What If....

I'm no Doc, but I'm real good at pretending =)

Velocity is everything. It is said "with a big enough level you can move the world". By that same reasoning, "with enough mass and speed, you will become unstoppable".

But can we get enough mass and speed?

You can understand that there is no "gun" we could build to do so. You can imagine that the amount of energy needed to pierce the Earth is great indeed. And you must also be aware of "equal and opposite reaction". I posit that even if you could build a gun big enough, and mounted it on the moon, the recoil alone would vaporize the moon. We're talking a lot of energy.

So it has to be cosmic. HAS to be. It's the only way to get something with any weight going fast enough. But with the speeds possible for a projectile (limited by physics) the rest of the oomph would need to be made up by mass. And with those speed limitations, I posit the projectile would have to be so great as to vaporize the earth (or more likely, pull it apart, as we're talking a lot of necessary mass).

And, even supposing you could make a projectile the size of a bitty .22, and could get it fast enough to have the energy to make it through, the energy absorbed by Earth would be so great that it would explode like a melon.



All these are just guesses, btw. But they sound good.

Quote: rxwine

Is it possible for something to go completely through the Earth, but not at the subatomic level?

I think something hot enough could melt its way to the core (The China Syndrome), but I don't know about coming out on the other side.

Is cosmic radiation considered subatomic? Those energetic little guys go right through the Earth all the time.

I don't think so. Regardless of the energy required, the projectile couldn't withstand the impact and friction needed to get through 12,000 kilometers of rock, lava, magma, and very dense metal. A very large projectile, say the size of Mars, could emerge whole, but it wouldn't go through the Earth, rather it would shatter it.

But every day untold quantities of neutrinos pass through the Earth as though it wasn't even there.

I wonder if dark matter could also pass through the Earth if it were moving fast enough (ie faster than 11 kms relative to the planet).

What if we never find out what dark energy and dark matter are?

Quote: Nareed

What if we never find out what dark energy and dark matter are?

We'll die, be broken down by bacteria, and eventually be consumed by our own sun =)

Quote: Nareed

What if we never find out what dark energy and dark matter are?

Always a new angle may appear...

Like so:

Quote:

An international team of astronomers have come across solutions to decades-old equations describing what happens as two spinning black holes in a binary system orbit each other and spiral in toward a collision.

The results should have significantly impact not only on the study of black holes, but also the search for elusive gravitational waves, a type of radiation predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, in the cosmos.

http://www.techfragments.com/3110/colliding-black-holes-bring-hope-for-gravitational-astronomy/

If the temperature this morning is 0 degrees and the Weather Channel says, "it will be twice as cold tomorrow", what will the temperature be?

Quote: rxwine

If the temperature this morning is 0 degrees and the Weather Channel says, "it will be twice as cold tomorrow", what will the temperature be?

00, like in roulette. Double the HE.

Quote: rxwine

If the temperature this morning is 0 degrees and the Weather Channel says, "it will be twice as cold tomorrow", what will the temperature be?

Just about the same under those hot studio lights.

What if dark energy isn't energy at all but a force?

Could the universe sue Timothy Zahn for copyright infringement? :)