Another case of overly dramatic science-journalism. The title says "comet collision". Worse yet just before the video it says "The comet appears to explode upon impact but most likely only made it to within touching distance."<p>Touching distance? This writer clearly does not understand the subject at all. (Or else it's a crappy translation from an ESA item in a foreign language.)
I went into a little more detail about this event here, <a href="http://spaceindustrynews.com/30-meter-comet-hits-sun-at-same-time-as-coronal-mass-ejection-results-are-explosive-video/3899/" rel="nofollow">http://spaceindustrynews.com/30-meter-comet-hits-sun-at-same...</a><p>Basically this sungrazing comet disappears into the sun and the CME happened at the same time.
Though it looks like the comet created the CME, it in fact did not.<p>Very cool to see though!
I think this is second or third such video of a heavenly body colliding with the sun that I have seen. I am a bit curious why the impact from one side of the sun (which is diametrically huge in comparison to the incoming projectile) pushed out a large flare or material on the other side of it?<p>Is sun just a ball of <i>liquid+gases+plasma</i> or there is a hard solid core in the middle of it? For if there was a solid core at all, or even a molten inelastic core, then perhaps the emission on the far side wouldn't have been this big. To me, the the ejecta on the other side is almost equal to the splash on the side the comet hit.<p>Any explanations?
Is that Saturn in the upper left? I thought it was an icon or some artificial marking it's so stereotypically Saturn shaped I didn't think it was really Saturn.
There's a group claiming comets are solid rock and their tails are electrical in nature:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn_HqbMmn-4&list=FLvHqXK_Hz79tjqRosK4tWYA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn_HqbMmn-4&list=FLvHqXK_Hz7...</a><p>The video is certainly interesting. Here's a longer one:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wtt2EUToo&feature=c4-overview&list=UUvHqXK_Hz79tjqRosK4tWYA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wtt2EUToo&feature=c4-overv...</a><p>(I'm no expert on this topic, I don't feel I can judge these claims one way or the other)
Look at the light coming off the far side of the sun post-impact.<p>It's almost unbelievable how an object "tens of meters" in diameter can affect an object nearly 1.4 Billion meters in diameter.<p>Just startling.<p>(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.)