Quote:
Originally Posted by ardeegee
I don't know about THAT much energy, but look at what a beam of protons (essentially hydrogen nuclei) traveling at 99.99 percent of light speed can do:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/a...s-to-stop-it/1
From the article: "In experiments, researchers found that an 86-microsecond exposure of the beam would bore a hole 40 meters into a block of copper." |
When I consider CERN, the cannonball sized hole from a single H atom is perhaps off the mark for any
practical starship, but the cannonball hole is theoretically possible if you keep in mind that the closer a particle gets to C, the more its mass approaches infinity (which is why no starship could ever exceed the speed of light). Keep in mind that I'm speaking here of a thought-experiment involving speeds exceeding even those of the LHC. Even a speeds much less, hydrogen collisions are a real danger.
http://www.philforhumanity.com/The_D..._of_Light.html:
Image for a moment that you are in a spaceship traveling at 10% of the speed of light. All of a sudden your spaceship hits a single molecule of floating hydrogen gas (only two atoms of hydrogen). Traveling at those speeds, these two lonely hydrogen atoms essentially become high intensity radiation that will penetrate through your spaceship, destroy all electronic equipment that they touch, and kill any living thing that is unfortunately in their way.
And
http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencet...eed-would-kill:
Edelstein said in an interview with the Star that the problem is when travelling in space at close to light speed hydrogen turns into “intense radiation” that kills humans and destroys electronic instrumentation. Even a ship’s hull of 10 centimetres in thickness would do nothing in terms of preventing damage.