Re: Moving masses

From: DavidBowman (dt041054_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 03/05/05 

Date: 5 Mar 2005 04:15:05 -0800

I think his question really was "are ther any objects the size of a
rock or larger that travel at relativistic speeds".

Answer: in general, no. Exoloding stars hurl gas away from their poles
at a good part of c, but the material is more like a vacuum than a
material.

Mass requires so much energy to accellerate it relativisticaly that any

natural phenomenon pushing it that hard would tear it into atoms.

I think objects pulled into neutron stars probably move pretty fast
before they hit, but I have no idea how fast.

Nor do I know at what point the integrity of the physical object would
be overwhelmed by tidal forces, naking it not your onject anymore.

I imagine that close to a black hole, there's a point where molecules
are torn apart and rendered into atoms because of the tidal force.

In any case, all of this would be local to the neutron star, not
something like asteroids or plantes, which is what I think you're
talking about.

The only other exception I can think of would be very distant galaxies.
 The space between us and them is expanding, and there's so much of it
that really distant objects are receeding with very, very fast relative
to us.

=[ d