• Question: Would a stone traveling at the speed of light cut through metal?

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      Asked by Grade-A-Under-A to John, Laura, Luke, Rob, Ruth on 16 Jun 2016.
      • Photo: John Fossey

        John Fossey answered on 16 Jun 2016:

        It would not need to travel so fast to achieve this.
        Think about your question too – you did not specify any other dimension so I could take some tin foil – pin it up – and throw a stone though it.

      • Photo: Laura Finney

        Laura Finney answered on 16 Jun 2016:

        I would say yes generally! They say that if you drop a 5p from the top of the Eiffel tower it would go through someone’s head and that isn’t even anywhere near the speed of light. obviously it depends on the metal and thickness etc though too!

      • Photo: Luke Williams

        Luke Williams answered on 16 Jun 2016:

        My physics, particularly this area of physics, is more than a little shaky. That said I believe anything traveling AT the speed of light behaves particularly strangely and may be in multiple places at the same time?

        But, assuming something traveling fast enough, yes it would go through anything. A typical example would be a piece of dust in space. A small particle can easily pierce metal such as on the International Space Station. This was shown quite graphically in the film Gravity. Remember even something going thousands of miles an hour (more than enough to do the trick) is not going an appreciable fraction of the speed of light.

        http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debris.html

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