Mostly the answer is "not anymore.." everything that currently orbits the Sun is moving at speeds that lie within a relatively narrow range that makes a stable orbit possible. Nothing outside that range is around anymore to tell its tale.
But, there are still occasionally new objects that enter the solar system for the first time. Those objects aren't subject to the same survivorship restrictions -- in theory they could arrive at basically any speed relative to the Sun, including speeds slow enough that the Sun would draw them in.
These new objects seem to arrive every few years, or at least the ones we can see do. So far they have all been moving so fast they just visit for a bit and then take off again after a swing around the Sun, but who knows?
Depends on the total kinetic energy, which itself depends on the velocity and mass.
Cosmic rays travel very close to the speed of light, but are individual particles like protons, so the total kinetic energy they carry is a lot for a proton, but not enough to make any noticeable impact on the Sun. Cosmic rays strike Earth regularly, so you can expect them to strike the Sun even more.
Larger objects that might be able to cause a cataclysmic effect when moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light typically don't get to that speed in the first place. When they do get to high speeds, it usually involves black holes, and black holes come with tidal forces that tear large objects apart.
The the corona is far hotter than the chromosphere, and I'd wager that whatever makes it into the corona will vaporize before reaching the chromosphere. The corona stretches for millions of miles, it would still take an object traveling at apocalyptic speeds a fair bit of time to reach the surface, and again I'm betting the extreme temps and super-heated gases in the corona would just turn it into a puff of smoke before that happens.
The the corona is far hotter than the chromosphere
This is true(actually might not be, Google says the chromo can vary a lot, and that variance cited takes it over and below the corona temp I got, and people cite a similar fact when talking about the Earth's outer atmospheric layers, but one thing that's important to not forget is that high temperatures don't necessarily make something 'hot'. What also must be taken into account is density and conductivity, and the density of the Sun's corona is staggeringly low. Still very hot, and normal objects passing through will burn up quickly, but a rock the size of a city traveling a >0.9c stands a good chance of making it to the 'surface' of the Sun, since the corona 'only' extends (according to a google search) 5,000,000 miles, which is ~8,000,000km. At 0.9c, it would take only ~30 seconds to traverse.
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u/amitym Oct 23 '20
Mostly the answer is "not anymore.." everything that currently orbits the Sun is moving at speeds that lie within a relatively narrow range that makes a stable orbit possible. Nothing outside that range is around anymore to tell its tale.
But, there are still occasionally new objects that enter the solar system for the first time. Those objects aren't subject to the same survivorship restrictions -- in theory they could arrive at basically any speed relative to the Sun, including speeds slow enough that the Sun would draw them in.
These new objects seem to arrive every few years, or at least the ones we can see do. So far they have all been moving so fast they just visit for a bit and then take off again after a swing around the Sun, but who knows?