Coronal Mass Ejection: Explosion Occurs Moments After Comet Hits Sun, Scientists Say It's Coincidence

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a satellite monitoring the sun, caught an amazing scene over the weekend: A comet slammed into the sun, and then, a few minutes later, a solar explosion occurred.

The video, created by a sequence of images and available above, could be out of a Hollywood blockbuster. It shows a fiery comet approaching and appearing to collide with the sun and, seconds after the collision, the sun emits a huge blast from the other side.

The video creates the impression that the comet is somehow related to the explosion, which is called a coronal mass ejection, or CME.

But scientists say the two events aren't actually linked.

According to a blogpost from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, "...there still remains zero evidence for a link between sungrazing comets and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that can't be better explained than by simple coincidence."

Dr. Phil Plait, an astronomer who writes Discover Magazine's Bad Astronomy blog, explains in a video and post why this is most likely a coincidence. (Video available below.)

According to Dr. Plait, these type of comets, called sungrazers, constantly get close to the surface of the sun, sometimes hitting the surface or becoming absorbed. At the same time, he explains, coronal mass ejections are frequently occurring on the Sun, even when there aren't any comets colliding with it.

To support this, Dr. Plait shows three videos of the incident taken by three different satellites. The different angle of one of NASA's STEREO satellites shows a coronal mass ejection occurring before the comet even makes its way to the sun. A third video, from images taken by another STEREO satellite, shows that the comet could have even missed the sun.

"At this stage of the solar cycle," writes Karen C. Fox at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, "the sun is producing many mass ejections -- in fact there were several earlier in the day -- and it is only chance that one of them burst off the sun at the same time the comet approached."

This was the 2,143 comet that the SOHO satellite has recorded, according to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

Comets colliding with the sun in May and September also produced some spectacular videos.

Video at top courtesy of ESA/NASA/LASCO C2

For more on the collision -- and the coincidence -- be sure to check out The Bad Astronomer's blog post.

WATCH: The Comet and the Coronal Mass Ejection, from The Bad Astronomer.

Comments

[Robert Gudzikowski]

10:33 AM on 10/19/2011

This is happenstance twice is a coinsidence and three times may be the charm or enemy action as we do not need!

[Robert Gudzikowski]

10:23 AM on 10/19/2011

Seems the same effect the moon plays on earth with the tides. Can you feel the heat snap? Much like the cold snap. Maybe we should all get a big yellow submarine?

[Marci Economidis]

07:49 PM on 10/11/2011

I'm always suspicious of anything that happens behind an "occlusion disk"..........and where can I get one?

[BuckyJamesDio]

12:17 PM on 10/11/2011

Coronal Mass Ejection would be a great title for a Red Hot Chili Peppers album.

[No stinking fans]

05:55 PM on 10/10/2011

Clearly that comet was hijacked by Klingons with box cutters.

[NerdyStudent]

09:56 AM on 10/09/2011

I'm trying to find why this should be in the Tech Section.

Does it relate to Steve Jobs? Existentially perhaps?

[palindrom]

11:59 AM on 10/09/2011

They throw astronomy articles willy-nilly into "tech" or "green", or sometimes both.

That's because they don't have a science section, which may not be such a bad thing, considering some of the things that pass for science over in the health and wellness section, which has been described as a 'wretched hive of scum and quackery' by the deeply scholarly and hilarious blogger Orac on "respectful insolence".

[jaredbrain]

10:40 PM on 10/08/2011

Space has such abundant, overwhelming coolness that it has extra and can just have random coincidental awesome moments.

[YrthWyndAndFyre]

10:37 PM on 10/08/2011

The causal relationship between the comet and the mass ejection is an artifact that is created by the acceleration of the video. The video is not in real time. The mass ejection happened several *minutes* after the comet passed behind the occlusion disk, not a second later, as the video suggests. If you extrapolate the path of comet with its rate of travel, then if it did not actually hit the sun, it probably had already passed the sun when the mass ejection occurred.

The ejection did not even occur on the opposite side from the sun from the comet. Trace the comet's trajectory, and you will see that the mass ejection originated about 40-50 degrees to the left of the projection of the path of the comet (from our point of view). In some of the other shots, the angle looks closer to 70-80 degrees off the path of the comet.

So if there is a relationship, what caused the comet to suddenly make a hard left turn right after it passed behind the occlusion disk? There are two mass ejections in the video above. One occurred on the approach side before the comet even got close. I don't see a comet incoming from the opposite side - do you?

Still...cool video.

