What happens if you shoot a firearm in outer space.

From the point of view of modern physics, nothing that has a non-zero rest mass can reach the speed of light. You can only get closer to her. At the same time, the closer the speed is to the speed of light, the more energy you need to spend in order to accelerate further. Someday you just won't have enough energy available to speed up just a little bit more.

If you, moving at a speed close to the speed of light, fire a pistol, nothing surprising will happen to you. You will see exactly the same shot as usual. From your point of view (subjectively) the bullet will fly at the same speed and hit the target after the same time. The bullet will not get stuck in the barrel (if the gun does not misfire) and even more so will not suck anything anywhere.

I also believe that the speed of the bullet is too low to create any pronounced relativistic effects. Therefore, it is more interesting to consider the option of a shot from a laser (which itself moves at the speed of light).

But even in this case, you will see everything exactly the same as if you were testing a laser while standing motionless on the Earth.

This is the whole point of the theory of relativity. It doesn't matter if you are moving or stationary. In fact, at any moment in time you are moving from the point of view of something (the Earth itself is moving quite fast), and from the point of view of something else (who is moving with you) you are still. At the same time, it cannot be said which is more true: are you moving or not? Both statements are equally true.

Much more complex issue- how that observer will see the situation, relative to which you are moving almost at the speed of light (we will call him a "fixed" observer).

Firstly, I also understand this with difficulty (and it’s far from the fact that I can accurately describe everything). Secondly, it is even more difficult to explain this clearly to a person who did not try to break his brain with the theory of relativity. Distances at this speed decrease, masses increase, and discrepancies over time become apparent.

Let's say your target was 300,000 kilometers away. You fired the laser and the beam hit the target exactly 1 second later. From your point of view. And from the point of view of a "stationary" observer, the target was at a distance of 300 kilometers from you, but the beam reached the target in almost 2 weeks (I did not calculate using the formulas, but estimated very approximately, so the error can be large, but general essence is correct). That being said, you are both right.

From the point of view of modern physics, a person cannot move at the speed of light. I wrote about it at the beginning of the answer. So let's replace "at the speed of light" with "at 99.9% of the speed of light".

The bullet will not hit a person, because it will fly at a speed of, say, 99.900001% of the speed of light, that is, faster.

I will repeat the main idea again. The fact that something is moving at almost the speed of light does not fundamentally change anything. If the bullet does not hit the shooter himself under normal conditions on Earth, then the bullet will not hit him at "almost the speed of light". If on Earth a bullet hits a target, then it will hit at "almost the speed of light". Any other outcome would be a violation of the principle of relativity.

Only numbers will change from high speed: bullet flight time, bullet flight length, bullet size. But nothing can fundamentally change: a shot will happen, a bullet will hit the target.

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Let's say you sit so-so in the office and you are very bored. And suppose you suddenly had the idea to go to the shooting range, take the most powerful machine gun with a silencer there, attach a tape for 700 rounds to it and drop them all at once. What will happen in such a case? We didn't know for sure. It was assumed that at that moment you would not envy the machine gun. But to such! The metal of the barrel heated to kross and the molten silencer, this is what 700 bullets flying out of the barrel will lead to!

In a shot from West Coast Armory (not to be confused with West Coast Custom), an M249 SAW machine gun and two people appear, a gunner and an assistant feeding him a tape of ammunition. As stated in the description of the video, somewhere after 350-400 bullets fired, the muffler quickly melted. A few seconds later, the metal at the end of the barrel heated up to such an extent that the muffler was literally turned inside out, bent to the side. However, the machine gun continued firing.

As the proud testers, who managed to melt the barrel of the machine gun a little, said: “The weapon itself fired perfectly and there were no problems with it. The only problem we had after that, someone had to do the cleaning afterwards.”.

There is no confirmation video with the same machine gun that would have landed several hundred more bullets. It seems to me, as an amateur in this matter, that after such a merciless use, the barrel should become completely unusable. Perhaps this is not so.

While talking about machine guns, here is another video that explains one of the most mysterious topics of my childhood: How did the fighters shoot through the working propellers?

Happy viewing

Fire does not burn in airless space, but what about a shot from a Modern cartridge contains some of its own oxidizing agent, which allows the gunpowder to detonate. Therefore, oxygen is not required for a shot.

A shot in space will differ only in the smoke trail, it forms a sphere of smoke at the muzzle. But shooting in space can lead to very interesting consequences.

