Briefing
room
(continued)
Big meteorites traverse our
solar system with a typical speed of about 30 km/sec. If such a meteorite
enters the Earth's atmosphere, its energy of movement is converted into
heat, reaching 100,000 Co or more and melting most of its material
('shooting star').
We do not have the technology
to make a space ship go at the speed of light (300,000 km/sec), but it
is possible - using accelerators at CERN - to make single particles (like
a proton, the nucleus of a hydrogen atom) go that fast.
If a particle moving with
this speed hits a block of material, its energy is also transformed, producing
'temperatures' of 10,000,000,000,000 Co or more. Under
these extreme circumstances, the energy set free in the collision will
transform into matter.
But:
what kind of matter do I produce in such collisions?
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