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It has been suggested, and not facetiously, that life might have originated on Mars and been carried to Earth when a meteor hit Mars and bla
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It has been suggested, and not facetiously, that life might have originated on Mars and been carried to Earth when a meteor hit Mars and blasted pieces of rock (perhaps containing primitive life) free of the surface. Astronomers know that many Martian rocks have come to Earth this way. One objection to this idea is that microbes would have to undergo an enormous, lethal acceleration during the impact. Let us investigate how large such an acceleration might be. To escape Mars, rock fragments would have to reach its escape velocity of 5.0 km/s, and this would most likely happen over a distance of about 4.0m during the impact.
1) What would be the acceleration, in m/s, of such a rock fragment?
2) What would be the acceleration, in g’s, of such a rock fragment?
3) How long would this acceleration last?
4) In tests, scientists have found that over 40% of Bacillius subtilis bacteria survived after an acceleration of 450000g. In light of your answer to part A, can we rule out the hypothesis that life might have been blasted from Mars to Earth?
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Physics
3 years
2021-08-17T11:52:21+00:00
2021-08-17T11:52:21+00:00 1 Answers
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Answer and Explanation:
Given that
v_f = 5 km/s = 5,000 m/s
d = 4 m
v_i = 0 m/s
The computation is shown below:
1. The acceleration in m/s is
Here we use the motio third equation which is
5000^2 = 0^2 + 2 (a) (4)
So
2. Now acceleration in g is
3. The long of acceleration last is
4.As we can see that
is smaller than the
So, it should not be ruled out