• kieron115@startrek.website
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    4 hours ago

    Also Q help you if the navigational deflectors wink out for even a microsecond lol. I’m not a physicist but I’m fairly certain that hitting a mote of dust at 1/4C would cause a large enough explosion to wipe out an entire planet, if not an entire solar system.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      A 1 gram rock would be “almost nuclear,” yeah, but not planet killing, and most micrometeoroids/cosmic dust is fortunately much smaller than that.

      • kieron115@startrek.website
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        2 hours ago

        I found a fun calculator trying to research this. An object weighing 1 microgram, travelling at 0.25c, would contain nearly 3 megajoules of kinetic energy. So yeah I guess dust wouldn’t be apocalyptic but that still wouldn’t be fun to bounce into/through.