What would happen if a large comet like comet NEAT would make a direct hit to the sun? Would the effects be catastrophic? Would nothing happen at all???

Back in '94, a comet slammed into the giant 5th planet from Sol, the one we call Jupiter. The comet was in orbit around Jupiter for decades, having been somehow been pulled away from its natural orbit around the sun, which it had been doing for more than 4 billion years. The comet was weakened by Jupiter's gravitational pull, tearing it apart before it's fatal fall. Jupiter is a gaseous planet, at least near it's surface, and when the fragmented comet slammed into it at 135,000 mph, it made a big hole in the gas layer, making it look like a Joe Palooka doll that had taken a hard right from Mohammed Ali. It was sad to see that great giant with a large hole in its face, but its wound quickly healed, and nothing really changed in the big picture.
A comeet is thought to be made of mostly frozen water and rock fragments created during the formation of our solar system billions of years ago. If one of those big ones were to fall toward the primarily hydrogen-helium sun, a most improbable event, it would likely vaporize before it hit, but assuming some rock fragments were to survive the descent into hell, they wouldn't do it, or us, any harm, it'd sort of be like hurling a pebble into the open sea. About 100,000 years ago, it is believed that 2 giant burnt out star galaxies (black holes), each many many many times more massive than the sun, collided with each other, forming one mother of a black hole. The effects of this collision will reach us in about 300,000 years, at which time, if humanity is still around, only highly sophisticated gravity wave detectors will be able to sense the space-time ripples of this catastrophic event.

Interesting to know. Thanks, as always, gerry.

What if Mercury, however unlikely it is, were to get pulled off its orbit around the sun and slam into it. What would happen then? Would the sun get pulled off it's course? Would that pull us of our courses??

Julieta..

I hope my answers are as good as your questions.


If Mercury were to fall into the sun, the sun, along with the remaining planets of our solar system, and along with all the other stars and planets of our galaxy, would still continue, unaffected, on its merry course in orbit around the gargantuan black hole that lies in the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. The earth's orbit around the sun would also, for all practical purposes, be virtually unchanged. The only effect I can envision is an ever so small change in the tides, which, dwarfed by the gravitational effects of the moon and the sun, would be immeasurable. As you mentioned, Mercury's fall into the furnace is most unlikely, rather, in a few billion years from now, the sun's hot gases, in a desperate attempt to escape the gravitational pull within it's core as it exhausts it's nuclear fuel and starts to die, will expand outward to swallow up Mercury like a match consuming a cotton ball. At this point, the Earth will be so hot that all life, including vegetation, will cease to exist, followed by the extinction of earth itself in a huge fireball, the remains of which will ultimately be sucked back to the darkened core of the burnt out sun, where it shall remain for 100's of billions of years, ultimately destined to the nothingness.

Okay one more question and I'm done with this.

What if a comet the size of mercury slammed into the sun at a very high velocity? Would anything happen then?

(I guess I'm kinda hoping something would happen!!!)