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Originally Posted by gopher65
Hmmmm. I just remembered this topic, and I was thinking, since this object is travelling at ~0.9c, you might be correct that it would vaporize upon hitting the atmophere. But I don't think this would diminish its destructive effect. This just means that the entire energy of the object (which is considerable) would be tranferred into the atmophere instead of the ground. So there wouldn't be much of a crater, and there wouldn't be much in the way of a dust cloud (or at least not as much of one), but you would have a truely gigantic shockwave travelling around the earth.
I have no idea how to calculate the damage that such a shockwave would do. Anyone care to take a shot at it?
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I'm not sure it would vaporize. It is moving so quickly that it might not have time to heat up much as it entered. In order to vaporize, I think it would need a large surface area (ie be composed of a porous material), or it would need to slow a great deal as it entered the atmosphere.
Actually, this brings up an interesting question. How does time dilation enter into the picture? Does the object, because it is moving so quickly, heat up at a different rate than classical thermo would indicate? I'd like to say yes, but I'm still undecided as to what I think would happen.
Anyway, maybe I'll give the shockwave model a shot, assuming that the thing vaporizes entirely. I know how to model pressure waves in open space, but the existence of ground and the fact that the world is a closed surface make it a little more challenging (accursed co-ordinate conversions!
) We'll see if the long weekend gives me time to try it out...