool images of collision as well as a quicktime video. Could this have been the cause of the large solar flares that have been occurring this week?" Update: 11/10 03:07 GMT by H : Hah. Cliff's feeling retro I guess, and posted this story from 1998.

Flares

[Anonymous Coward]

Could this have been the cause of the large solar flares that have been occurring this week?"

No.

Re:Flares

[BoomerSooner]

I'm not sure what sun pictures they are talking about. All I see are pictures of scratched CDr disks. Hell I can duplicate that on my old Verbatim Blue disks.

umm, no.

[the_greywolf]

Could this have been the cause of the large solar flares that have been occurring this week?

that'd be kinda hard since it happened SIX YEARS AGO in June.

Not quite quick on the draw...

[p4ul13]

"June 4, 1998 Web posted at: 3:50 p.m. EDT (1950 GMT)"

Not exactly breaking news here. I'm pretty sure that since this article is 5 years old, the comets didn't cause the solar flares.

Re:Not quite quick on the draw...

[hawkstone]

And the best part? The year is in the URL, the dateline, pasted on every single image, and implicit in the references to Deep Impact and Armageddon in the first paragraph.

Re:Not quite quick on the draw...

[whorfin]

Welcome to /., where nobody RTFA, including the posters and editors!

Butterfly causes hurricane

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news the movement of a butterfly's wings in the last century has been shown to have caused last month's hurricane.

Re:Not comets!

[AnnCoulterTroll]

Even the sun can't take the shoddy editorial standards of our favorite webrag. I think the CMEs and the aurora borealis are gentle reminders that we should check for misspellings, obvious dups, and incredibly decrepit links.

Obviously you haven't read the FAQ. It's not the job of the editors to actually do editing. You don't believe me? Read for yourself:

How do you verify the accuracy of Slashdot stories?

We don't. You do. :) If something seems outrageous, we might look for some corroboration, but as a

talk about a get out of jail free card

[sydlexic]

that's utterly lame. i hope these guys don't actually get paid to pick their asses and do nothing all day. or maybe this level of incompetence requires effort.

Re:talk about a get out of jail free card

[mcmonkey]

Aparently there are people who will pay for 5 year old 'news'.
http://slashdot.org/subscribe.pl

Re:talk about a get out of jail free card

[Snowspinner]

I would imagine they do not so much get paid as scream in agony at the bandwidth charges of the site go higher, higher, higher.

I mean, figure the submission volume they get... and... ummm...

Yeah, you want to fact check it for them?

Wow...

[AnnCoulterTroll]

That CNN looks awful. Wait, a second, phone call. It's 1998 calling, they said they want their ugly web site back.

What day of this week?

[Gewis]

Are you sure it was this week? Positive? Could it have maybe been a couple of weeks ago? Oh, wait, make that 7 friggin' years ago! *sigh* Hey, Slashdot, it's been a rough week for ya, hasn't it?

Re:What day of this week?

[jhoffoss]

Check yer math, son...still, you're not as far off as Cliff.

Re:What day of this week?

[Gewis]

Oh, yeah. I guess whatever's got Cliff is contagious.

Good Gawd....

[szyzyg]

Back when I was writing papers about impact catastrophes we used to show this movie to people. But when we did the mathematics we protty much could rule out any chance that the flares seen in the vide are related. The energy released in a solar flare is so many orders of magnitude greater that you have to start invoking exotic physics to have a chance of relating them...

OK this was 5 years ago, maybe the laws of physics have changed.

ooohhh - maths.... that must be true...

[quinkin]

I guess I can pretty much rule out big red switches controlling a terrestrial nuclear fission device too...

After all - F=1/2mv^2
So assuming a finger velocity of 10ms^-1 and a combined finger/button mass of 0.05Kg we still only acheive an energy output of approx. 2.5J.

Obviously this is far short of the 1.928 x 10 E10 joules produced by 1 Kg of Uranium 235. Hence we can rule out any relationship between buttons and terrestrial fission devices...

Ok, so that is a touch inflammatory - but if I see one more "mathematically proven" piece of opinion I am going to "go critical".

After 10 seconds of thought here is my analysis:

Comets have two tails, not one. One is the "dust tail", the other the "ion tail". The ion tail (generally CO2 ionised by UV radiation) is swept away from the surface of the sun by its "solar magnetic wind" and hence will be roughly perpendicular to the suns surface (and hence it's field force lines).
An ionic tail (possibly up to an astronomical unit in length) descending into the suns EM fields is going to be like sticking a fork in a powerpoint...
To quote Nasa: "Flares appear to be associated with rapid energy releases high above the photosphere"

Hypothesis complete. Completely unproven of course, but I will not rule it "in" or "out"...

Q.

Okkkkk now....

[Transcendent]

I doubt the comets made it anywhere near the surface of the sun to be concidered "crashing into it". Even from the videos they just seemes to dissappear far before they got close to the surface.

And that tiny little speck of rock, even IF it hit the surface, would not have caused a solar flare.

Life imitates fiction?

[cookie_cutter]

This is weird, cuz smallville just had an episode a couple weeks ago where comets colliding into the sun causes unusual solar flare activity [tvtome.com](see "notes" section), fucking up Clark Kent's powers. At the time, I though it was weird how the episode's theme coincided with the solar flare activity at the same time. Now, actual comets flying into the sun, AFTER the episode is aired. Strange.

Here's a thread discussing the ep [badastronomy.com] on bad astronomy.com

Re:Life imitates fiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, actual comets flying into the sun, AFTER the episode is aired

You mean before? ...5 years before?

1998??

[Tom7]

What the fuck? This article is from 1998. Is that a typo? Is this the Slashdot wayback machine?

Re:1998??

[Vengeance_au]

Its 1998? Quick everyone, grab a low Slash UID!!!

Science Called

[OwlofCreamCheese]

Science called.... I...I don't know what it was trying to say... but I think it was crying.

Is this a dupe?

[jon787]

Anyone know if /. posted this one 5 year ago?
I hope it wasn't in the story queue for 5 years.

Re:Is this a dupe?

[adamjaskie]

MOD PARENT FUNNY

Also in the news this week:

[1nv4d3r]

- Ask Slashdot: Will Windows98 be good enough to convert happy MacOS 8 users?

- Soundtrack for Titanic Selling Big!

- Netscape to release code for 'Navigator' browser

- Optimists predict Linux Kernel v2.2 may be released this year

Re: Also in the news this week:

[unclealbert_2035]

Actually, to accompany "Wow! 2 comets slam into the sun, which burps", on that fateful day in 1998, /. posted: Crackers break into Indian Nuclear Centre Editorial:Towards World Domination Ask Slashdot:LCD Projectors Use ICBMs as Fireworks! Katmai release bumped up Wearable Linux Machine RAM for a buck ABC news on Hacker v. Cracker Linux.org Gets a Revamp Crackers, Hackers, and ICBM's, oh my! UA

Re: Also in the news this week:

[Micro$will]

There were dupes that year too.

July 4th [slashdot.org]
December 14th [slashdot.org]

The links are long dead, but the stories are basically the same.

Re: Also in the news this week:

[ls -lR]

You could have just posted a link to that day's slashdot headlines [slashdot.org], you know. http://slashdot.org/?issue=yyyymmdd Try it sometime...

Re: Also in the news this week:

[CowboyMeal]

Did they have a preview button back then too?

Damnit

[Sevn]

And here I was getting ready to say it wasn't comets at all but two malfunctioning Halliburton motherships then I get to find out this shit is 5 years old.

/me kicks rock
/me folds up tinfoil hat
/me frowns

Party like it's 1998!

[Chester K]

NightWulf and Cliff, you may think I'm crazy, but sell your dot-com stock now !!!

Re:Party like it's 1998!

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Hey, you know, I heard about a really cool web site called slashdot.org. I hear it's got almost five hundred unique users!

