Just curious since as the speed of an object increases, the mass also increases... so how great will the damage be? i was thinking, maybe like that of a nuclear bomb?

omo the crater nor go be here mehn!

Booyakasha:
Just curious since as the speed of an object increases, the mass also increases... so how great will the damage be? i was thinking, maybe like that of a nuclear bomb?

you mean in a uniform system where all factors are kept constant - I mean no interference?

paranorman:

you mean in a uniform system where all factors are kept constant - I mean no interference?

Yes.

Teempakguy, johnydon22, menesheh, food don done o.


#watHappens?

Dekatron:
Teempakguy, johnydon22, menesheh, food don done o.



#watHappens?

*hides all d spoon in d house*



Yea wah damage will happen

cc dekatron.

i have seen your request oh.

this is rather wierd, i've been working with such a problem myself. it's quite complicated.

anyway, i'll be back to put up a solution when i find it.

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okay guys! I'm back. i finally overcame my stupid laziness and used the internet.(imagine, a scientist who is too lazy to use even the internet. )

first i had to find the mass of a grain of sand and then the mass of the earth and their speeds and other annoying things . . . and then i had to find impulse forces by using some formulas . . . anyway, first of all, let me just note this first. it is impossible to make a grain of sand accelerate to the speed of light anyway. and and the truth is, in real life, the earth wouldn't even exist anyway since all the atoms in the universe would have been ripped apart to fuel the grain's acceleration.

but this is theoretical-hypothetical physics. so . . . we are going to assume things.

er . . . first, how much energy does the so called grain have?

well, from E=mc² and some calculator magic, i have something around the order 60 billion mega joules. whoops! that is huge! just did a rough calculation here and it seems like that is enough to run an average light bulb for one thousand and nine hundred years!!!

this is not going well for earth at all . . .

an enormous force will be generated from the collision as the grain of sand will deccelerate within a very short distance. given the size of a grain, i can boldly say that the grain will pass through the earth. all the objects it encounters will instantly vaporize.

BUT!

there is a problem here, the whole thing is so incredibly fast. the grain will pass right through the earth in just 25 thousandths of a second. in which case, the grain will . . . wait a minute . . . i think we're missing something . . .

ah yes! of course the sand isn't indestructible. how could i have forgotten that . . . anyway, the sand itself will be instantly vaporized within seconds of hitting the atmosphere. this means that the grain won't be piercing the earth. sorry guys.

just a few mejajoules will completely vapourize the sand, rip out it's electrons and turn it into a plasma.

the earth's magnetic field will take over at this point and instead of it causing any damage, it will circumvent the earth!

and absolutely nothing will happen downhere. for all we know, something like that could be happening right now . . .

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ahem, there is a slight mistake up there, i used the wrong formula to calculate the energy of the sand. we're actually looking for kinetic energy. not energy contained in mass, so . . . using 0.5mv² . . . i got something around 30 billion megajoules. woah . . . that's interesting! it would seem the kinetic energy of any mass is exactly or nearly exactly half of it's energy contained in mass when moving at light speed! i literally just noticed that now. someone should release a research paper on this, johnydon22 and gang, do take note of this!

anyway, as i was saying, at thirty billion megajoules, essentially the same thing is going to happen. the sand grain will hit the air at incredible speeds and the air will in turn, solidify . . . (if you didn't get that, think of speedboats on water. the faster the speedboat goes, the harder the water becomes. and the boat then starts bouncing.) at the speed of that collison, the air should be as strong as steel.(someone with good knowledge in dilatant fluid equations should verify this please.) and the sand will heat up, vaporize into charged plasma, which will in turn be deflected by the earth's magnetic field. directly below the collison, some lightning and thunder with a flash of light may occur. but on other places, it will be stable.

what else . . . ah, i see booyakasha starts by assuming that the mass of the grain will increase . . . well, if it did . . . then at lightspeed, it's mass would be infinite and it would become a supergiant blackhole and it wouldn't need to approach the earth before the entire solar system got sucked into it. but that wouldn't be a collision. it would be spagettification . . . which you didn't ask us to describe.


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Lol @tempakguy how will the sand be vapourized with it's kinetic energy? Sorry i made a mistake there with my title since nairaland now does not allow more than 80 chars in title, okay, here is it, since it is impossible for an object with mass to accelerate at the speed of light because as the object nears speed of light it's mass increases thus requiring more and more acceleration which will just keep increasing the mass of the object e.g 99.9% to 99.99% to 99.999... till the object runs out of fuel.

Okay lets say the grain of sand hits earth at 99.9% light speed, i don't need to show you how kinetic energy is represented, so at 0.99c which is approx 6mc raise to power 2. With a grain of sand averaging 4mg the kinetic energy will be: 6 x 4 x 3 x 3 x 10 raised to power 10 joules. That's approx equivalent to 400 tons of TNT.

What i don't know yet is whether the grain will come as a comet and explode on the ground or whether it will dig through the ground exausting that energy.

It's a big bang anyway! But it wouldn't be on a global scale, just a locally big big explosion like the atomic bomb that hit japan, only thing is, it might be 2x the effect lolz!


Guys join this site for science students, nerds, geeks and technology lovers, you'll learn things faster there i bet! - http://Gdevit.com

Booyakasha:
Lol @tempakguy how will the sand be vapourized with it's kinetic energy? Sorry i made a mistake there with my title since nairaland now does not allow more than 80 chars in title, okay, here is it, since it is impossible for an object with mass to accelerate at the speed of light because as the object nears speed of light it's mass increases thus requiring more and more acceleration which will just keep increasing the mass of the object e.g 99.9% to 99.99% to 99.999... till the object runs out of fuel.

Okay lets say the grain of sand hits earth at 99.9% light speed, i don't need to show you how kinetic energy is represented, so at 0.99c which is approx 6mc raise to power 2. With a grain of sand averaging 4mg the kinetic energy will be: 6 x 4 x 3 x 3 x 10 raised to power 10 joules. That's approx equivalent to 400 tons of TNT.

What i don't know yet is whether the grain will come as a comet and explode on the ground or whether it will dig through the ground exausting that energy.

It's a big bang anyway! But it wouldn't be on a global scale, just a locally big big explosion like the atomic bomb that hit japan, only thing is, it might be 2x the effect lolz!


Guys join this site for science students, nerds, geeks and technology lovers, you'll learn things faster there i bet! - http://Gdevit.com

at 99.9 the speed of light, eh?

at 99.9 the speed of light, the grain will weigh around . . . what will it weigh around . . . i don't know, but let's just set it to a sufficiently high number to maximize ultimate destruction.


it . . . still doesn't change anything. the kinetic energy it possesses will cause it to heat up upon contact with the atmosphere. sorry. but if you want this to work, we can't use a grain of sand. it is simply too weak for this experiment.

Number one, a grain of sand with kinetic energy from space will burn up when it enters earth's atmosphere, because of friction by atmospheric pressure
2. A grain of sand would not enlarge bro to the extent u mentioned, and nagazaki type explosion, grain of sand, nah bro..

Booyakasha:
Just curious since as the speed of an object increases, the mass also increases... so how great will the damage be? i was thinking, maybe like that of a nuclear bomb?

there will be no impact....reason is that,at that speed the material will disintegrate due to atmospheric resistance and friction...the material will simply seize to exist