What If a needle or a grain of sand hits the earth at the speed of light?

We are used to anticipating danger from outer space. A huge almost unknown space hostile to humans and no wonder colossal explosions take place asteroids and comets travel at tremendous speed. There are black holes and all this can potentially cause the death of the earth but what about something small for example an ordinary sewing needle what if one finds itself in space accelerates to the speed of light and then crashes into our planet.

 

Any object consisting of matter can't move at the speed of light or faster so scientists from NASA are unlikely to ever consider such a disaster well I will do it for them today you'll know how dangerous such small things can be if they are properly accelerated and at the same time, you'll learn about another strange scenario of the end of the world. Our planet is constantly bombarded by various cosmic bodies we don't even notice most of them they just burn up in the atmosphere.

 

 

Sometimes celestial bodies managed to reach the visibility zone and even make some noise take for example the Chelyabinsk meteor or the very asteroid that caused the dinosaurs to become extinct but the fact is that all these celestial bodies move very slowly of course considering the scale of the universe. For example, the Chelyabinsk meteor was moving at a speed of 60 to 69 thousand kilometers per hour that's 37 to 43,000 miles per hour.

 

Now imagine that one day scientists will report the terrible news an unknown object is approaching the earth at the speed of light it's very small the size of a needle or even a grain of sand if at this stage you had time to think that there's nothing to worry about. It is in vain what seems ridiculous at first glance poses a serious danger to our planet. The consequences would be terrible. It's all about speed for example take a car if it moves at a speed of about 50 km/h or 31 miles per hour and hits a person the person will survive if you accelerate the car to 65 km/h or 40 miles per hour then the collision could result in death or serious injuries. The speed of life is almost 300,000 kilometers per second that's 186,000 miles per second. This is very fast. In nature visible light and other types of electromagnetic radiation travel at the speed of light and also possibly gravitational waves.

 

Scientists believe that massive particles can't move at the speed of light, they can only come close to it for example protons are accelerated just to near light speed in the Large Hadron Collider so a needle approaches the earth at the speed of light or a grain of sand in general something very small. The length of the simplest sewing needle is about 35 millimeters or one in four-tenths of an inch the size of a large grain of sand can reach five millimeters or nineteen hundreds of an inch. For comparison the same Chelyabinsk meteor had a diameter of about twenty meters or 66 feet the difference is huge but in this case the size does not matter even a tiny object having accelerated to tremendous speed will become deadly. It won't burn up in the atmosphere and will not explode in flight. The bonds that ensure the integrity of an object will stop working a grain of sand or a needle will simply become a bunch of atoms passing through the air but the real danger is kinetic energy. I won't bore you with calculations we will immediately get to the result.

 

The kinetic energy for example of a grain of sand which has nearly accelerated to the speed of light will be equal to the kinetic energy of an object weighing 100 tons that is falling from a height of a 15 story building it is as if the largest part of the Statue of Liberty fell from its pedestal in one fell swoop. So if a needle rushing at the speed of light strikes the earth will scientists have time to notice it? It's hard to say but in a collision with the surface of our planet all the kinetic energy will go into the energy of the explosion the power released will be similar to the energy of a nuclear bomb approximately 43 kilotons of TNT and that's a lot.

 

The Bomb Fatman dropped on Nagasaki had a capacity of about 21 kilotons. Just compare the two an ordinary needle and a nuclear bomb that destroyed an entire city in order to understand what kind of destructions such a collision can make. You need to choose a city, for example, New York where else should a needle moving at the speed of light strike if not Manhattan, cinematic alien invasions happen here if an atomic bomb of the same power were dropped here then most of Manhattan and the surrounding area would be destroyed even at a distance of 4 kilometers or 2 and a half miles building windows would break people who are a little closer to the epicenter would suffer serious harm, for example, all the inhabitants of Hell's Kitchen would get third-degree burns. Central Park will be almost completely burned people, who are within 1 and a half kilometers or less than a mile of the place where the bomb Falls are likely to die within a month. The needle bomb can also penetrate below ground creating a huge crater with its explosion and yes the Statue of Liberty will definitely fall from its pedestal perhaps right into the water.

 

What about the big wave there is another version of how this might go it's less scientific but much more spectacular I'm sure you'll want to see it crashing into the planet, the needle disappears into the Earth's crust. A plasma cloud will spread from the entry point to the sides energy will escape through the body of the planet and along with it many particles created by the collision with the Earth's crust. It will become a colossal fountain of everything that our earth is made up of in a split second it will become so hot that there will be nothing left alive on the surface. The energy will be so great that it will exceed the energy of the gravitational coupling of the planet see what all this means an explosion the earth will simply be torn apart faster than you have time to blink. However there will be no one left to do so anyway the solar system will change forever and all because of some small needle however, this whole situation is of course hypothetical so there's an alternative point of view, some physicists believe that because of too much kinetic energy and enormous inertia the needle will simply pierce the earth through and this will happen so quickly that no one will even notice the needle will come out the other side of the planet and continue its flight. Perhaps due to interaction with the mantle and the Earth's crust earthquakes will begin but they are unlikely to be strong. Ultimately humanity will easily survive.

 

 

Whatever happens but what if the needle doesn't strike the ground or even the water but rather a person. The probability of this is quite small but it's still there, it would seem that this is just like the Statue of Liberty which dropped on your head yes and from the 15th floor. It sounds like it's impossible to survive. The kinetic energy of the needle will be very strong if your body absorbs it completely, it will simply explode but physics is a tricky thing due to the high energy and small size the needle in contact with the skin will immediately begin to destroy all the bonds between cells. In this case, the rest of the body will feel almost nothing, the object will simply move through the body dissipating a little of its energy into friction in slightly increasing your temperature as a result the needle will be able to make an almost perfect hole in your body, not a single vital organ is affected not seriously anyway and the wound is likely to be cauterized.

 

I'll try to summarize, does it make sense to fear needles that travel at the speed of light, I think everyone will decide for themselves but still I hope that extraterrestrial civilizations are sufficiently developed and will so with the help of something else.