Comet ISON Gets Roasted by Sun and Vanishes, But Did It Survive?

To my uneducated mind, what looks like what happened is… ISON was a rock covered in snow. As it rounded the sun, the snow flashed off, leaving just the rock. The rock, however, wasn’t pure rock, but had volatiles mixed in with it; now that the insulating snow layers have been blown off, the rock itself is starting to roast and cook out the volatiles within.

So ISON might survive as a comet, but I would guess that, compared to what it was before, it’ll be a pretty sad comet. It’ll be interesting to see how the orbit might’ve changed since the snow blew off.