Atom & Cosmos

A solar sneeze, a superhot planet, the death of a comet and more in this week’s news

Sun snot
Someone should teach the Sun some manners. When it sneezed on June 7, the sun blew an enormous glob of dark plasma into space — and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught it on tape. The 20,000-degree Celsius eruption — actually rather chilly by solar standards — can be seen raining back onto the sun’s surface in blobs and streamers.