45 miles per second is pretty good.

At 10:35pm on August 27, 1957 in Area U3d of the New Mexico Nuclear Test Site, the bomb was detonated. But instead of the expected small yield the bomb detonated with a yield approximately five orders of magnitude greater than expected (that’s about 100 000 times greater). The blast instantly vaporized the entire multi-ton concrete collimator and shot it up the tube as a multi-ton wave of vaporized matter at extremely high temperature, pressure, and velocity. The shaft had, in effect, become a enormous 500-foot long, four-foot wide gun barrel with the energy of billions of pounds of TNT released at one end and, at the other end, the now insignificantly small metal cap, about the equivalent of a bottle cap on the end of a naval gun.

As it happens, a very high speed film camera was recording the event and was expected to capture in slow motion the path and speed of any ejecta from the hole. Unfortunately, the camera, which had quite a wide view of top of the hole and and the area around and above, recorded the “manhole cover” on only one frame. There was no malfunction of the camera, it’s just that the “manhole cover” blasted out of sight so fast that the camera only saw it for one frame. Later calculations showed that the heretofore mundane four-foot metal disk had been launched at six times Earth’s escape velocity. That’s one hundred fifty thousand miles per hour. Forty-five miles per second. Nine times faster than the Space Shuttle, six times faster than the fastest moon rockets.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-fastest-speed-of-any-object-on-the-earth/answer/Talon-Torres?srid=hAm9&share=66667ee7

Would the space probes not be travelling faster, after using orbits to ‘slingshot’ off?

“Ooops” 😳

Impressive, though does the LHC count? That propells matter at a smidge below the speed of light?

Faster than bad news?

I was going to nominate Tim’s recent spacewalk, a 4 hour jaunt outside, went round the earth 3 times.

I sneezed quite hard once, would that be close?

Cheers for linking this. I remember Karl Pilkington telling Ricky Gervais about it on XFM a few years back. In his telling though, the scientists had plonked a manhole cover on the bomb just for shits & giggles.

matt_outandabout – Member

Would the space probes not be travelling faster, after using orbits to ‘slingshot’ off?

Not faster than the Voyager crafts, according to the article:

Forty-five miles per second. Nine times faster than the Space Shuttle, six times faster than the fastest moon rockets. Faster than the Voyager spacecraft, which, having reached over 35000 miles per hour, are now leaving the solar system and have for years been claimed to be the fastest man-made objects ever. To which I now say: Pshaw and poppycock — the Pascal-A “manhole cover” in a fraction of a second achieved more than four times the speed it took Voyager 1 decades to attain.

😯

matt_outandabout – Member

Would the space probes not be travelling faster, after using orbits to ‘slingshot’ off?

They made a fit of a fuss about the Juno probe becoming the fastest man made object a couple of years ago – but it’s only ‘moving’ at 25 miles a second – 90k miles an hour. Just over half the speed of wwaswas’s nuclear airgun pelet. Given the above was only captured in a single frame they would have only had one point of reference and couldn’t really confirm it’s speed, just calculate would it could have been.

My Saxo could have it

Would the space probes not be travelling faster, after using orbits to ‘slingshot’ off?

I also watched the Martian recently.

The Pioneer probes are apparently travelling at 0.005% C which, if we take C to be 3×10^8 m/s is about 15 Km/s. I thought that was fast, but it’s not as fast as the Juno probe P-Jay mentions above.

My next question – did it come back down, or are we about to take out Pluto with a manhole cover? 😆

I’m imagining an alien in a galaxy far far away some time in the distant future sitting down for a barbecue in the garden when a manhole cover crashes into the pool: “OK, which **** threw that” 😆

matt_outandabout – Member

My next question – did it come back down, or are we about to take out Pluto with a manhole cover?

Well according to a youtube video I just watched, a manhole cover travelling at 45 miles per second would be the ideal method to knock over the world trade towers

45 miles a second?

Slap a K&N on that and you’ll get 50 no probs.

According to the blog it almost certainly partially disintegrated as it slowed down in the atmosphere before falling back down to earth. It was also the Pascal B test and not A as cited, look up Operation Plumbbob.

The speed was also a back of the fag packet calculation by the scientist in charge who wasn’t really too interested.

