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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

I thought very strange things start to happen at even 10% the speed of light (mass increase, etc.) so 20% sounds impossibly ambitious?

Also the fastest physical object we've ever observed is only 1000 miles per second. A far cry from even 10% of c

Then there is that pesky problem of deceleration.

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They're not going to put them into orbit, just a fly-by. Then they'll continue until they hit something some time in the future. In a million years some unlucky alien might get hit by an iPhone.

Travelling at 20% of the speed of light, I think it'll probably bend..

Inadvertently starting an interstellar war, provided they survive the impact on their homeworld.

According to Wolfram Alpha, an iPhone 6 Plus which weighs in at 192 grams would have about 3.558×10^14 joules of kinetic energy at .2c, or about 85 kilotons of TNT. That's roughly 4 times the energy of the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Not the biggest boom in the world, but certainly nothing to scoff at.

Nice! Thanks for adding the math to my joke. :)

Math makes all jokes funnier. Right?

The interstellar medium is holding it wrong.

At 20% the speed of light, time would dilate by around 2%, but that's about the extent of the effects, afaik.

Also: why bother decelerating at all? Take a picture as you fly by.

Wouldn't want to program that particular timer. Talk about hard real time requirements!

It'd be hilarious to have a bonus tied to the successful completion of that project. "In twenty years, I may get an $X bonus!"

Have you ever tried to take a picture from a moving car? They never turn out.

The sun is 8 light minutes away from earth. These babies would span that distance in 40 minutes. If the plan is to take planetary images I would call that basically crawling speed in terms of angular velocity (unless they are on actual collision course).

They are definitely not planning on decelerating.

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