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The Fastest Human-Made Object Is a Manhole Cover Shot into Space

• pmontra 4y ago
  That's maybe the farthest human made object. Voyager 1 is escaping at 3.6 AU per year. That's 3.6 * 150,000,000 km / 365 / 24 = 61,643 km/h That manhole started with a speed of 200,000 km/h and several years in advance.
• metadat 4y ago
  How is it possible the manhole cover went "too fast to burn up" before exiting Earth's atmosphere? Why wouldn't it instead speedily transition to some kind of a plasma? The friction from air had to go somewhere..
  • justin66 4y ago
    I think the idea there is that it would pass through the portion of the atmosphere offering significant friction vertically (i.e., taking the shortest possible path) and too quickly to heat up to the temperature needed to vaporize. I believe "what really happened to that manhole cover?" was the topic of a few fun scientific debates on Usenet back in the day. I think the question might have landed on one of the groups' FAQs.
• lisasays 4y ago
  So the next time you look up at the stars, remember Brownlee's story. Somewhere out there, a manhole cover launched by a nuclear bomb is probably speeding away from Earth at about 125,000 mph. Meaning the Earth sits motionless at the center of the universe, in Business Insider's cosmology. And BTW, that weren't no "manhole cover" either.