Sundiving Comet Storm

[Lucid]

Jan. 12, 2011:

The sun has just experienced a storm—not of explosive flares and hot plasma, but of icy comets.

"The storm began on Dec 13th and ended on the 22nd," says Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington, DC. "During that time, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) detected 25 comets diving into the sun. It was crazy!"

Sundiving comets—a.k.a. "sungrazers"—are nothing new. SOHO typically sees one every few days, plunging inward and disintegrating as solar heat sublimes its volatile ices. "But 25 comets in just ten days, that's unprecedented," says Battams.

"The comets were 10-meter class objects, about the size of a room or a house," notes Matthew Knight of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. "As comets go, these are considered small."

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...an_cometstorm/

[CakeDecorator]

Nice. A lot of "unprecedent", "unexpected", "unusual", etc... has been happening lately, hasn't it?

[IMSAVED]

These kinds of things are going to increase.