Astronomers have pieced together what appears to be the first direct evidence that solar storms can wreak havoc with comets, destroying the ion tails of icy wanderers in a collision of highly charged particles.
But the effect is not permanent and may serve as a marker for scientists trying to track solar storms known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) as they blow out into space.
"What we have now is sort of a new tool of tracking these ejections," said Geraint Jones, co-investigator of the comet study and a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It's like dropping paint into a flowing river of water."
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/1...rms/index.html
Linear Mode
