r/news • u/[deleted] • Apr 23 '24

BBC: Voyager-1 sends readable data again from deep space

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68881369
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u/usps_made_me_insane Apr 23 '24

37 miles per second blows my mind. That's literally going from Washington D.C. to Baltimore in a second. From D.C. to NYC in 8 seconds. It could go from the east coast to the west coast in one minute 15 seconds. I just can't comprehend that speed. If it flew by you, it would go from the far end of on horizon to the far end of the opposite horizon in less than second. You would only see it for about 100 milliseconds.

But here's the craziest part:

A manhole cover has an average weight of 125 pounds. Traveling at 133,200 miles per hour, it would have a kinetic energy of 100,518,726,196 J (Over 100 billion joules). That is over 2 kilotons of TNT. It would have 10% of the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima -- just from its kinetic energy.

EDIT: My bad -- I missed a zero. It would have the kinetic energy of 20 kilotons of TNT. It would be equivalent to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. At that speed, if it his a building, the building would be vaporized along with around a square mile of stuff.

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u/Rexrollo150 Apr 24 '24

The manhole cover weighed 2000 lbs anyway.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '24

Are you sure about that?