what would happen if you were exposed to space
What would happen if yous shot a gun in space?
Fires tin can't burn in the oxygen-complimentary vacuum of space, but gunscan shoot. Modern ammunition contains its own oxidizer, a chemical that will trigger the explosion of gunpowder, and thus the firing of a bullet, wherever you are in the universe. No atmospheric oxygen required.
The just difference between pulling the trigger on Earth and in infinite is the shape of the resulting smoke trail. In space, "it would exist an expanding sphere of smoke from the tip of the barrel," said Peter Schultz an astronomer at Brown Academy who researches affect craters.
The possibility of gunfire in space allows for all kinds of cool scenarios.
Related: vii everyday things that happen strangely in space
Shooting stars
Imagine yous're floating freely in the vacuum between galaxies — just y'all, your gun and a single bullet. You have ii options. You either can spend all of eternity trying to figure out how y'all got there, or you can shoot the damn cosmos.
If y'all do the latter, Newton'south third law of motility dictates that the force exerted on the bullet will impart an equal and reverse force on the gun, and, because you're belongings the gun, you. With very few intergalactic atoms confronting which to caryatid yourself, you'll start moving astern (not that yous'd accept any way of knowing). If the bullet leaves the gun barrel at 1,000 meters per second, y'all — because you lot're much more massive than it is — will head the other way at only a few centimeters per second.
Once shot, the bullet will keep going, quite literally, forever. "The bullet will never stop, because the universe is expanding faster than the bullet can grab up with any serious amount of mass" to slow information technology down, said Matija Cuk, an astronomer with joint appointments at Harvard University and the SETI Institute. (If the universe weren't expanding, then the one or two atoms per cubic centimeter encountered by the bullet in the near-vacuum of space would bring it to a standstill after x meg low-cal-years.)
Getting downward to details, the universe expands at a rate of 73 kilometers per second per megaparsec (about iii million calorie-free-years, or the boilerplate distance between galaxies). By Cuk's calculations, this ways matter that is 40,000 to 50,000 light-years away from the bullet would move away from it at most the same speed at which it is travelling, and would thus exist forever out of reach. In the unabridged time to come of the universe, the bullet will take hold of up only to atoms that are less than 40,000 or so calorie-free-years from the bedroom of your gun.
Speaking of y'all, y'all'll be bobbing through infinite forever, too.
Related: In images: Visualizations of infinity
Shooting giants from the hip
Guns practice actually get carried to space, though non quite to the void between galaxies. For decades, the standard survival pack for Russian cosmonauts has included a gun. Until recently, information technology wasn't just any gun, but "a deluxe all-in-one weapon with three barrels and a folding stock that doubles as a shovel and contains a swing-out machete," co-ordinate to space historian James Oberg. The space guns are issued in case the cosmonauts demand one back on Earth, so that they can protect themselves if emergency landing of their Soyuz spacecraft has left them deserted in a treacherous region. Merely still, cosmonautsin theory could shoot their guns before they landed.
So what if, during a spacewalk, a cosmonaut opened fire on Jupiter?
He or she should feel free to shoot from the hip. Co-ordinate to Robert Flack, a physicist at University College London, the enormous gravitational field of Jupiter is likely to suck in a bullet even if information technology is badly aimed. "Jupiter is and then huge, information technology will capture the bullet and then it will follow a curved path down into the planet," Flack said.
And as information technology does, information technology will option upward some serious steam. According to Schultz, if the bullet is shot straight toward Jupiter, the planet'due south gravity will accelerate the ammo to the heart-popping speed of almost lx kilometers per 2d past the time it crosses the gas giant's threshold.
Sentry your dorsum
Shooting someone in the back is a cowardly human action. In space, "theoretically you lot could shootyourself in the back," Schultz said.
Y'all could do it, for instance, while in orbit around a planet. Considering objects orbiting planets are actually in a constant country of gratis fall, you have to get the setup just correct. Yous'd have to shoot horizontally at just the right altitude for the bullet to circle the planet and autumn back to where it started (you lot). And you'd also accept to consider how much yous'll become kicked backwards (and consequently, how much your altitude will alter) when you fire.
"The aim has to be perfect," Schultz said.
Such a scenario isn't equally absurd as it sounds. In fact, Schultz said scientists at one signal were considering setting upwards such a self-striking in space in order to investigate the effects of loftier-speed impacts.
Withal, because all the math involved, Cuk suggests it might be easier to commit space suicide past standing on a mountain on the moon. "'Shooting yourself in the dorsum' works in principle if you shoot a bullet at horizon from the superlative of a lunar mountain, at 1600 meters per second or so," he said. He thinks it just might work as long as you accommodate your aim to account for lumps and irregularities in the shape of the moon, which would bear upon the distance of the bullet as it travels.
With then many possible picture show plotlines to consider, one question remains: Why are there so few space shoot 'em ups?
Originally published on Live Science.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/18588-shoot-gun-space.html
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