Mary Anna (16
March 2012)
"Comet Takes 'Swan'
Dive Into Sun"
http://www.space.com/14912-comet-swan-dive-sun-encounter.html
Just three months after one comet made a seemingly death-defying
plunge through the sun, another icy wanderer is set to try its
own luck in a solar rendezvous.
The newly discovered comet Swan is on a collision course with
our star, and it should plummet through the solar atmosphere
sometime late today (March 14), researchers say. Swan's dive
follows shortly after that of comet Lovejoy, which shocked
astronomers by emerging from behind the sun on Dec. 15, 2011,
stripped of its tail but otherwise intact.
The odds are against such a happy ending for comet Swan,
however.
"I'm as sure as I was with Lovejoy," said Karl Battams, a solar
scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Center in Washington,
playfully referring to his ‹ and pretty much every other
expert's ‹ prediction of Lovejoy's