alt Hacker NewsInteresting. I'd not considered the loss of mass as a means of propulsion.
Obviously there was the kinetic energy transfer but the impact ejacted some of the asteroids mass opposite to it's trajectory further increasing it's trajectory change.
Cool demonstration, hopefully not needed one day.
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alhirzel • today at 1:29 PM
It's the butterfly effect. After the momentum exchange (the rocket slamming, stuff being ejected in the impact, etc), the entire system was left with different properties. From now on, the equation F=Gm1m2/r^2 will have a different m1, and you can sum the equation over all m2 (literally every other massive object in the universe).
When the impact happened the news articles seemed to imply some surprise about that as well which seemed strange to me. I just wrote it off to the journalist just not being up to speed on the subject matter. The size of the debris field trailing also seemed to be a surprising result.