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?
I mean, technically you’re in one right now. Some of them just randomly point in our direction. But I’m sure you mean up close.
It’s particles going a significant fraction of the speed of light, but you may well have a few of those going through you as we speak. I don’t know how much is known about how wide they are exactly, or how dense, but it’s possible you’d die slowly from radiation poisoning rather than of anything more dramatic.
Some things look a lot more impressive from far away, like nebulae, which are almost perfect vacuums that are just a bit less perfect than their surroundings.
I think it may be smaller than that. Down to subatomic particles. But that is funny haha. Also his chin is a nutsack.
Edit: I’m very juvenile.
I’m very juvenile
I wouldn’t have figured myself, P00ptart
Randal Munro’s comment in a what if comes to mind: “You wouldn’t really die of anything, you would just stop being biology and start being physics”
To shreds you say
They would no longer have to pay taxes.
Where do I sign up?
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.
Matter in the jets goes 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)
No clue where the image is from, sorry.
Yeah, figured it would be something relativistic like that, I was just looking at overall power to do that back of the envelope calculation. Considering how high the energy is at ~0.25c, it makes me wonder what the average particle spacing is in the jet at that diameter.
I expect a lot wider too, the jets will diverge of course so it’s going to depend on how far away from the star you’re measuring. I just took 0.05lyr because it’s a size I had a very shitty source for hahaha.
Yeah, we’re pretty much short a variable here. If we had density, mass flux or (some rough measure of) diameter we could calculate the others, but we don’t. That might be because it’s actually unknown - they’re all really far away. In any case, I doubt it’s narrow and dense enough to really be very matter-like. It’s a particle beam.
I expect a lot wider too, the jets will diverge of course so it’s going to depend on how far away from the star you’re measuring
Like I mentioned in my own reply, we’re actually in the beams of multiple ones already, just by random chance.
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!)
Quasars are some of the most energetic objects in the known universe. That jet is made of high energy X-rays and gamma rays and would probably convert a human body to ionized particles very quickly.
Does that mean they like evaporate? Incinerate?
Disintegrate
Ionate
Ever hold a strong flashlight up to your hand and see your bones outlined in red? Like that, only… more.
Only one way to find out
A simulation!
All the basic technologies ever invented by humans to feed and protect themselves depend on a relentless commitment to hard-nosed empiricism: you cannot assume that your arrowheads will pierce the hide of a bison or that your raft will float just because the omens are propitious and you have been given supernatural reassurance that they will. You have to be sure.
—Barbara Ehrenreich
they would be unalived before they knew what hit them
Well yeah, but the question is how. It’s interesting to think about because we have no idea exactly. You can be unalived from bumping your head wrong, just dying in itself is unimpressive.
Also: my new favorite death representative wording is “meeting his end credits” that’s just a side, but it sounds way more fun, especially if the person really deserves it.
He game ended is still a classic as well.
That is a good one.
This kills the human.
The quasar wouldn’t do anything that the vacuum hadn’t already done…
You can actually survive a vacuum pretty well, until you suffocate.