According to Newton's third law, when fired, you will be thrown back, and the bullet will continue to move in literally forever. After all, as you know, our universe is expanding at a speed of 73.3 km per second for every 3.26 million light years, and the bullet will never catch up with the atoms of black matter, which are 40-50 thousand light years away. By the way, you will also move away from the starting point forever, but very slowly (about a couple of centimeters per second).

Another interesting point: if you want to shoot and hit Jupiter, you do not have to aim: you can shoot from the hip. Jupiter's gravity is so strong that it will pull the bullet on its own, and it will hit its surface at a speed of 60 km/sec.

But you need to be careful when shooting: if you are in orbit, say, planet Earth, and shoot, then, in an unfortunate set of circumstances, the bullet can go around the planet and enter your back. After all, objects in the orbits of the planets are in a state of free fall.

Scientists even somehow planned to conduct such an experiment in order to study the consequences of collisions of objects at high speed. The perfect place for the experiment, they named the top of a mountain on the moon at an altitude of 1.6 km. But the idea was not realized.

One question remains: why is there so little good old fashioned stuff in sci-fi movies? firearms, which can lead to such unexpected consequences?

We discussed what would happen if shoot in space from firearms.

Clayton S. Anderson,twice former astronaut of the International Space Station, six-time space traveler, NASA employee for thirty years:

Well, if the gun was loaded, someone would be in great danger... especially if he was aiming at the wall of the autonomous compartment! While I'm not an expert on transcendence of the imagination, I can assume that if the gun is actually loaded, then the bullet will follow where the shooter points the gun and fires (and if it doesn't, I'd blame Robonaut). The bullet will move in the opposite direction due to the impulse forces from the gunpowder in the barrel chamber. I can't imagine it moving too fast, but the 'bump/bounce' force that I've come across from my own experience can be significant. I think physicists should measure it.

It will be much more interesting to do this in vacuum space during an EVA. Then the bullet will travel forever, and the astronaut - if he is not attached to the space station in any way - again, will move in the opposite direction from the bullet for as long as his safety cable will allow. In this case, they will slowly return to their original position due to the ability of the cable to retract, or the cable will break, turning the astronaut into a scenario of desperate plea and activation of his SAFER (a simplified device for saving an astronaut during extravehicular activities) in the hope of returning "home" to the station.

Frank Hale, physicist, software developer:

Shoot in space? It's quite real. Vacuum in outer space won't be a problem for a shot. The weapon does not require oxygen to operate. Gunpowder or other explosive in the cartridge that contains the bullet is independent of the atmosphere. It has an oxidizing agent mixed with a combustible substance, and is ideal for shooting in a vacuum. Even the fuse struck by the striker of a firearm is completely autonomous and can work in a vacuum.

Shooting in space weapons will be even a little better than on Earth. The bullet will not need to "poke" through the air and compress it immediately after exiting the pistol / gun. The air will not reduce the speed of the moving bullet, so the range of the weapon becomes essentially infinite, and the bullet, in turn, will move in a circular trajectory, however its trajectory will be different from the trajectory of the weapon / shooter. For example, the travel speed of the International Space Station (ISS) is approximately 17,000 miles per hour, which is equal to 7,600 m/s. The muzzle velocity of the bullet varies from 120 m/s to 1200 m/s depending on the type of weapon, and therefore the circular trajectory of the bullet will be unlike that of the astronaut who fired. In general, a shot in the forward direction of the orbit will result in a more elongated orbit that will always remain at or above the ISS orbit. If the fire is opened in the opposite direction, the bullet may eventually sink into the atmosphere and deorbit.

There is no need to fire a weapon to see if it works or not. The difference between the mass of the bullet and the mass of the weapon plus the person holding the weapon indicates that the bullet takes almost all kinetic energy when fired, even if they both receive the same momentum. However, assuming the astronaut is moving freely in space and the muzzle line does not point to the center of mass of the barrel + astronaut, firing a firearm will impart a small angular momentum to the astronaut.

For more accurate calculations, we can cite the M4 carbine as an example, which has an initial bullet speed of 910 m / s. The weapon weighs 3.4 kg and the bullet weighs 4 g. The ISS space suit weighs about 124 kg, and assuming the astronaut weighs 70 kg, then the mass of the weapon, astronaut and space suit is about 197 kg. If a starting speed bullet 910 m / s, then the momentum of the bullet will be 3.6 Ns (4 g * 910 m / s). If the astronaut + weapon have the same momentum, then the bullet will move 18 mm/s (4 g * 910 m/s / 197 kg). Then the astronaut will have a very low speed. The kinetic energy of the bullet will be 1656 J (see 4 g * (910 m/s)^2/2), while the astronaut + weapon will have a kinetic energy of 0.02 J (122 kg * (18 mm/s)^2 /2). Thus, as I said, the bullet receives all the kinetic energy. In the worst case scenario, if the bullet flies near the astronaut's head, then he will rotate in space every three minutes, which can be easily controlled by the auxiliary engine used by the astronaut for movement.

