Please correct if I'm wrong

You don't have a clear idea of the scale of the Sun. Were the Sun the size of a watermelon, Earth would be the size of a pea. And comet Ison would be a bacterium.

Edit: typo

I do have a clear idea of how big the Sun is. When I said implode I meant expand from the excess energy of Ison. I'm only worried about what if hits a sunspot.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the sun works and how massive it is.

That's funny, because implode doesn't mean to expand. It means to collapse inwards. Like a black hole. So not only do you fail to grasp the scale of either the sun or Ison, you also fail to grasp basic language. Par for the course I guess.

Nothing bad is going to happen if ISON hits the sun or not. Even if it doesn't look like it from our vantage point, you need to understand that those sunspots can be HUNDREDS of times bigger than the size of the earth. ISON would have about the same effect on the Sun as a drop of rain in a lake would have. I'm definitely one to give conspiracies a chance, but all the DOOM PORN surrounding ISON is just downright silly.

That being said, you have nothing to worry about other than finding a nice pair of binoculars to view the sight :)

many comets have impacted the sun before. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXa22x1WYnA one just a few years ago, and we are all still alive

As strange as it seems there is a massive CME after that Comet hit, in the video... Not @ the exact same spot. May just be a coincidence...

It is just a coincidence...

Whoaaaaa.....

everything is fine

go back to sleep

A drop of rain still makes the lake ripple

Sure, that is a valid point. But does that ripple honestly matter or effect anything in the grand scheme of things? Within a second its gone and if you weren't looking for it, you wouldn't have even noticed it.

It affects the inhabitants of the lake. I'm just worried Ison is going to cause a butterfly effect, or in this case a ripple effect.

How does a ripple from a drop of water affect inhabitants of a lake?

depends if that ripple is a tsunami or not doesnt it

seeing as it's from a drop of water, that does not matter at all.

a several km wide comet is only a drop compared to the pacific, at 2million miles per day it would still make a bit of a splash

Yes, but we're talking about ISON hitting the sun, not an ocean on Earth.

it wont hit the sun, its coming here

That is likely, but this string of comments was in reference to if it hit the sun.

it wont

We will find out soon enough.

What do you do at NASA?

A small ripple on a massive lake has literally no impact, figuratively and literally. It is just that, a tiny ripple that quickly fades away and is forgotten.

I swear to God I feel dumber after reading this

Then why the fuck are you commenting. It's just a question. I'll admit the grammar is a little iffy, but that's because I have to use my phone to post.

If I flicked a grain of sand off your chest, would you implode? No, ISON is a speck, and is insignificant when placed in context with the scale and energy output of the Sun.

As an aside, I notice no one is losing their shit over the other comets currently in the Solar System - just this one.

I'll admit implode was the wrong word. I meant expand. And no I wouldn't implode if you flicked a grain of salt off me, but would expand if I ate it.

The Sun won't be affected by Comet ISON. In a week it will either have vanished in the depths of the Sun, or it'll get past it and we'll have a small dot of light to watch in the skies for a few months.

You wouldn't expand if you ate a grain of salt- there's plenty of space inside of you for it to fall in to. If someone were to weigh you, you would be marginally heavier, but not by a significant amount. Also, that sand wouldn't be incorporated into your mass.

I'm not trying to sound like a dick but "by implode I mean get bigger" makes no sense. Would it expand due to a direct comet impact? Maybe, but the sun is constantly expanding due to the fact that it is constantly exploding. It's also contracting due to the fact that it is a big ass mass of gas with a lot of gravity. So a comet's mass being added to that of the sun might possibly change this dynamic by a very very small fraction of a percent, but I sincerely doubt that it would effect Earth unless some large part of the comet hit the planet.

Where did you hear that it will hit the sun? As far as I know, it's expected to zing around it and go flying back out into space.

Theoretically, Ison will have a stellar increase in magnitude if it survives its pass near the sun. It would become a naked eye object during the morning hours, visible without a telescope in some places. As far as the potential of a sunspot or solar flare or other type of CME interacting with Ison, I am clueless. It would probably just disintegrate, I imagine, but alas I am just a simple stargazer with little real knowledge.

http://www.space.com/21998-comet-isons-perilous-journey-around-the-sun-explained-video.html here ya go

The sun has been Shooting Multiple M-Class and X-Class Flares towards Ison's Direction over the past weeks , Ison most certainly seems to be having a Minor Magnetic relation that is affecting the sun.

