If a spaceship hit the Earth's Atmosphere at 500times the speed of light?

Question

What affect would it have on the Earth?
I figured it would shake the Earth alot and most likely heat up the Earth incredibly fast.

Just to say I'm not bothered about the ship, just the Earth.

If it could exceed the speed of light, use some imagination.

If the ships designed to with stand that pressure.

And actually, there must be things with more energy then the speed of light as a black whole is the one thing light can't beat or escape meaning it's possible something has the energy to go faster, we just have no idea what.

I'll slow it down a bit. What if it hit at the speed of light.

Answer 1

If it just hits the atmosphere, not too much (a bit of localised displacement) and thundering noise for any passengers as gravitational pull forces the ship to slow down to the speed of sound.

Answer 2

well, its physically impossible to go faster than the speed of light, it goes into all this weird Einstein stuff about when ur going at the speed of light, time actually slows down, an how fast are u really going? its very strange stuff, u can actually travel at the speed of light in an orbital trajectory, an u'll come back after 5 years, and ten years have happened on earth.
okay well anyway, if a spaceship hit the earth at the speed of light, it wud pro ably make a massive crator, or explosion depending on the desity and size of the ship. an extreamly small meteorite can cause massive damage and hugde crators, imagine throwing a peddble in a bucket of water, the pebble is small, but the the vibrations splash the water out of the bucket. its sort of like that.
of course the ship wud probably mostly disintegrate in the atmosphere, it migth even blow up before it gets to earth, im not sure ♥

Answer 3

The Earth would be destroyed.

Setting aside the problems of how it got to be going that fast, where the energy of acceleration came from, etc....

You have to think about the ridiculous energy levels at work here. 500 times the speed of light is so much speed that a single atom going that fast would have more kinetic energy than the sum total of all the heat and light our sun has ever emitted, or ever will.

Anything getting hit with that much power is gone, simply gone, like hitting a rotten orange with a crane wrecking ball. Less than that, a rotten grape beneath a falling skyscraper.

Answer 4

The Earth and the entire universe would be gone. The amount of energy it would take to bring anything past the speed of light would translate to an infinite mass. The speed of light itself would also require an amount of energy that would translate to infinite mass.

To what degree am I allowed to alter reality for the sake of this question? Even if the space ship's speed doesn't cause it's mass to infinitely swell, then time on the spaceship would be moving backwards at about 500 times the rate it moves forward! The speed of light and time are relative. The speed of light is the same for every observer, so if you are in the space ship that is travelling at the speed of light, light does not speed up to get ahead of you, time for you slows down or stops and the speed of light remains constant. Beyond the speed of light, time begins to move backward.

In regards to your statement, "And actually, there must be things with more energy then the speed of light as a black whole is the one thing light can't beat or escape meaning it's possible something has the energy to go faster, we just have no idea what."
The fact that light is unable to escape the event horizon of a black hole is not an indication of any object's ability to reach the speed of light. The speed of light is just a measurement, it doesn't have energy, so it's inaccurate to say "there must be things with more energy then (sic) the speed of light...," but in order for an object to reach the speed of light, energy would be REQUIRED. On the other hand, light itself does not REQUIRE energy to obtain the speed of light... light IS energy.

Answer 5

1st the ship would disentergrate before it hit Earth because to reach 500times the speed of light would mean you would have to circle around something so at to not hit debris.

2nd if it did hit it like that (able to withstand the heat) then it would probably severly fracture the earth's core, possibly even split the world in half.

Answer 6

Flying at right angles to the earth it would rip away the super heated atmosphere in its wake unless you've something to deflect the particles first. Any other angle and the bow shock pressure wave would sonic boom half the planet to oblivion. You're not planning on impact are you ? Please slow down.

Answer 7

The ship would break up before hitting the earth.

Answer 8

guyster, there are particles which are belived to go faster than light, so lay off the insults unless you know what yuo are talking abut.

trouble is with this, we have no understanding of something that fast so could not possibly predict what would happen.

Answer 9

first of all, the speed of light is the speed limit of the universe. it is impossible to go faster than in. second, if it did, it would smash against the atmosphere and end life in a giant freeze. if it hits it at a hole in the atmosphere, then it will probablyu disintergrate 10 miles beneath the surface.

Answer 10

if a space ship travelling that fast hit the earth , yu wouldnt know a damn thing about it