Cooling is the only problem with multiple shots. Cooling in space would be radiative, not convective, so weapons could overheat. I trust the grease that is used for firearms and evaporates very slowly. Therefore, I doubt that the grease will dry much faster than on Earth.

pula 28-09-2005 13:22

Is not it?

FRAG 28-09-2005 15:10

Planet Earth is also moving in outer space. If fired against her movement... In short, those damned bullets fly as they please, even behind the shooter!
It was not for nothing that Suvorov disliked them ...

Dem0n 28-09-2005 16:17

...from the Wasp in the opposite direction to the movement, then the bullet will fly after the shooter!
Is not it?

At that moment, while the flight is taking place, the speed of the aircraft is equal to the speed of the shooter, and, accordingly, it is equal to the speed of the bullet that is charged in the wasp, when fired, it turns out that the speed of the bullet will increase, i.e. your theory is wrong? IMHO.

bryansk 28-09-2005 16:57

2 Pula - if I understand correctly, the plane flies "forward" and shoot "backward" right? If so, then what are we looking at - if relative to the reference system -shooter-bullet -, then it will fly back, and if from the side of the observer from the ground, then probably forward, because the speed of the Wasp's shot is still less than the speed of the aircraft (probably.) And if you look from the point of view of green men, then ... X @ d knows where it will fly ... :-)))

pula 28-09-2005 17:39

quote: Originally posted by Dem0n:

At that moment, while the flight is taking place, the speed of the aircraft is equal to the speed of the shooter, and, accordingly, it is equal to the speed of the bullet that is charged in the wasp, when fired, it turns out that the speed of the bullet will increase, i.e. your theory is wrong? IMHO.

You inattentively read my "theory" - we shoot back. In general, if we judge the speed of the bullet relative to the shooter, then nothing will change (neglecting all sorts of medium densities at the altitude of the aircraft and, consequently, the friction of the bullet against the air). For an earthly observer (if he can observe all this), the bullet must still follow the plane, since its speed is higher than the speed of the bullet.
For example, the cruising speed of a passenger airbus TU-154 is 945 km/h (correct, if anyone knows for sure), that is, 262 m/s. The speed of the Wasp bullet is about one and a half times less.

vegur 28-09-2005 17:43

From the point of view from the center of the galaxy (if someone sees her, a bullet), she will remain in place

vegur 28-09-2005 17:47

And further
Which planes have windows that you can shoot backwards from?
And more importantly; in airplanes, windows are generally

OKUPANT 28-09-2005 20:50

If the plane flies forward (usually it happens), and we shoot back, then the shooter and the bullet will move away from each other at a speed equal to the sum of the speeds of the bullet and the plane. I think the author is joking.

pula 28-09-2005 21:56

Of course, I'm joking, because it's a flame. But in physics at school, I definitely had "excellent". And some definitely don't. I was especially struck by the last statement about the sum of speeds. Ha ha ha! Try jumping backwards from a moving motorcycle/bike... so what? Are you going back even faster? The question is rhetorical.

pula 28-09-2005 21:58

In general, it’s so true - it’s bad to shoot from airplane windows :-) neither back nor forward

OKUPANT 28-09-2005 22:11

I did not write that something will fly faster. I wrote that two objects will move away from each other faster. With a motorcycle too. Of course, you won't go faster back.

pula 28-09-2005 22:17

Two again! :-)
Objects will be removed at the same speed as with a stationary shot. See "Physics Grade 9"

shurchello 28-09-2005 22:32

quote: Originally posted by pula:
Of course, I'm joking, because it's a flame. But in physics at school, I definitely had "excellent". And some definitely don't. I was especially struck by the last statement about the sum of speeds. Ha ha ha! Try jumping backwards from a moving motorcycle/bike... so what? Are you going back even faster? The question is rhetorical.

Faster than a motorcycle. Slower relative to the ground. It's just vector addition. Those. fired back from the aircraft, the bullet will have the total speed of the aircraft and itself (if measured from the aircraft), and the speed of the aircraft - the speed of the bullet if measured from the ground.

