Qaladar on 11/11/2006 at 16:39
Crater nothing... an object that size hitting at that speed would put out enough energy to melt the entire planet's crust and throw big chunks of lava back into orbit. Getting there without hitting anything, however, has a probability of so close to 1 its negligible. Space is big and rocks are (relatively) small.
RocketMan on 13/11/2006 at 04:28
Do you know what kind of mass flux would be incident on the grove tavelling at those speeds? Its pretty damn high. To be honest I think the ship's hull would be sheared clean off, followed by the rest of it long before it got to Tau Ceti....assuming it could somehow maintain its colossal speed. Some sort of space-time shortcut would "probably" be necessary to explain how the thing arrived intact.
Cobra on 13/11/2006 at 14:37
Not that I don't think it is an oversight, but..
I thought when they explored TC 5 the grove WAS wrecked pretty badly, also, surely all that needs to 'survive' the impact needs to be a few annelid spores and a SHODAN wafer?
Or, perhaps more simply, if the annelids were psionic at the time of the grove being ejected (didn't play SS1, so sorry if I am wrong), maybe they just floated around for a bit and Psi-teleported or whatevered themselves to a suitable place to grow into something suitably evil (which just so happened to be Tau Ceti 5)- in fact, they could have evolved their psiness whilst floating around- and then started wanting to take over the whole of life, so started a distress signal on the offchance an FTL ship was in the neighbourhood?
Not much better, but at least it uses something (PSI) which we can't as easily show to be as impossible as moving at such a sizable fraction of the speed of light, maybe?
Qaladar on 13/11/2006 at 16:25
At that speed, the impact of a single solitary kilogram (about 2 pounds) of mass impacts with the energy of more than 150 Hiroshima bombs.
Multiply accordingly for an object the size of the grove.
Nothing would surive that... NOTHING. It would melt the entire planet's surface and flash its atmosphere into plasma instantly.
Matthew on 13/11/2006 at 16:36
Hence why it was obviously the Beyonder.
AxTng1 on 13/11/2006 at 22:12
I think Billie Bad Wolf did it.
RocketMan on 14/11/2006 at 18:54
Quote Posted by Qaladar
At that speed, the impact of a single solitary kilogram (about 2 pounds) of mass impacts with the energy of more than 150 Hiroshima bombs.
Multiply accordingly for an object the size of the grove.
Nothing would surive that... NOTHING. It would melt the entire planet's surface and flash its atmosphere into plasma instantly.
Pretty much...so are we all agreed the thing didn't crash into TC at a third the speed of light?
kidmystik101 on 15/11/2006 at 06:12
not even twinkies could survive that
AxTng1 on 15/11/2006 at 06:44
Quote Posted by kidmystik101
not even twinkies could survive that
Depends on the size of the twinkie
Matthew on 15/11/2006 at 10:08
Tell him about the twinkie.
