Re: if the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs hit the sun would it blow up

As far as astronomers can tell, an asteroid approximately 10 km in diameter hit the earth 65 million years ago. The effect of its impact was to wipe out the dinosaurs along with many other species. The reason for the destruction was that the asteroid was solid and the impact threw lots of dust into the air. Since the impact occurred off the coast of Yucatan, Mexico, along with the dust, lots of water vapor was thrown into the air. The dust plunged the earth into winter for many years, allowing few plants to grow and causing many animal and plant species to die out.

On the other hand, if the same asteroid had hit the sun, it would have had very little effect on the sun. The sun is over 300,000 as massive as the earth, so the mass of the asteroid is very small compared to that of the sun. Secondly, the sun does not have a solid surface, so no material could have been splashed up. The sun would just swallow up the asteroid and it would vaporize (turn into a gas) as it plows below the surface of the sun.