back to article Hubble snaps space conker bonk aftermath

The Hubble space telescope has snapped a pic believed to show the results of two dinosaur-biffing asteroids smacking into each other in a hypervelocity collision - faster than two cannon shells fired from supersonic jet fighters hitting one another head on*. P/2010 A2 Hubble image. Credit: NASA In space, nobody can hear you …

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  1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
    Headmaster

    Standard Units please

    Linguini, double Decker buses, debris would fill x number of Olympic sized swimming pools etc.

  2. Ebaneezer Wanktrollop
    Unhappy

    My physics must be rubbish

    I was under the impression that if that fighter het were to unleash it's cannon at supersonic speed - the shells would end up in its arse rather than firing out at standard velocity + airplane speed???

    Ah well, school was a long time ago.

    1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
      Boffin

      Your physics are not rubbish

      I think you may be thinking of an incident on the 21 September 1956 in merkin-land, when pilot Tom Attridge fired two bursts from his 20mm cannon mid-way through a climb manoeuvre, he then put the aircraft, a Grumman F11F/F-11 Tiger, into a shallow dive but as the velocity and trajectory of the cannon rounds decayed he managed to fly into his own gunfire.

      Quite a number of pilots have become a cropper with their own missiles, but that's really a technology failure, it takes real Darwin award winning skill to shoot yourself down with your own guns.

      1. TeeCee Gold badge

        ...and he wasn't the first.

        I believe that the first pilots to fall foul of this particular problem were those flying the Me163 "Komet" in WWII.

        They found the hard way that the standard tactic of approaching the target from above and behind, firing a burst as you close and then levelling out to pass beneath the target with the intention of going around for another try put them neatly in the hail of 20mm cannon fire that they'd unleashed a couple of moments earlier.

        Not a good idea when flying something that's quite prone to explode without any external intervention anyway.

  3. Emilio Desalvo
    Pint

    Sure it's an asteroid?

    It looks suspiciously like a Centauri starship.

    VIR! Bivari!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    Mig-25 Faster than an SR71?

    Really?? Does el reg know something we don't?

    From Wiki wonders world of pop-ular knowledge:

    Mig-25

    The airspeed indicator was redlined at Mach 2.8, with typical intercept speeds near Mach 2.5 in order to extend the service life of the engines. A MiG-25 was tracked flying over Sinai at Mach 3.2 in the early 1970s, but the flight had resulted in the destruction of its engines.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Only in Soviet aircraft fantasy land

      And in Wikiland the aircraft-related stuff is quite good, and they're citing another source which is probably good for the facts, too.

      In Soviet aircraft fantasy land, meanwhile, it's all "that Firefox movie was on the money" and waffling about some Soviet überaircraft that someone sketched on the back of a napkin once.

  5. fifi
    Welcome

    Conkers? Asteroids?

    Looks more like a Klingon bird-of-prey decloaking if you ask me.

    1. Elmer Phud
      Alien

      There goes the neighbourhood

      Is this where we get all those twats who 'learnt' Klingon going "Told you so!"

      could a Klingon ever use Botox?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Eloquent as always

    Lewis, you have a way with words. "Space lumpkins", "space thingy" - couldn't have said it better meself. No high-fallutin' nonsense like "comet-like object", why can't those eggheads just say it like it is? It's a lumpkin fer chrissakes!

  7. Dave Murray
    Pirate

    The Angel Cartel is coming!

    That's clearly a Dramiel checking for miners in the belts.

    http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Dramiel

    1. Ed Blackshaw Silver badge

      Funny

      I was thinking the same thing but thought it might _just_ be a little too geeky to say...

    2. Daniel Wilkie

      Hahaha

      I was desperately trying to think of an Eve reference as well.

      But I don't have time for a more fully fledged reply as I need to do my year-end accounts for my corp.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Yes but...

    I would ask how much it weighs but that would be as silly as asking how fast a meteorite would be traveling when it in the vicinity of a jet fighter cannon shell.

  9. Wize

    Happens all the time?

    Isn't it like the experiment where they fire electrons at a solid surface and they pass through all the gaps. Lots of space compared to the size of the rocks.

  10. Stratman

    title

    When they say "Recently collided", do they mean recently as in since tiffin, or recently as in less than a million years ago?

  11. Jerome 0

    Fighting falcons

    Alternatively, the closing speed of the asteroid impact was almost twice as fast as two colliding cannon shells fired from two F-16s* flying towards each other at top speed.

    Top speed of an F-16 is around Mach 2 I believe (1,500mph), plus the two lots of 1,700mph for the cannon shells makes a total of 6,400mph.

    * An aircraft which *does* have a cannon. :)

  12. alyn

    Comets tail

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought a comets tail was caused by ablation of the solar wind against the comet not the heat of the sun.

  13. Mal Adapted

    New ElReg units

    Velocity: "one (two cannon shells fired from supersonic jet fighters hitting one another head on)"; also, "one foxbat".

  14. Stevie

    Bah!

    Allow me to congratulate the editors of The Register for beating the traditional media to the successful synthesis of Headlinium - a collapsed wording so dense that meaning of any sort cannot escape it's gibberish field.

    Well done! This is the sort of thing that made Britain great.

  15. Get the puck outa here
    WTF?

    First convert to slugs per second

    What if Paris Hilton was flying a Foxbat and fired a canon at a dinosaur whose tail always points away from the sun? Would she make any sound?

  16. Pigeon

    The boffins are guessing

    I'm not a qualified "Swedish Scientist", but I would have thought there would be some evidence of spin from the collision. The Swedish Huuble will be fitted with a Flashlight, probably nucklear powered.

  17. Winkypop Silver badge
    Stop

    So

    No give way to the right rules in space then?

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