What is the fastest speed ever recorded for anything?

Question

It can be a rocket, car, plane, etc......but it has to be the fastest ever recorded on earth. There is only one answer but I don't know what sort object did it.

Answer 1

It depends both on what you mean by "fastest speed ever recorded," and "on Earth."

Light is naturally the obvious answer.

Next to that are probably the speeds DEDUCED for the lightest neutrinos, following their production in particle accelerator experiments, or those received from Supernova 1987A on February 23rd 1987, for example.

The lightest neutrinos evidently have a mass of the order m c^2 = 10^(-3) to 10^(-2) eV, yet their MEASURED energy is often of order 10 MeV, that is 10^7 eV. (There may well be even more energetic ones produced by cosmic ray collisions with the Earth's atmosphere.) Let's look at the velocity implications of this. The relation between energy and speed is given by Einstein's famous relationship:

E = m c^2 / [1 - (v/c)^2]^(1/2), so that [1 - (v/c)^2]^(1/2)
= (m c^2) / E,

or v^2 / c^2 = 1 - [(m c^2) / E]^2, that is, to an excellent approximation,

v/c = 1 - (1/2) [(m c^2) / E]^2 .

Thus, expressing both energies in eV, the highest speed would be AT LEAST that given by m c^2 = 10^(-2) eV, or m c^2 / E
≈ 10^(-9), so

v/c ≈ 1 - (0.5) 10^(-18) = 0.9999999999999999995

(18 ' 9's ' followed by a ' 5 '),

while if you take the lower estimate for the lowest neutrino's mass one gets:

v/c ≈ 1 - (0.5) 10^(-20) = 0.999999999999999999995 .

(That's 20 ' 9's ' followed by a ' 5. ' [ ! ] )

Recall that we're talking here about speeds ALREADY "acheived," not speeds planned for the future.

If we're talking about speeds achieved by MACROSCOPIC, MECHANICAL OBJECTS on Earth, that would probably be by a rocket sled on 29 April, 2003 at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. Hitting hypersonic speeds of Mach 8.5 --- that's 6,416 mph, in civilian terms --- a 4-stage rocket sled took just 6.04 seconds to blast the more than 3-mile length of track. (Another report of the same event claims that the rocket sled reached a "world record speed" of 6,453 mph.)

I don't think that rockets going into orbit (at ≈ 17,500 mph) or leaving Earth orbit (at ≈ 24,500 mph) satisfy the "on Earth" requirement. They are well "off Earth" when they achieve these speeds, and indeed still "off Earth" by a considerable amount when they first pass the speed achieved by the rocket sled mentioned above. Similarly, meteorites or meteoroids slamming into the earth's atmosphere at ~ 25,000 mph or more (including a celebrated one that BRIEFLY skimmed through the outer atmosphere and went on out into space again!) don't qualify as being "on Earth." By the time that meteorites reach the Earth's surface (if any), most of them are moving at much slower speeds on the order of only 100s of mph, due to the effects of atmospheric friction. (The great Tunguska event of 1908 has had many explanations, one of them being an airburst of a meteoroid/asteroid/comet head 5 to 10 kilometers (3–6 miles) above the Earth's surface, following its atmospheric entry at a typically high speed.)

Live long and prosper.

Answer 2

Fastest Speed Ever Recorded

Answer 3

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
What is the fastest speed ever recorded for anything?
It can be a rocket, car, plane, etc......but it has to be the fastest ever recorded on earth. There is only one answer but I don't know what sort object did it.

Answer 4

On the border between France and Switzerland, they are building a huge 17 mile-diameter dome which will allow scientists to accelerate particles at about 99.99999... times the speed of light. (they want to record the existence of the Higgs Boson-google it). That is definitely going to be the fastest particle ever accelerated, whatever kind of particle it is. (Research Higgs boson, and you'll get the particle. Man that's fast!)

Answer 5

The only things that can go faster then light are nonphysical geometrical abstractions, like the movement of the point where the blades of a giant pair of scissors intersect as they are closed. The 'phase velocity' of a wave can be faster than the speed of light, too. Sometimes you'll read about a galaxy being measured to move faster than light from photographs, but it always turns out to be a misinterpretation that fails to account for the time of flight of the light. Again it's only geometrical "nothings" that can go faster than light, so you can say the phrase "Nothing can go faster than light" with a new emphasis-- "Nothing CAN go faster than light!"

Answer 6

well to bein the speed of light is what is the universal measure of very fast things.
as far as I know the absolute fastest man made vehicle would be the shuttle when it returns from space.
there is also an atom splitter in California they use neutrons and send them toward atoms to split them

Answer 7

Probably the protons and other charged particles in accelerator experiments, which are magnetically juiced to nearly the speed of light and used as relativistic bullets to smash things apart and see what they're made of.

Answer 8

This is a guess -- the Saturn 5 rocket, which reached an escape velocity of approximately 7 miles per second.

Answer 9

How about anything made of a multiple units of an element. say like an ounce or gram of something. how fast have they ever got something like that to travel

Answer 10

Light at 186000 miles and hour