Gobbler Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 I am a regular visitor to fivedoves.com where they feel the rapture is imminent. I peruse the site for the laughs and also because I was into end times prophecy stuff when I was a christian. I came across one letter about some dude who had a dream of the rapture back in 1996 and states that in this vision he saw "super-sized twin asteroids" impacting the sun in a "vital spot" causing a major solar storm thereby knocking out all of earth's electricity. Now apart from what drugs he was smoking, I was thinking can something really impact the sun? I would think an asteroid would burn up within several million miles of ever reaching the sun. Not that I give any credence to this silly dream, yet I was curious as to the feasibility of such a thing happening. What say you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator florduh Posted February 11, 2009 Super Moderator Share Posted February 11, 2009 With God, all things are possible. It seems odd to me how Christians believe in supernatural acts of God but still try to attribute the miracles to natural phenomena. I'm thinking of things such as the tortured explanations of how all those animals could fit on the Ark and how the Red Sea could part due to wind, topography, etc. God, I don't know, but Christians certainly work in mysterious ways. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 It does not sound feasible. The sun is extremely large compared to comets and asteroids, and the solar storms are happening anyway, and I don't think there are any "vital spots" in the fire ball of plasma it consists of. It's like saying a "vital spot in my water glass." Sure, drop a pebble in a vital spot in the ocean, and there might become a tidal wave... Another question is, what asteroid? Would one of the current asteroids in orbit outside Mars all of a sudden decide to break away and head for the sun? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueGiant Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 So far as I know i should be possible for an asteroid, of sufficient size and speed to hit the sun, depending on which density boundary you are using to call the surface of the sun. As far as setting off a chain-reaction like that, well, whatever the guy was smoking, he needs to start sharing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chefranden Posted February 12, 2009 Share Posted February 12, 2009 ... Would one of the current asteroids in orbit outside Mars all of a sudden decide to break away and head for the sun? Not exactly; the asteroids are God's bean shooter ammo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurisaz Posted February 12, 2009 Share Posted February 12, 2009 Not much to add here. Of course asteroids, if large enough, could "impact" (see below) the sun... but considering how fucking large the sun is, and that it's 150 million km away, for anything to have even a remotely detectable effect on it I guess it would have to have at least the size of a planet. Furthermore, there is not a clearly defined "surface" of the sun. It's a ball of gas dammit! There's not that much to "impact" into, in the conventional meaning of the word. Whatever falls into the sun would (as I see it) melt, but there wouldn't be an explosion or something. And finally, solar EM storms - for all I know - are caused by the unwinding of twisted magnetic fields in the sun et cetera. I find it hard to imagine how any asteroid or even earth-sized planet (Jupiter-sized gas giants may be another case ) plopping into the sun could seriously influence its magnetic field. Unless maybe it's solid iron Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gobbler Posted February 12, 2009 Author Share Posted February 12, 2009 Thank you all! You have pretty much confirmed what I was thinking. It would have to be a "special" asteroid from god himself to do the dirty deed. I read some responses to this nutbag's vision today and they are eating it up like post-toasties. Amazing how gullible one is when you have your head into the clouds all the time waiting for your precious jesus to evacuate your ass out of here! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwc Posted February 12, 2009 Share Posted February 12, 2009 I'm envisioning the same type of "impact" that string of meteors the Shoemaker-Levy 9 made with Jupiter (considering it was only a couple years after the SL9 impact). The Sun is just under 10 times the diameter of Jupiter so the meteor would have to be 10 times greater just to even get the comparison off the ground. This doesn't even begin to take into account density and all the related stuff like mass and gravity. So a quick look means an object 20km (SL9 was up to 2km) in size. Not very big. I'd hazard a guess to say the Sun has swallowed chunks of this size without blinking. Forgetting all that nonsense it is a known fact that CME (coronal mass ejections) happen without any impacts at all and if they're large enough and if they come at the earth they can and will nuke all our electricity if we don't shut it all down. I was going to link the wiki article but it's not very good (I may as well...CME). Like most of these types of things we don't need some stupid "prophecy" from some scientific no-nothing to invent a reason for the Sun to do what it already does. mwc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted February 12, 2009 Share Posted February 12, 2009 Of course asteroids, if large enough, could "impact" (see below) the sun... but considering how fucking large the sun is, and that it's 150 million km away, for anything to have even a remotely detectable effect on it I guess it would have to have at least the size of a planet. I think the largest asteroid is a few kilometers, or maybe miles, wide. Isn't the definition of asteroid: small planet? Basically, all the debris out there which have the same course like planets, but are too small to be considered more than rocks. Pluto is a size between planet and asteroid, so it would mean the largest is smaller than pluto. Okay, I looked it up. The largest asteroid is 1 Ceres (the 1 is some kind of numerical designation used for the largest ones, I think). It's about 970 km in diameter. Ceres is so large in comparison to the other asteroids, so it contains about 25% of the total mass of all asteroids. That means, all asteroids in our solar system, all together, would amount to 4 times the size of Ceres. Now think of that the Sun is 1391980 km in diameter. Which is 10 times larger than Jupiter, and 109 times larger than Earth, and 1435 times larger than Ceres. Sure it seems like Ceres could have some effect on the Sun. But so could Earth, Pluto, or Venus... And it's very unlikely it would lose its inertia and suddenly fall into the Sun. It would be totally against the most fundamental laws of physics, the conservation of energy. What really could happen though is a very large object, a "planet" sized asteroid coming from deep space. There could be a gigantic meteor, or a black hole, at this moment moving in high speed towards us. Anything is possible. Apophis might totally annihilate life on Earth in 20 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hereticzero Posted February 12, 2009 Share Posted February 12, 2009 Woe, woe! And the third angel sounded, and a great star burning like a lamp fell from the heaven, and it fell on the third part of the rivers and on the fountains of waters. And the name of the star is called Wormwood, and a third part of the waters became wormwood. And many men died from the waters, because they were made bitter. (Rev 8:10-11) This one wipes out the earth populations. Don't know what could reach the sun? The earth would be dust a long time before anything takes out the sun. The dude is an obviously bad prophet cuz his god doesn't know dick about the universe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gobbler Posted February 12, 2009 Author Share Posted February 12, 2009 The dude is an obviously bad prophet cuz his god doesn't know dick about the universe. Maybe sky daddy was absent from science class that day! The sad and scary part is that these "rapture ready" pus nuts want this shit to happen! Forget about the rest of us poor bastards who get annihilated in the process! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woodsmoke Posted February 12, 2009 Share Posted February 12, 2009 Damn, where's that rapture comic when I need it? Bunch of folks looking around at the piles of clothing and abandoned cars, realization dawns, and they start jumping in the air and shouting for joy. "They're gone! We're free at last!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Looking4Answers Posted February 12, 2009 Share Posted February 12, 2009 An asteroid big enough to have an affect on the sun as described in the original post would cause us problems well before it reached the sun! Its shear size would probably have a HUGE gravitational pull on our planet and the other planets as it passed by (no matter from which direction it entered our galaxy). If the moon, as small as it is, can affect the tides of all the earth's oceans, then imagine the effect of an asteroid large enough to impact the sun as it passes through our galaxy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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