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If you were shot by a grain of sand(at lightspeed)

D

darkxshade

Lifer
Obviously this is hypothetical so if a grain of sand were able to be shot at you(and stays intact/does not disintegrate) at the speed of light... would it be lethal?


Discuss.
 
#2 depends on where it hits. I would think a head shot would be less likely to kill than the heart or other areas, but I could be wrong.
 
how big is the grain? You can take a needle just about anywhere (even through the heart) and survive.

Through the head, as long as it didnt hit any arteries, would probably do some damage, but you'd live.
 
plus we dont know the physics of being in proximity of mass traveling the speed of light. Science as we know it today says mass CAN'T travel that fast.

If you think about a hyper sonic bullet, (50 cal) it can travel past you (technically not touching you) yet still rip you in half because of the vaccum it creates.
 
Originally posted by: Train
how big is the grain? You can take a needle just about anywhere (even through the heart) and survive.

Through the head, as long as it didnt hit any arteries, would probably do some damage, but you'd live.
Click to expand...

Your typical average sized grain of sand from the beach. It's not the same as a needle in that the tip of the needle is smaller than the sand but the circumference at the back is wider. Not to mention a needle has more mass.

Honestly, I don't think a grain of sand would even induce bleeding at lightspeed.
 
If you think about the bullet example I mentiond above. Obviously sand is a lot less mass, but theats WAAAAYYY offset by the exponential growth in speed.

Force = Speed x Mass, therefore a grain of sand at light speed is 1000000000 X times more force than a hypersonic 50 cal round.

If it flew within a thousand yards of you, you'd be ripped to shreds in under a second.
 
I'm thinking that because it is moving so fast, it would cleanly through-and-through you no matter where it hit, without causing alot of damage.
 
Originally posted by: Train
If you think about the bullet example I mentiond above. Obviously sand is a lot less mass, but theats WAAAAYYY offset by the exponential growth in speed.

Force = Speed x Mass, therefore a grain of sand at light speed is 1000000000 X times more force than a hypersonic 50 cal round.

If it flew within a thousand yards of you, you'd be ripped to shreds in under a second.
Click to expand...

that's hot
 
At the speed of light, the mass of the grain of sand would be infinite and you'd be sucked into a black hole?
 
Moving that fast, it would likely impart enough energy to be the equivalent of a high powered laser beam. It could hypothetically impart enough force to blow a hole in you the size of the sun, but odds are it would simply bore straight through you cauterizing the wound as it went (due to high energy). But honestly, a person is barely thick and dense enough to reduce the momentum of that gain of sand by a fraction of 1%.

That's not to say it wouldn't hurt like a bitch though.
 
Originally posted by: Train
plus we dont know the physics of being in proximity of mass traveling the speed of light. Science as we know it today says mass CAN'T travel that fast.

If you think about a hyper sonic bullet, (50 cal) it can travel past you (technically not touching you) yet still rip you in half because of the vaccum it creates.
Click to expand...

No it wont.
 
Originally posted by: Train
If you think about the bullet example I mentiond above. Obviously sand is a lot less mass, but theats WAAAAYYY offset by the exponential growth in speed.

Force = Speed x Mass, therefore a grain of sand at light speed is 1000000000 X times more force than a hypersonic 50 cal round.

If it flew within a thousand yards of you, you'd be ripped to shreds in under a second.
Click to expand...

Whether that's true or not. You'd have to consider how far that force is trailing the grain of sand because surely it's not moving at the speed of light. The grain would initially hit you first followed by the shear. But lets ignore that because the question is the initial blow from the grain itself and not what happens afterwards.
 
Originally posted by: Train
If you think about the bullet example I mentiond above. Obviously sand is a lot less mass, but theats WAAAAYYY offset by the exponential growth in speed.

Force = Speed x Mass, therefore a grain of sand at light speed is 1000000000 X times more force than a hypersonic 50 cal round.

If it flew within a thousand yards of you, you'd be ripped to shreds in under a second.
Click to expand...

fail.. f=ma.. a=0, f=0
on the other hand, momentum = speed x mass. momentum is what makes an suv own a small car. But in this case, it'd probably wouldn't matter since the grain would go right through the body and thus little momentum would be absorbed.

The contributing factors to death would probably how the projectile would enter and exit the body and what body part hit.

If it went through like a needle, then I'd say it's unlikely there would be any death, even through the brain.
 
I would tend to guess that it would pass through you, leaving a grain-of-sand-sized hole. That is, if you abide by the accepted reality that you couldn't realistically make a grain of sand travel at the speed of light.
 
Originally posted by: Crusty
The faster it moves the more energy it has, it will vaporize your ass instantly.
Click to expand...

I'm no rocket scientist but I don't believe all that energy is transfered into you. I'm guessing the sand would preserve all that energy and only a small amount is displaced as it penetrates and continues on. It travelled through you in a fraction of a nanosecond.
 
Originally posted by: SSSnail
So I googled and came up with the grain of salt will hit you with ~60 Newton. Whatever that means...
Click to expand...

Correction : it will pass through you with almost all of that ~60 Newton intact.

Think of it like this :

a normal .357 round is much less deadly to a human than a black talon version of the same round, due to the bullet flattening out and fanning to distribute the kinetic energy to the target in the form of more damage.

A tiny grain of sand does not have the mass necessary to deliver a lot of energy to a non-dense target such as a human.
 
OP should change the question to .999999C to avoid destroying the universe.

In that case it would have an incredible amount of mass, so I imagine your body would be promptly separated into it's constituent subatomic particles.
 
I have no idea but I would guess that the speed of the sand would vaporize you or blow you to nothing.
 
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