Wow. I thought the article was downright misleading:
Friday, August 23, 2013, 10:31 AM - NASA and the European Space Agency's
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has managed to capture a comet
colliding with the sun, **appearing to explode as it approaches.**
Upon seeing your comment, I scrolled down and looked a little closer:
At approximately the same time, the sun let out a large coronal mass
ejection (CME), looking as if the comet triggered the event.
In fact, the CME was caused by an explosion on the other side of the star.
The icy space body was simply too small to have any impact.