Foone🏳️⚧️
I was calculating the damage of weaponized high speed rail and wolfram alpha told me "infinity joules" and was confused where I messed up the math.
it turns out by "high speed" you don't usually mean "light speed", which would indeed give you infinity joules.
Foone🏳️⚧️
Sir Isaac Newton may be the deadliest son of a bitch in space, but if you hit LA with a train going lightspeed, Einstein will tell Newton to step aside and let the big boys play.
Foone🏳️⚧️
@futurebird the terminating station, in this case.
myrmepropagandist
Uh. Weaponized WHAT? Against what?
Foone🏳️⚧️
I was joking on Tumblr that two things I think the US should do are:
1. Revive the Superconducting Supercollider project (canceled in 1993)
2. Build a ton of high speed rail.
So why not combine the two? With a Superconducting Supercollider Train you could cut the travel time between New York & LA down from 6.5 hours to 13 milliseconds!
Foone🏳️⚧️
with the minor downside that if the brakes fail you'll hit LA with more kinetic energy than a supernova, instantly destroying the earth, then the rest of the solar system and any inhabitable worlds within 53 parsecs.
Foone🏳️⚧️
Relativistic weapons are a hell of a drug.
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunexotic.php#relativistic
Foone🏳️⚧️
This, by the way (looking up some formulas on Atomic Rockets and a few google searches on the mass of trains and speed of the Large Hadron Collider) is more math than was done on the Hyperloop at any point
Foone🏳️⚧️
@plaidtron3000 right. Compared to an observer on the train going the opposite way, they're going EVEN FASTER
Plaid
@foone 13 milliseconds to a stationary observer.
Foone🏳️⚧️
@munin I think that's Juuls. He wanted to vape forever
Fi 🏳️⚧️
I thought the infinity joules were what Dr Robotnik was after
Foone🏳️⚧️
@dr_a yeah. As you get closer to c, your mass increases. at c, your mass is infinity, as is your kinetic energy.
dr_a
@foone would infinite joules be a consequence of relativistic mass increase?
Foone🏳️⚧️
multiple people have pointed out that even if the breaks work, they'd have to dissipate 10^46 joules of kinetic energy, which is a LOT of heat to dump into the area.
Foone🏳️⚧️
@psilocervine very dry, as less than 10^27 joules would flash-boil all the earth's oceans
YES I CHECKED THE BREAKER
@foone it's okay, it's a dry heat
Dana Fried
(it will also destroy the train almost instantly, but the net momentum of the debris will definitely decrease over time)
Foone🏳️⚧️
@tess yeah it'd very quickly stop being a "train" and become an "expanding plasma cloud"
Dana Fried
@foone good news! you won't need brakes, because the hypersonic bow shock in front of the train that is carrying on nuclear fusion of air molecules will definitely slow the train all on its own
Foone🏳️⚧️
@munin the hottest summer since records began, which will be that summer, as all the records will be instantly evaporated
Fi 🏳️⚧️
it'll be the hot new summer blockbuster
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