High-Speed Collisions in Space – Experiments with a Carrot Gun
Andy uses a carrot gun to discuss the hazards of micrometeoroid impacts in space, showing that at high enough speeds even tiny specks of dust can be dangerous. Why do high energy collisions...
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Today I want to talk to you about matter. Specifically, what happens when it collides with other matter. This is a bit of equipment I built for this year's CHRISTMAS LECTURES, to discuss the hazards of micrometeoroid impacts in space. Whether this is with man-made stuff of natural micrometeroids. Micrometeoroids are tiny specs of space dust which become very dangerous at high speeds. So we built this bit of kit here to demonstrate that anything can be dangerous it it's going fast enough. Even a carrot. Using this high-speed footage we were able to clock the carrots travelling at around 100 metres per second. That's well over 300 km per hour... which is more than enough velocity to obliterate a lightbulb, just in case you were wondering. But t...
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Today I want to talk to you about matter. Specifically, what happens when it collides with other matter. This is a bit of equipment I built for this year's CHRISTMAS LECTURES, to discuss the hazards of micrometeoroid impacts in space. Whether this is with man-made stuff of natural micrometeroids. Micrometeoroids are tiny specs of space dust which become very dangerous at high speeds. So we built this bit of kit here to demonstrate that anything can be dangerous it it's going fast enough. Even a carrot. Using this high-speed footage we were able to clock the carrots travelling at around 100 metres per second. That's well over 300 km per hour... which is more than enough velocity to obliterate a lightbulb, just in case you were wondering. But t...
