Light Speed Collision

[Thanos]

Possible spoilers for recently released sci-fi block buster. You've been warned....








Not sure where to post this. A recent movie has on of the heroes ram their ship in to another one at light speed (possibly over). What would really happen? I think both ships would just be turned in to little bitty pieces. Something else?

Trying to avoid spoilers

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

It depends on the plot.

 

[whulorigan]

Possible spoilers for recently released sci-fi block buster. You've been warned....

Not sure where to post this. A recent movie has on of the heroes ram their ship in to another one at light speed (possibly over). What would really happen? I think both ships would just be turned in to little bitty pieces. Something else?

Trying to avoid spoilers

To ask what "really" would happen, you would need to define what is "really" going on when one enters hyperspace.

It is impossible for an object with rest-mass (like a ship) to accelerate to lightspeed within a finite timeframe under conventional physics. It is only possible to get closer and closer to lightspeed as one accelerates over the eons, the acceleration becoming smaller and smaller as you approach lightspeed.

 

[nobby-w]

IT depends on your canon. A collision at light speed would have energy of MV²/2, which is in the same league as MC² where V ~C. The resulting explosion from two spaceships colliding at that speed would be - shall we say - best viewed from a distance.

Assuming that somewhat less energy would be needed to push a ship into hyperspace, then the collision might be expected to reflect the amount of energy involved in the jump - which could be pretty much anything depending on your canon.

 

[whartung]

Well, the answer is obvious. If you saw the movie, you would know what happened.

 

[whulorigan]

A collision at light speed would have energy of MV²/2, which is in the same league as MC² where V ~C. The resulting explosion from two spaceships colliding at that speed would be - shall we say - best viewed from a distance.

Actually no. It would be:

E_k = (m₀c² / sqrt[1 - R²]) - m₀c² , where R = v/c, and m₀ = rest mass.
​

At v=c, R=1 ==> E_k= ∞

Best viewed from outside the confines of the universe.

 

[Condottiere]

I'd assume the same as if a hydrogen bomb went off.

 

[nobby-w]

I'd assume the same as if a hydrogen bomb went off.

There are phenomena in the universe that release too much energy to be powered by fusion.

 

[flykiller]

There are phenomena in the universe that release too much energy to be powered by fusion.

such as?

 

[aramis]

such as?

Quasars. They're powered by gravity...

 

[nobby-w]

such as?

Quasars are referred to as quasi-stellar objects because they produce too much output to be stars (i.e. a star that large and hot would be unstable and go nova straight away). The prevailing theory is that the energy output is from the accretion disk of a supermassive black hole, which is the only phenomenon that can be predicted theoretically to produce that much energy.

 

[whulorigan]

Quasars are referred to as quasi-stellar objects because they produce too much output to be stars (i.e. a star that large and hot would be unstable and go nova straight away). The prevailing theory is that the energy output is from the accretion disk of a supermassive black hole, which is the only phenomenon that can be predicted theoretically to produce that much energy.

In fact, with our more advanced space-based telescopes, we have been able to confirm for a number of quasars that they are in fact active galactic nuclei (i.e. Supermassive Black Holes, as you noted) at the center of galaxies very far away and long ago in the cosmic past (the host galaxies having previously been too dim to resolve).