Komets can do some pretty serious damage when they hit planets we know this
because they've caused doomsday scenarios when they've hit earth but
today we're not talking about what would happen if a comet hit a planet we are
talking about what would happen and if a comet hit the Sun considering comments
are massive balls of ice and rock most of the time when comets passed by the
Sun they wither away in essentially melts into nothing but what if a comment
big enough happened to hit the Sun what exactly would happen today life's
biggest questions asks what would happen if a comet hit the Sun hello and welcome
back to life's biggest questions the channel that asks the fundamental
questions of life and occasionally we answer them too I'm Charlie dobre and I
would just like to thank you all again for helping this channel get romana
sized your kind words made us feel so supportive and we are so happy to be
back in business making videos for you so with that being said if you are new
here hit that subscribe for more daily questions and don't forget to stick
around in to the end of the video where we respond to users comments comets as I
said are big blocks of ice and rock that travel around the solar system comments
get their tails from solar winds comet tails are actually the ice in a
comment melting most of the comments in our solar system are quite far away from
us they hang out in the Oort cloud which is on the outer reaches of the solar
system past Neptune just so you know Jack Finch and I are starting a band
called the Oort cloud we're actually not but I feel like that's a pretty good
band name but the comments that do manage to make it to the inner solar
system and get close to the Sun are called Sungrazers sungrazer comets pass
by the Sun at a rate of three or four a week that's according to NASA's Solar
and Heliospheric Observatory Carl badams expert at the u.s. Naval Research Lab in
Washington DC said if you're a loosely packed snowball then going to the Sun is
something you should probably try to avoid thanks Carl I'll tell that to all
my massive snowball friends it actually isn't the sun's outer layer that melts
the comets as they graze past it the outer layer of the Sun is called the
corona it's pretty hot but very thin too thin to transfer a lot of heat it's
actually the glare caused by solar radiation that sublimates ice into gas
eventually escaping into space or causing the comet to break apart the
size of a comment actually changes depending on how close they are to the
Sun komm adventures near our star the ice on
its surface vaporizes to form a cloud called a coma this coma could be as
large as 50,000 miles the Sun however does not have a surface it's literally a
gigantic spinning ball of gas and fire mostly hydrogen but scientists have
recently observed a comet called Lovejoy passed through the Sun's core not still
together on the other side it was worn down mind you but still intact kind of
like Frosty the Snowman on a warm day but you're not here to find out what
would happen if a comet graze past the Sun you're here for the good stuff
you're here to find out what would happen if a comment hit the Sun I'm not
sure if you noticed but the Sun is a really really big object it's entirely
possible for a comet to hit the Sun because there's plenty of objects flying
around the solar system and the Sun according to NASA stargazer Carl bottoms
is a pretty big target astronomer John Brown calls comets that hit the Sun
supersonic snowballs in hell quite fitting if you ask me also a good band
name I really got to talk to Jack about this he says that a comet would have to
have a mass of at least 10 kilograms to hit the sun's lower atmosphere if a
comet is big enough and gets close enough to the Sun it would engage in a
steep fall into the Sun's gravity and begin to accelerate reaching 600
kilometers per second this would effectively flatten the comment into a
pancake thanks to drag from the sun's lower atmosphere then once it hits the
Sun it will explode in an air burst also releasing ultraviolet radiation and
x-rays that we can actually see with specialized modern instruments the
explosion from a comment hitting the Sun would unleash the same amount of energy
as a magnetic flare or something called a coronal mass ejection essentially
according to John Brown it would be like a bomb being released in the sun's
atmosphere he also says that the momentum propelled by the comet could
make the Sun ring like a bell which sun quakes are going through the solar
atmosphere that being said a comet hitting the Sun poses absolutely no
threat to earth but they do look pretty cool this type of event doesn't happen
very often probably once a century what Brown is saying is only an educated
guess no one has actually observed a comment hitting the Sun closely and that
makes sense because only in the last couple of decades have we developed the
technology to observe such an event apparently though back in October of
2011 the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory captured footage of a
hitting the solar surface of the Sun and shortly afterward there's a big
explosion scientists aren't sure if these two events were correlated because
the explosion actually occurred on the opposite side of the Sun far away from
where the comet actually hit another reason why it's so rare for a comet to
get near the Sun is because of the Sun's gravitational forces its Roche limit the
Sun's gravitational forces rip apart comets that are structurally weak it
takes a really strong tick with to cease comet to actually make it to the sun's
upper atmosphere let alone a comment tic enough to cause an explosion yes I just
called a comet tick are you mad about it I don't think you are well there you
have about it you just heard what would happen if a comet hit the Sun I hope you
enjoyed hearing about it as much as I enjoyed researching it for now I'm gonna
wrap up this video with some common features from my last video what if you
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