Do you think the Honda 45p comet will hit us or cause a solar flare to hit us?

The popular media is so horrible with science reporting, it is as if the National Enquirer and Weekly World News took over the Internet.

Stories about comets or wayward planets striking the Earth are garbage, plain & simple.

Comets are frozen masses which are heated up as they approach the Sun, thus causing gas to trail behind them. This gas and dust reflects sunlight, though it is so diffuse as to be a more perfect vacuum than any vacuum made on earth. (Look it up, I'm not talking about the Hoover kind).

Even a comet crashing into the Sun does not and will not produce a solar flare. It would actually be totally destroyed long before reaching the Sun.

There are dangers to our electronics posed by CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections), but these are exceedingly rare and the government and some universities have taken measures to protect their equipment from one.

No and no. The comet was discovered in 1948; its orbit is well known. While it will pass close in astronomical terms, it still be hundreds of thousands of miles away.

And no, it will not cause a solar flare. Solar flares and comets have nothing to do with each other.

No and no.

But like all comets these days it has the power to incite the popular media to hit us with megatons of hype and nonsense.

Cheers!

No... it's not very close to us at all. And, comets don't cause solar flares... So, we're good.

No

No

no, no