That’s just exponentials coming into play. Area vs mass.
A micrometeorite can sure fuck up an astronaut at orbital velocities.
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altphoto@lemmy.today 2 days agoBelow the mm size it does get harder to make something deadly.
ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
altphoto@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Yeah but that’s in near vacuum.
TheGuyTM3@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
If you make a piece of dust of about 1microgram fly to someone at about 99% of c, or about 290’000km/s, with Ek=(1/2)mv², we get an energy equivalent to 42’050’000J, or about 10kg of TNT.
The dust would probably vaporise instantaneously, so it would be the resulting explosion that would be deadly if you fired at point blank range.
But first find a dust accelerator that can get enough power for that.
altphoto@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Someone stuck their head into a particle accelerator remember?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski
In general you need to be in vacuum for any of this to work because a small mass has a small mean free path in atmosphere.