The sun has fired off multiple x and m class flares at everything around it recently, not just ison. That's normal, though.

I know. The most recent ones have almost all been directly at Ison however.

Source? I've been closely monitoring flaring for quite some time and unless you have access to satellite cygnets I'm unaware of, I'm gonna have to call bullshit. Nasa and noaas enlil spirals show nothing of the sort.

It is most likely completely unrelated as most sunpots for some reason seem to shutdown when earthfacing and go up in flaring activity once they face away from the earth , which currently happens to be in Ison's Direction. Maybe I should have worded my Post differently , Just don't want to Rule out the possibility of it being related.

That's right. I was reading about this yesterday. I'm just curious as to to why the sun is shooting these solar flares directly at comet ison. How does the magnetic field of a large comet result in the suns solar flares occurring?

They aren't directly at it. They just expand and hit everything in their path .

Probably telling it to back the fuck off

I'm gonna say the only potential for doom here would be a breaking up of ison as it passes around the sun, making different chunks of it spread on separate trajectories, increasing the odds of a direct earth hit.

BUT- that only means increasing the odds in one dimension. I have no idea if the trajectory is in direct line with earth in the other dimension. Kind of like shooting a target from separate distances without adjusting the scope. You can hit the target in multiple places vertically, but that doesn't change the horizontal aim.

This is really a decent question. I guess I had assumed that if it hit the sun it just ceases to exist, at least as far as its impact on the solar system and the sun itself. That being said, I freely admit that I don't understand physics or thermodynamics enouph to even make an educated guess, so it's possible that the comet hitting the sun could have other negative effect

Comet Ison is a ball of ice that's a few miles wide. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that a ball of ice hitting the sun is like a single snow flake falling into an Olympic swimming pool full of boiling liquid iron, and then thinking that the snow flake will somehow cause the liquid iron to implode into itself.

I am literally having a hard time understanding how stupidity of this magnitude can even exist.

People here drive me crazy... drop of water on a lake, grain of sand on your chest? REALLY? Try, what happens if you throw gasoline on a fire, what happens if you throw magnets into a magnetic engine, what happens if you put aluminum in the microwave? I cant tell you what will happen or even a guess but what worries me is that i see the MSM flat out avoiding it, sure there's articles here and there but its not anywhere near the attention the comets that we KNEW weren't going to cause any affects had received.

The sun is a giant fusion reactor. Comets are typically ice/rock/dust. When they pass the sun they heat up and get a pretty tail. So its not like throwing gas on a fire. Its like throwing an ice-cube at a bonfire.

More like ice cube at a forest fire.

More like an ice cue into a nuclear reactor.

You know, I actually considered using forest fire instead of bonfire. But then I was like, eh I like the word "bonfire".

Truthfully though, a forest fire is probably a more apt analogy.

"typically" great word for astronomical chances.

As in, "The chances that a comet isn't a bit of dirty ice are astonomical."? Because I agree with this.

I only used the word typical because I don't know about every comet ever, and maybe there are a few that have different compositions (less ice, more rock maybe?).

Wow, i had no idea everyone here had samples of the Ison to analyze let alone the equipment to analyze the sample. Fucking brilliant, this sub is dead.

THE SKY IS FALLING!.... Declaring comets as sign of Doomsday has never happened in the past!

What are THEY trying to hide? WAKE UP SHEEPLES! Who knows maybe it's happening this time, for real reals!

they are covering the shit out of ison for a reason and the posts in this thread are yet more evidence...........

Sure, that is a valid point. But does that ripple honestly matter or effect anything in the grand scheme of things? Within a second its gone and if you weren't looking for it, you wouldn't have even noticed it.

How does a ripple from a drop of water affect inhabitants of a lake?

As in, "The chances that a comet isn't a bit of dirty ice are astonomical."? Because I agree with this.

I only used the word typical because I don't know about every comet ever, and maybe there are a few that have different compositions (less ice, more rock maybe?).

A small ripple on a massive lake has literally no impact, figuratively and literally. It is just that, a tiny ripple that quickly fades away and is forgotten.