Unfortunately that narrative leaves a huge gap between 72km/s and 0.01c (3000km/s) -- and it is right in the geometric middle of this gap that 1 million miles per hour falls: 500km/s.
This is important because although it is disappearingly unlikely that one of these hypervelocity (million mph) stars would collide with anything in our solar system, the potential exists for a vastly larger number of vasly smaller objects -- objects on the order of the size of the 100ft diameter diamond asteroid exemplar of the narrative. What is the statistical distribution of such small, hypervelocity objects? Even if all of the potential hypervelocity starts were being ripped apart into precisely 100ft diameter diamonds traveling at 500km/s, I conjecture the odds of any of them impacting anything in our solar system, including the sun, would still be disappearingly small. Nevertheless, this would be an interesting exercise in astronomical numbers. On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 9:54 AM, Eric Walker <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 6:13 AM, Hoyt A. Stearns Jr. <[email protected] > > wrote: > > What would happen if a million mile per hour 1 ton rock impacted? >> > > There's an interesting xkcd writeup on a similar question (posed by an > eight year-old): > > "If a meteor made out of diamond and 100 feet in diameter was traveling at > the speed of light and hit the earth, what would happen to it?” > > http://what-if.xkcd.com/20/ > > Eric > >
