this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
50 points (98.1% liked)

Ask Lemmy

32340 readers
1720 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Like, obviously they would die immediately. But I'm wondering, would they be ripped to subatomic shreds? Would they somehow manage to set off a small nuclear explosion? Would they just get cooked as they're propelled into the void?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I did a little snooping and found someone claiming to have a source on the diameter of a jet, but their link went nowhere. I think it's this though. Anyway, at 0.05 light years across and presumed circular, a human body purposefully over estimated to have a cross sectional area of 2m^2, would be subject to 28.5 gigawatts.

Wolfram Alpha very kindly points out that this is the equivalent of nearly two and a half space shuttles blasting you, boosters and all. Good luck!

I've no idea how accurate this is, but googling gave me an estimate of the energy required that suggests it would take a little less than three seconds to vaporize an entire body. If it can create a plasma, that counts as subatomic in my books, but I've no idea what that would take.

Nuclear would depend more on the particle kinematics and I've got no intuition there tbh. I'm sure it's certainly possible though, especially if you get close.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 58 minutes ago

Matter in the jets go at like 0.25c, which some quick research tells me is absolutely enough to overwhelm the coulomb barrier and cause nuclear reactions.

Where is that image from? I was expecting a lot wider. (And it's going to be speculation because we have limited resolution that far away)

[–] dmention7@lemm.ee 5 points 2 days ago

I'm as fascinated by those shuttle comparisons as anything else!

On the face of it, I wouldn't have guessed that the space shuttle's power output was measured in gigawatts, nor that the space shuttle's output is on the same scale as an entire country's steam power output (in 1896, sure... but still!)