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?

  • Sasha [They/Them]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    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.

    • dmention7@lemm.ee
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      1 day 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!)