God, I wihs they sold banner ads so that I could get in on some of that techie action!

Two comets collide with the sun...

[annisette]

and the bartender says.. yep, 7 year old stories, bartenter jokes, sunday night, no beer, butterflys compeating with elephants. need an engine for my truck, at least they had fish at buffet for dinner, think I will try the radio, lets...(/.)...try...a...little...harder... for...a...real...time...story. Besides would'nt a comet have to be like the size of Jupiter to even reach the sun? And 100xJupiter to make a splash that would do something? I thnk these went pfft a few million miles out.

Re:Two comets collide with the sun...

[Gewis]

It's good to know I'm not the only retard who said 1998 was seven years ago. And it's 2003.

Re:Two comets collide with the sun...

[annisette]

Yea, well I did go on your key but I am damn proud to be part of your team. (now that I think about it has anybody figured out it was six years 98,99,00,01,02,03? better to be over than under)

Re:Two comets collide with the sun...

[Gewis]

13 - 8 = 5

2003 - 1998 = 5

With your math, 0 is seven numbers away from 6, given by the series 0,1,2,3,4,5,6. No, the story is 5 years and 4 months and six days old. Of course, if you wanted to round up... =)

Re:Two comets collide with the sun...

[annisette]

Thanks!

Technically it did happen today...

[nmoog]

Everyone know that light from CNN takes over 5 1/2 years to reach slashdot. So while you are only seeing the story appear now, the event actually occurred in 1998...

Re:Technically it did happen today...

[kalidasa]

Hey, that explains it ... the story was *submitted* in 1998, but the net congestion was so screwed up that day the packets got routed through Proxima .... oh, wait a minute, that would've had the story being posting in 2008.

House votes to impeach the President

[Texas Rose on Lava L]

Too bad this isn't any more current than the story. Have they found the WMDs yet?

Great!

[dacarr]

I was wondering when Armageddon was gonna come out! Go Bruce Willis, j00 r0x04!

More breaking news from 1998!

[mraymer]

There's a great new PC game that was just released, I suggest you check it out. It's called Half-Life, and I think we're looking at a serious contender for Game of the Year!

Also have you seen the new iMacs? They come in pretty colors!

Heh. I have to wonder if the submitter actually noticed that this was from 98 and just submitted it in order to see if it'd get past the editors...

Connection with Jupiter?

[Jump]

Wow, two comets !!! Well, they probably are part of one commet which broke apart, perhaps when it passed Jupiter, -perhaps- even some pieces hit Jupiter and caused the mysterious black spots which have been observed just recently. So, things get really connected on a cosmic scale (or better solar scale).

That picture on the right..

[NanoGator]

..looks like most of the CDs I own. Big splotch here, bit splatter there...

Solar gas... ewww

[ewhenn]

The space agency also said the solar gas was directed away from Earth and does not pose a danger to Earth or orbiting astronauts and satellites.

The solar fart, the fart to end all farts, the fart to end humanity, its the type of fart that could crumble the walls at a sewage plant.

Re:awesome QUICKtime movie!

[ph43thon]

well.. the theories about the sun's structure might suggest it to be somewhat difficult for a comet to pass through. Essentially, the sun is dense and massive enough to fuse atoms. I think that alone precludes any sort of object like a comet from passing through.. If single protons and nuetrons have trouble moving around in there.. then any sort of larger matter will too. Maybe it could skim the surface..? (maybe that's what you meant.)

Either way, after seeing the video.. the comets were just consumed by t

record smashing periodicity

[iggymanz]

Slashdot is proud to announce it has raised the bar for dupe periodicity, now breaking the 5 year mark. When interviewed, CmdrTaco said "our eventual goal is 25 years. We believe this is a sufficiently long period of time that the dupe will pass under the radars of over 99% of our moderators and readers, especially as most grammar and high school history programs start with events circa 3000bc and invariably the school year ends around or about the time WW II is being covered. Thus for the vast majority