[StephenJK]

12:54 AM on 10/09/2011

The comet didn't make it out of the other side of the disk. That suggests that it impacted. And if it impacted, it would alter a lot of what was going on on the surface at that time.

[YrthWyndAndFyre]

01:53 AM on 10/09/2011

I did consider that, but this is a flat 2-D projection of what is happening in a 3-D space. If it didn't hit the sun, then it would do a gravitational sling-shot around it, and I don't actually know the true angle of approach. It may have made a complete U-turn around the sun entirely within that occlusion disk. Maybe it's outbound trajectory was almost directly *at* or *away from* the occlusion disk, which would keep it hidden for a much longer period. Perhaps the video simply wasn't long enough to show it coming back out. Short version: I don't think there is enough information available to call impact.

I do think, though, that if it had impacted the sun, that would be the news story - not a light-show whose sole element of interest is that it *appears* to show a cause-effect relationship.

[Roadrun]

09:48 PM on 10/08/2011

A coincidence for sure but a really cool coincidence just the same. It really does look like the comet causes the ejection. Great shot.

[trainer3]

03:36 PM on 10/08/2011

Gravity and 1000 years of love drew us together. I spotted her, we had a close encounter about the time the Celts were burying people in swamps. I noticed her lovely tail. Anticipation, what is a millenium when you're in love. So I dressed up, and she approached, I was trembling with excitement. She hit me in the rear and I released. It was a Mass ejection.

Then we smoked a couple asteroids and we are now living together. She's not as cool to me as she was 1000 years ago.

[Quint Michael Long]

03:19 PM on 10/08/2011

Wow, amazing video. I think it is a coincidence. But that is just my opinion. The real mystery I want to know is what actually did happen to it. Did it disentigrate, did it just directly hit the sun.

[WorkhelpWorkhelp]

12:26 PM on 10/09/2011

At the Sun's temperature me thinks the comet got cooked.

[fernandezgras4q]

02:08 PM on 10/08/2011

WHAT KIND OF MATTER (MATERIAL) WILL NOT DISINTEGRATED BEFORE GET NEAR OF THE SUN? WHAT KIND OF COMET WILL BE ABLE TO HIT THE SUN? FORGIVE ME BUT I AM CONFUSED?

[Quint Michael Long]

03:12 PM on 10/08/2011

Compund matter, like us, trees, or anything that has multiple elements strung together to make a compound will decentigrate normally. Elements will not decentigrate because they are not able to. They are already in the simplest state of matter, so the suns intense heat can not seperate them. Im not exactly sure how it works, but compounds are broken down and split apart, which is why things disentigrate. And any kind of comet can hit the sun as long as it is in the proper orbit to collide with it.

[Mark Guzak]

06:24 PM on 10/09/2011

Fernadez, please stop yelling it will be alright.
Matter can be compressed beyond atomic dimensions under the extreme pressures, densities and temperatures resulting from the sun's fusion reactions. As nuclei from any matter are forced together a strong nuclear force occurs fusing them. Or so I remember from some class......
So it's not disintegration, but fusion. E=MC2 so matter is transformed into energy.
Not the whole story, but I hope it answers your question. Film@11....

[p8q2b8ng]

05:56 PM on 10/08/2011

disintegrate-"Break up into parts, typically as the result of impact or decay."

Atoms. An atom disintegrating would commonly (always? The nuclear bond has to be broken. I know of no way of doing that without a sudden release of the energy.) be a nuclear explosion (which does happen on the 'inside' of the sun).

[blindhog]

01:24 PM on 10/08/2011

Who was that guy on SNL in the 90s and early 00s ? I think he's now employed by SOHO. What would he say? "Yeah. Sure. There's no connection. Yeah."

[Samuel Huntington]

12:29 PM on 10/08/2011

It goes behind the occulting mass, and boom... so one cannot see if the comet actually hits the sun or disintegrates...

Reminds me of a magicians trick of sticking swords in woman in the box routine. I am sticking in the sword you see the sword going in, but you do not see what is going on inside the box. it must be that the woman is dead and there should be blood dripping out the bottom. Next thing you know a pretty girl in a skimpy outfit is out of the box and parading around the stage. Something happened in the box and all our previous conclusions are wrong.. but why are they wrong...we made assumptions based on incomplete information about the box the swords, everything was rigged.

So the occulting mass serves to create incomplete information and we are left with our assumptions and incomplete information to make our conclusions.

[galactictravelerjavjav]

12:29 PM on 10/08/2011

This one scares a bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis