What would happen to a single human if they were put into the jet of a quasar?
Like, obviously they would die immediately. But I'm wondering, would they be ripped to subatomic shreds? Would they somehow manage to set off a small nuclear explosion? Would they just get cooked as they're propelled into the void?
I think it may be smaller than that. Down to subatomic particles. But that is funny haha. Also his chin is a nutsack.
Edit: I'm very juvenile.
Randal Munro's comment in a what if comes to mind: "You wouldn't really die of anything, you would just stop being biology and start being physics"
To shreds you say
they would be unalived before they knew what hit them
Well yeah, but the question is how. It's interesting to think about because we have no idea exactly. You can be unalived from bumping your head wrong, just dying in itself is unimpressive.
Also: my new favorite death representative wording is "meeting his end credits" that's just a side, but it sounds way more fun, especially if the person really deserves it.
They would no longer have to pay taxes.
Where do I sign up?
Ever hold a strong flashlight up to your hand and see your bones outlined in red? Like that, only... more.
I did a little snooping and found someone claiming to have a source on the diameter of a jet, but their link went nowhere. I think it's this though. Anyway, at 0.05 light years across and presumed circular, a human body purposefully over estimated to have a cross sectional area of 2m^2, would be subject to 28.5 gigawatts.
Wolfram Alpha very kindly points out that this is the equivalent of nearly two and a half space shuttles blasting you, boosters and all. Good luck!
I've no idea how accurate this is, but googling gave me an estimate of the energy required that suggests it would take a little less than three seconds to vaporize an entire body. If it can create a plasma, that counts as subatomic in my books, but I've no idea what that would take.
Nuclear would depend more on the particle kinematics and I've got no intuition there tbh. I'm sure it's certainly possible though, especially if you get close.
I'm as fascinated by those shuttle comparisons as anything else!
On the face of it, I wouldn't have guessed that the space shuttle's power output was measured in gigawatts, nor that the space shuttle's output is on the same scale as an entire country's steam power output (in 1896, sure... but still!)
Quasars are some of the most energetic objects in the known universe. That jet is made of high energy X-rays and gamma rays and would probably convert a human body to ionized particles very quickly.
Does that mean they like evaporate? Incinerate?
Disintegrate
Ionate
Only one way to find out
A simulation!
All the basic technologies ever invented by humans to feed and protect themselves depend on a relentless commitment to hard-nosed empiricism: you cannot assume that your arrowheads will pierce the hide of a bison or that your raft will float just because the omens are propitious and you have been given supernatural reassurance that they will. You have to be sure.
---Barbara Ehrenreich
This kills the human.
The quasar wouldn't do anything that the vacuum hadn't already done...
