What Can Cause My Airsoft Gun Fuse to Blow

What would happen if you shot a gun in infinite?

Fires tin't burn in the oxygen-free vacuum of space, but gunstin shoot. Modern ammunition contains its own oxidizer, a chemical that will trigger the explosion of gunpowder, and thus the firing of a bullet, wherever you are in the universe. No atmospheric oxygen required.

The only deviation between pulling the trigger on Earth and in space is the shape of the resulting smoke trail. In space, "it would be an expanding sphere of fume from the tip of the butt," said Peter Schultz an astronomer at Brown Academy who researches bear on craters.

The possibility of gunfire in space allows for all kinds of absurd scenarios.

Related: 7 everyday things that happen strangely in space

Shooting stars

Imagine you're floating freely in the vacuum between galaxies — only yous, your gun and a single bullet. You have two options. Y'all either can spend all of eternity trying to figure out how you lot got there, or you tin shoot the damn cosmos.

If yous exercise the latter, Newton's third police of motility dictates that the force exerted on the bullet volition impart an equal and opposite force on the gun, and, because you lot're holding the gun, y'all. With very few intergalactic atoms confronting which to brace yourself, yous'll first moving astern (not that you'd take whatsoever way of knowing). If the bullet leaves the gun barrel at i,000 meters per second, you — because you're much more massive than it is — will head the other fashion at only a few centimeters per second.

Once shot, the bullet volition proceed going, quite literally, forever. "The bullet will never end, because the universe is expanding faster than the bullet can catch up with whatever serious amount of mass" to slow it down, said Matija Cuk, an astronomer with joint appointments at Harvard University and the SETI Institute. (If the universe weren't expanding, then the i or ii atoms per cubic centimeter encountered by the bullet in the almost-vacuum of space would bring it to a standstill afterward 10 million light-years.)

Getting downwards to details, the universe expands at a rate of 73 kilometers per second per megaparsec (near 3 one thousand thousand light-years, or the average altitude between galaxies). By Cuk's calculations, this means matter that is 40,000 to 50,000 calorie-free-years abroad from the bullet would move away from it at about the aforementioned speed at which it is travelling, and would thus be forever out of attain. In the entire future of the universe, the bullet will grab upwardly only to atoms that are less than 40,000 or and so light-years from the bedroom of your gun.

Speaking of you, you'll exist bobbing through infinite forever, too.

Related: In images: Visualizations of infinity

When you shoot a gun in space, things can get pretty weird. — When you shoot a gun in infinite, things can go pretty weird. (Image credit: NASA (astronaut image))

Shooting giants from the hip

Guns practice actually get carried to space, though non quite to the void betwixt galaxies. For decades, the standard survival pack for Russian cosmonauts has included a gun. Until recently, it wasn't just any gun, but "a palatial all-in-one weapon with 3 barrels and a folding stock that doubles as a shovel and contains a swing-out machete," according to infinite historian James Oberg. The space guns are issued in case the cosmonauts need one dorsum on Earth, and then that they can protect themselves if emergency landing of their Soyuz spacecraft has left them deserted in a treacherous region. Only nevertheless, cosmonautsin theory could shoot their guns before they landed.

And so what if, during a spacewalk, a cosmonaut opened burn on Jupiter?

He or she should feel free to shoot from the hip. Co-ordinate to Robert Flack, a physicist at Academy College London, the enormous gravitational field of Jupiter is likely to suck in a bullet even if information technology is badly aimed. "Jupiter is then huge, it will capture the bullet and then it will follow a curved path downwardly into the planet," Flack said.

And as it does, it will pick upwardly some serious steam. According to Schultz, if the bullet is shot straight toward Jupiter, the planet'southward gravity will accelerate the ammo to the eye-popping speed of almost sixty kilometers per 2d by the time information technology crosses the gas giant'due south threshold.

Watch your dorsum

Shooting someone in the back is a cowardly act. In space, "theoretically you could shootyourself in the back," Schultz said.

You could practise it, for example, while in orbit around a planet. Because objects orbiting planets are really in a abiding state of free fall, you lot have to become the setup simply right. You'd take to shoot horizontally at just the right altitude for the bullet to circle the planet and autumn back to where it started (you). And y'all'd also have to consider how much you'll get kicked backwards (and consequently, how much your altitude will alter) when you burn down.

"The aim has to be perfect," Schultz said.

Such a scenario isn't as absurd as information technology sounds. In fact, Schultz said scientists at i point were considering setting up such a cocky-hit in space in guild to investigate the effects of loftier-speed impacts.

Withal, considering all the math involved, Cuk suggests it might exist easier to commit space suicide past continuing on a mountain on the moon. "'Shooting yourself in the dorsum' works in principle if you shoot a bullet at horizon from the meridian of a lunar mount, at 1600 meters per second or then," he said. He thinks it just might work as long as yous adjust your aim to account for lumps and irregularities in the shape of the moon, which would affect the altitude of the bullet as it travels.

With and then many possible movie plotlines to consider, one question remains: Why are there so few infinite shoot 'em ups?

Originally published on Live Science.

Natalie Wolchover was a staff writer for Live Science from 2010 to 2012. She agree a bachelor'south degree in physics from Tufts University and has studied physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Follow Natalie on Google+.