[extropy-chat] Impact Effects (was: Pluto New Horizons launch -getting ready)

[Russell Wallace]

On 2/20/06, Amara Graps <amara at amara.com> wrote:
>
> Also, I gave you folks a pointer to an excellent tool
> http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/
>
> I suggest to read through the document to know their assumptions and
> equations. I see comments and questions here that tells me that no one
> read it. A discussion of the pressures, shock wave, vaporization and
> plasma produced (in the instance of fireballs) is discussed in that
> paper.
>

Guilty as charged :) Having now read that section, though, it doesn't seem
to invalidate my statement - while they do use the relativistic energy
equation, their model is explicitly designed to handle meteors, not science
fiction projectiles travelling at a large fraction of lightspeed, and I
would still expect a relativistic impactor on hitting atmosphere to turn
into a beam of plasma rather than several discrete chunks (how wide a beam,
I don't know).

- Russell
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