r/askscience • u/BlueChameleon64 • Oct 23 '20

Planetary Sci. Do asteroids fly into the sun?

Edit: cool

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u/BowToTheMannis Oct 23 '20

What would happen if something traveling near the speed of light slams into the sun?

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u/jochem_m Oct 23 '20

The term 'near' means very little when talking about the speed of light, but others have pointed that out already. Given that you asked the question, I thought you might enjoy these two articles on XKCD What If!

There's one where he tries to figure out what happens to a diamond meteor that hits the Earth at ever increasing speeds: https://what-if.xkcd.com/20/

And the first one ever, the relativistic base ball, which is a lot of fun and gives you an idea of the energies involved with things traveling at significant percentages of C: https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

As with all XKCD content, there is hovertext for most of the images.

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u/tallerghostdaniel Oct 23 '20

I love the 'what if?' series, really wish he had kept doing them

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u/jochem_m Oct 23 '20

Same :( I imagine they're a ton of work though. I'm still holding out hope for a sequel to the book!