…Don’cha just love the way we nerds obsess over this silly crap? I can hear the sane people screaming: “IT’S JUST A &?@#$% COMIC STRIP!!! SHUT THE @#$%& UP!!! XD

Whether it takes half an hour or half a millenium to reach there does not really affect the story, it is the emotional release associated with it that I empathized with. If the concern is the reappearance of the calendar machine, perhaps one can hope that it melts into a harmless bit of molten metal and bothers them no more.

Personally, the only part that really rings true is that it is nearly impossible to find a bra that fits and supports. I have enjoyed this comic from the start. Thank you.

So, for up to a quarter of its diameter, the sun is over 11 times denser than lead and over 13 million degrees hot. The photons created therein take over 10,000 years to escape from it.

I’m gonna assume that the god-like power of a Golem Girl gives her the ability to bulls-eye a star, and say it’s no stretch to call that calendar-nugget fully vaporized.

BTW, what IS the escape velocity of the sun?

First, ignoring Bud’s own movement throwing the nugget, the “boom” would be the nuggets’ passage through the atmosphere. “Relatavistic weapons burning off the atmosphere” is pure baloney – the nugget can only directly interact with the volume it traverses. Since it’s still sub-c speeds, there would be ionization and superheating of a column of air only an inch wide, extending from launch point to exit. It would be like God’s Own Lightning Bolt. There would be a secondary effect, from those electrons and ions unfortunate enough to undergo direct collision with the nugget – EMP. Interaction with the Earth’s magnetic field would cause those moving charged particles to emit radio waves, or rather a single powerful wave all at once.

The time scale in which this would all take place is a blink of an eye, or a lightning strike. Also, don’t forget the inverse square law for the EMP: Like the “boom”, it would be highly localized.

The reason for such mild effects is that our atmosphere is not that dense, so not that much energy would be imparted in it’s parting.

On the other hand, the Sun has a calculated density slightly higher than water (on Earth). Unlike water, the Sun is plasma of a few light elements. Plasmas behave much differently than ordinary matter – being electromagnetohydrodynamic, capable of superturbulence, and other really cool stuff.

Also, the Sun is so HUGE – the calendar is an insignifigant mass in comparison. That little nugget, however energetic, is hardly going to make a ripple – again, it has a very small cross-section it can interact with in it’s passing.

Interaction is the key, here. Ballistic bullets are not effective unless they transfer momentum: Mushrooming bullets do more damage because they widen and transfer more.

IF the nugget is 0.3c, then it would pass right through the Sol, creating a solar prominence on the side opposite the Earth where it wouldn’t be seen.

IF the nugget is below Sol escape velocity, passage through the solar layers would create enough drag to eventually halt the nugget, all the while evaporating it into plasma. I assume it would “dissolve”, because even though Bud compacted the calendar, it’s still made of atoms, and the Sun is hot enough nothing can exist as atoms – as it assumed ambient temperature, the nugget, too, would become plasma.

The only way I see that nugget actually having so-called “megatonnage”, is if it hit something solid and dense. Signifigantly greater mass to interact with, as well as a solid-to-plasma conversion phase, would make a much bigger boom than such paltry stuff as air.

Eh, whatever. It doesn’t really matter, unless there’s a demon out there with a catcher’s mitt, waiting for the mother of all fastballs.

Though Paul has said the 24 minutes is not accurate, so it probably really doesn’t have that 1.3 Gtons of Energy. Maybe only 1/4 that, it it’s twice as long to ‘impact’. Call it 250 Mtons, say.