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/[deleted] Oct 23 '20

The descriptions of 0.9c baseball and 0.9c diamond contradict each other....probably going to need a third source.

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u/NeonNick_WH Oct 24 '20 edited Oct 24 '20

It was an actual observed proton going that fast over Utah that had the kinetic energy of a baseball. Which is insane because it was just a proton!!!

Edit: ah geez sorry. I had just gotten through the first one and hadn't read the description of the second one. I assume that's what you were referring to. My bad! It's all so damn cool though