Re:Interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas: What We Know Now
by actionfromafar on Monday July 28, 2025 @08:12PM
(#44717437)
Wow, I clearly didn't think this through. That's brutal.
That leads to another idea - if something more substantial was placed in its path - the resulting debris and gas cloud from the impact could reveal something about the contents of the object.
Or, if it's an alien probe, it would force their hand. :-D We could see some exotic manuevering.
Re:Interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas: What We Know Now
by TheOtherHobbes on Tuesday July 29, 2025 @03:58AM
(#44720428)
Or an interstellar war.
But they're probably used to it. At 61,000 m/s, 0.5mv^2 must turn every collision with a small rock into quite a big bang.
Re:Interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas: What We Know Now
by mcswell on Tuesday July 29, 2025 @02:40PM
(#44726868)
A "solid object". But it's not clear how solid a comet is (or more to the point, this or any interstellar comet). If it were a fuzzball of snow, maybe 20 km across, you could in theory decelerate through it more slowly, maybe using a very large parachute initially, then discarding that for successively smaller parachutes as you approach denser and denser parts of the comet. The EPOXI mission to the Hartley 2 comet was reportedly hit nine times by "snowflakes" coming off the comet, but not damaged (https://www.astronomy.com/space-exploration/spacecraft-sees-...).
Of course your point is probably still valid.
Of course the G-load would lessen based on how much you sped up to match its speed beforehand, but still, I think you'd need to be pretty much sped up to near the same speed as it before you could remotely possibly survive the impact.