OKUPANT 28-09-2005 22:43

quote: Originally posted by pula:
Two again! :-)
Objects will be removed at the same speed as with a stationary shot. See "Physics Grade 9"

Would you like to say that the distance between a bullet and an aircraft (in one case moving, in the second case standing still) will increase at the same speed?

pula 29-09-2005 08:18

That's what I want to say, but I'm too lazy to prove it :-)

OKUPANT 29-09-2005 10:03

But prove it

ULD 29-09-2005 10:38

If you shoot from the plane, you will get into the cops. And no physics.

Pavel_F 29-09-2005 14:14

Exactly, no physics, only physiology. And go to the cemetery.

pula 29-09-2005 14:23

quote: Originally posted by ULD:
If you shoot from the plane, you will get into the cops. And no physics.

No, well, gentlemen ... we are considering a hypothetical situation: there is an airplane, a bullet and an observer from the ground, but nothing else.
Now for the proof. It was correctly said - the addition of velocity vectors. Consequently, the speed of the bullet relative to the ground will become less.
At the household level: an 18x45T cartridge flies to itself in an airplane at a certain speed, a bullet jumps out of it (cartridge) and tears back. But she already has some speed, and she only lowers it at the expense of the newly acquired gunpowder during the explosion. But, I repeat, this is all relative to the earth.

OKUPANT 29-09-2005 15:51

And I always ask you about the plane.

4V4 29-09-2005 21:02

Whose plane is it?

shurchello 29-09-2005 21:04

Yes everything is correct. Something I stepped in first. The speed relative to the aircraft will not change.

Almsk 30-09-2005 12:28

and it’s even more interesting not to shoot from a wasp from an airplane, but from a fly

Merlin 30-09-2005 08:56

quote: Originally posted by Shurchello:
Yes everything is correct. Something I stepped in first. The speed relative to the aircraft will not change.

But it is more interesting if the speed of the aircraft and the bullet are the same. Then, after firing back, the absolute speed of the bullet will immediately reach zero, and it will begin to fall down.

It will fall anyway.

Ah, ballistics physicists...

ps
Question?2:
Will a parachutist who jumped out of it follow the plane?

4V4 30-09-2005 10:46

If air resistance does not act on the p-ta (which they say he will like), he will be under the plane all the time, approaching the ground with uniform acceleration, about which the p.. will inevitably be given.

Nansen 02-10-2005 02:55

Blah-ah-ah-ah, about the paratourist, why? Why "to the land, about which inevitably p.. will be given"? I'm just going to jump tomorrow (already today) with a parachute again. Aaaaa!!! I was scared again, I'm not going fucking.

Palych1 03-10-2005 03:01

Don't be afraid! Jump! Don't forget to wear a parachute. :-)

Palych1 03-10-2005 03:27

Like this. I caught the bullet with my hand. Sounds crazy at first glance, but it's true. And everything is strictly in accordance with the laws of physics.

Anryal 03-10-2005 03:35

In "Technology for Youth" they described a case that happened during WWI.
The planes then were with open cockpits. During the air battle, the pilot saw some small object that was flying next to the plane at arm's length. Without hesitation, the pilot reached out his hand and grabbed this object in five. He brought it up to his eyes, examined it, - it turned out to be an enemy bullet.

blah, it was NEO! However, if the plane is already all hypothetical, then hypothetically it can. With one assumption: the "fan", as you put it, should be in front (the real ones were in the back). Then the air flow created by the rotation of the hypothetical "fan" at some point can reach such a speed that a lifting force appears on the part of the wing streamlined by the flow, sufficient to separate this unfortunate aircraft from the already sickened treadmill. And he will rush off into the distance, as befits a decent aircraft!

Sivutya 12-10-2005 23:59

Damn confused ... already the balls went behind the rollers ...

Of course, nothing will fly anywhere. The conditions for firing and approaching (removing) the bullet relative to the surrounding objects inside the aircraft will be the same as if the aircraft was stationary

Amanauz 15-10-2005 02:37

quote: Originally posted by Palych1:
In "Technology for Youth" they described a case that happened during WWI.
The planes then were with open cockpits. During the air battle, the pilot saw some small object that was flying next to the plane at arm's length. Without hesitation, the pilot reached out his hand and grabbed this object in five. He brought it up to his eyes, examined it, - it turned out to be an enemy bullet.
Like this. I caught the bullet with my hand. Sounds crazy at first glance, but it's true. And everything is strictly in accordance with the laws of physics.

I read about this as a child in the "entertaining physics" Ya Perelman.