Fire cannot burn in the oxygen-free environment of space, but it is possible to fire weapons. Since modern ammunition carries its own chemical incendiary to make gunpowder explode, you can fire a weapon wherever you are in the universe without the need for atmospheric oxygen.
However, a significant difference between weapons fired on Earth and in space is the trail left by the smoke. Brown University astronomer Peter Schultz, who studies the impact craters, says that in space, this smoke will “become a sphere of smoke that expands from the tip of the barrel.” In addition, the fact that weapons can be fired in space brings with it some strange and interesting possibilities.
Imagine yourself shooting freely into the space between galaxies in space. According to Newton’s third law of motion, the force applied to the bullet will have the same effect on the weapon, and therefore on you, in the opposite direction. As there is nothing stopping you in space, unlike Earth, while the bullet from the gun is moving in one direction, you will start moving in the opposite direction. However, even though the speed of the bullet is 1,000 meters per second, you will only move a few centimeters per second due to the mass difference between you. Also, the bullet – and you – will continue this motion indefinitely unless you encounter another space object.
Harvard University and SETI Institute astronomer Matija Cuk said that in the scenario where you don’t encounter any objects, if the universe were not expanding, the rare atoms that the bullet encountered would have stopped after about 10 million light years. However, if we look at the result without going into details, due to the growth rate of the universe, the bullet will only encounter matter that is up to 40,000 light-years away from it, and then it will continue to advance indefinitely.
If you shoot at Jupiter…
Another interesting scenario is that you don’t need to aim at all to hit Jupiter. Simply shooting in the direction of Jupiter means that the massive planet of our Solar System will pull the bullet towards itself due to its immense gravity, University College London physicist Robert Flack explains. Also, if you shoot directly at Jupiter, due to this gravitational pull, the projectile will accelerate to 60 kilometers per second without crossing the gas giant’s boundary.
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