One of my favourite geek stories and referenced in the excellent What-If book – https://what-if.xkcd.com/35/

The manhole cover apparently weighed 900kg. More here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob#Propulsion_of_steel_plate_cap

Now whilst there’s a very malign element to creating bombs, particularly the nuclear kind you can imagine that some of the scientists and engineers had a great time.

I also watched the Martian recently.

The martian? Didn’t they do this in Armageddon?

Nothing is as fast as Hammyuk leaping out the bedroom window. He’s so fast, the curtains burst into flames.

Yeh.. uh… sorry about that 😳

Many years ago I was doing some work for an actual genuine bona fide rocket scientist. We were firing .5 projectiles from a modified Browning into a scale model rocket motor. At most we might get deflagration, it was after all filled with a propellant not an explosive. Sat next to the frag trap in our portacabin I started our sequence timer to initiate the high speed camera, the sequenced rippled flashbulbs and the firing pack. The next thing that I recall was us all looking around at each other with a did that just happen look on our faces. The whole building shook as the ground beneath us moved and large lumps of concrete rained down on the steel plate roof above the portacabin. After the minutes clearance to allow the sky to give up everything we’d just chucked at it we went out to find one and a half ton pendine blocks that had formed an anti frag wall outside of the already double walled trap were lying 25 meters from where they had been and others were just rubble. The camera had every connection ripped from it but the magazine did at least remain intact so we had a few frames of the projectile up until the point it struck and for the camera the world ended.
The rocket scientist simply commentated that he “hadn’t been expecting that”

Funniest thing I’ve read for a long time, thank you guy’s. More.

Nothing is as fast as Hammyuk leaping out the bedroom window. He’s so fast, the curtains burst into flames.

All that CFH webcam footage has been sold

Can someone provide a glossary for all that?

‘Deflagration’? – is that something rude people might pay money to have done to them? Or what happens to you when you have eaten too much rich food?

‘Frag trap’? ‘Anti frag’ – are these Jim Henson creations?

Fast as that is, good as the story is and fast as New Horizons etc. are; the fastest satellite ever launched was the Helios 2 probe (wasn’t it?) which was something absurd like 200,000 mph. so that would still take the record.

Deflagration – burning very fast, appears to go explode maybe but the shock wave is subsonic, gunpowder for example.
Either that or it’s whipping someone but in a respectful submissive way while tugging ones forelock , I’m never quite sure.

Frag trap – building with inner and outer walls of very thick concrete with offset openings to let rapidly expanding gas escape while containing projecting objects – as if you’ve put you Gore Tex Y fronts on and shat yourself.

Frag trap – building with inner and outer walls of very thick concrete with offset openings to let rapidly expanding gas escape while containing projecting objects – as if you’ve put you Gore Tex Y fronts on and shat yourself.

Hats

I’m with Mike Smith the fastest man made objects are the protons in LHC

Crazy kinetic energy. Despite being wisp of nothing (All the protons ever used at CERN are from the same bottle of Hydrogen, it was bought in the 60’s in the smallest size available. There is no prospect of it ever needing replacing.). So any way this wisp of nothing has the same energy kinetic energy as an aircraft carrier at 20knots. The beam emergency dump sends the protons into a 500kg lump of copper. The beam energy will melt the block)

Can you make a Proton?
Well I know the Korean’s did but that was awful 😯

I would say a proton’s not a manufactured thing really? They just found some lying around…

Well I know the Korean’s did but that was awful

If you’re taking about the cars, they were Malaysian. But yes, having owned one, they were bloody awful…

Close enough – they all look the same anyway….

Protons – in case any of you thought I was being racist 😛

You don’t just find protons lying around do you? They tend to be attached to other stuff, so first you have to separate it from the other stuff – so a manufacturing process of sorts.

But it “exists” as a proton so it can’t be “man made”

Deconstruction, not construction 😉

like to nominate a shopping trolley with 5 items in, being pushed down the isle in ALDI by a pensioner, when she sees a foreign looking chap with a full trolley heading the same direction with only one person on the till, those pensioners almost pass supersonic speed.

I would say a proton’s not a manufactured thing really? They just found some lying around…

A proton is part of everything that exists, so is a naturally occurring item, not a human manufactured object.
Which will, of course, contain protons as part of its structure.