Re: Any limits on relativistic impact blast velocity?

On Oct 19, 11:02 am, Sam Wormley <sworml...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
IsaacKuo wrote:
What I'm wondering about is the sort of performance
can be expected from the kinetic impact. Let's
assume that the impactor has a near-c velocity
and the mass of the propellant puff is an order of
magnitude greater than the impactor's rest mass.

Near-c velocity impacts result in plasma and showers
of subatomic particles.

Sure. And at least at first, the kinetic energy in
the plasma and particles will be practically equal
to the kinetic energy of the impactor. There's
some small amount of energy absorbed in
ionizing the propellant gas, of course, but we
can more or less ignore this.

My question is what happens after the initial
impact. The plasma starts off hot, and thus will
be radiating a lot of thermal X-rays. How much
energy gets lost to thermal radiation while
the plasma expands and converts the brownian
thermal motion into bulk spherical expansion?

Isaac Kuo

.

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