The NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft recorded the moment a comet slammed into the Sun, according to Space Weather astronomer Tony Phillips.
Phillips recorded the anomaly in the center of the solar system last week. He described the situation as follows: "a dirty snowball dived right into the Sun."
A video titled "Comet's Death Dive Into Sun Snapped by SOHO Spacecraft" was uploaded onto YouTube by Space.com on Friday. The short video shows the comet in the bottom right of the screen traveling towards the round disk in the middle of the screen, otherwise known as the Sun, slams into the Sun's surface around the 18-second mark. On top of the Sun is Venus, and left of center is Mars.
Phillips said the comet is likely connected to a Kreutz sungrazer, which is a group of sungrazer comets that orbit 50,000 kilometers from the Sun's surface. The comet is named after astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who studied sungrazing comets in the 1880s and early 1890s. Kreutz theorized these comets are fragments from a single comet which had broken up 800 years ago.
This isn't the first time an event of its kind was recorded this summer. Citizen scientists on June 20 spotted two comets, one a Kreutz sungrazer and the other a Meyer sunskirter approaching the Sun. They used data from SOHO and NASA Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft to observe the comets.
Space.com said the Sungrazer Project had discovered more than half of all known comets. Discoveries of new comets can aid scientist to study comet orbits, comet composition, and comet evolution.
According to VladTime, conspiracy theorists said that "Nibiru became the cause of the abnormal attraction of comets to the Sun [Russian to English translation by Google]."
"Conspiracy theorists insist that the prototype of the Nibiru magnetic field lies in the "invisible" spectra for earth technology. The absence of a detection method exacerbates the situation, because a group of comets Kreutz Sungrazers will destroy the solar system. The SOHO picture confirms the hypothesis of scientists from the center of the solar system, and comets appear like mushrooms after rain," VladTime said.
"Continuing its movement, the comet goes directly to the Sun, where it is charged through the solar atmosphere, and ultimately collapses. Astrophysicists say that on average, the Sun receives 23 thousandct of energy from the explosion of one comet. If we take into account that the comets are a group, then the Sun receives a "nuclear" supply of energy resources, experts say. Scientists are not 100% guided in the mechanisms of the appearance of energy from the "death of comets", and claim the presence of a hidden sourcefor the explosion. At the same time, it is possible that it is not the Sun that is charged from comets, but Nibiruhidden in it," VladTime said.
And as far as what we can find, there's no concrete scientific explanation of why these comets are all of the sudden gravitating towards the Sun. As for now, conspiracy theorist explanations run wild.
