quote:
Originally posted by Alpha Kodiak:
If you could use a linear accelerator to fire a normal matter squirrel into an anti-matter squirrel at .99C, would you get an additional kinetic energy component to the explosion? What are the relativistic effects of a near-light-speed squirrel, anyway?
Well, (from the reference frame of the shooter) he'd be about 7 times as heavy, about 7 times shorter (in the axis of his travel) and he'd impact a stationary object with a kinetic energy equal to 130 megatons (assuming the rather well-fed, 1 KG squirrel)--about six times the energy that would be gained by converting the squirrel's mass to energy.
Just as an aside, the kinetic energy of an object is equal to the "conVersion" energy of the mass of an object at about .87c.
Load up your squirrels...
--A Philistine
(EDIT--fixed a math error in the KE=ConVersion calc.
)
[This message has been edited by a philistine (edited 01 March 2001).]