or just a ‘poof’?

  • Eiri@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I could see that if a planet slowly spiraled into it, but the question specifically asks about a direct collision.

    Do you really think silicon and iron and other relatively heavy elements can simply be vaporized that quickly?

    • viking@infosec.pub
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      3 months ago

      Uh, yes. Absolutely. The corona of the sun alone is about 5 million km thick and has temperatures of >1 million degrees C.

      Crossing that distance takes about 0.3 light minutes. For a planet with a somewhat large mass traveling at a fraction of that (average travel speed of celestial objects is around 1000-10000 km/min, depending on its mass), it would take between 83 and 833 hours (3.5-35 days).

      For reference, the distance from earth to moon is about 400000km (and takes a rocket 3 days to traverse), so the sun’s radius is about 12x that. Just put things into perspective.

      Silicon vaporizes at 3650°C, iron at 3500°C. A couple days at a million degrees? Yeah it’s vaporized alright.