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06/29/11(Wed)21:03 No.3307777Okay, Teacup. Lets have a little physics lesson, shall we?
If you are a troll you're a very persistent one.
Now,
temperature is a property of matter, and measures how much the
particles that make up this matter vibrate. Temperature can be conveyed
by contact (convection, conduction) or by producing photons via the
oscillation of electrons (radiant heat).
A vacuum is devoid of
mass, so it can't have a temperature. It's the ideal insulator, that's
why people use vacuum flasks to keep drinks at a constant temperature.
Now,
if you have an object in space, far from the sun, it can't convect heat
but it can radiate it. The planet's ability to radiate heat decreases
as it gets colder, so eventually it hits an equilibrium with the
incoming radiation from the sun.
When comets fly by the sun, they start to melt and produce a large tail, turning their shape into a 'shooting star'.
Anything
approaching the Earth will have to travel within the same distance to
the sun as Earth is; this exposes it to a hell of a lot of radiation.
Since there's no night except on rotating planets, this object is gonna
be blasted with every kind of radiation 24/7. It's not going to be 0k.
It's not going to be fusion temperature either, but it will probably be
hotter than most Earth conditions. The smaller the object, the faster it
will change temperature.
Finally, the amount of friction it has
to take when it hits the atmosphere will turn it into a fireball.
Meteors are heavy creatures, and orbital speeds are very high, so you've
got a hell of a lot of momentum to dissipate as it comes down. This all
gets turned into heat, which either goes to the air or remains in the
rock.
When it hits the ground though - it will still have a large
amount of momentum, and it will have to dissipate *all at once*. That's
a big dp/dt. On contact, depending on size, it could produce
temperatures hot enough to melt rock. |
