Theoretical weapons system

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Not quite sure where this should go, but as it is an exercise in physics, I'm starting it out here.

Imagine a weapon which teleports a sphere of solid iron of arbitrary size into a target which could be comprised of a variety of materials at a variety of densities. Now, the kicker is that this teleport drops the object on top of what is already there: It doesn't carve out a volume of empty space the size of our sphere of iron before inserting the sphere into that space, it just superimposes an iron sphere right on the target.

The question is: What happens? What are the effects of doing this?

[Dark Hellion]

I think the precise scientific term is "Bad Things".
Otherwise, if I wasn't completely physics out from my E&M test yesterday (i hate vector calculus) I could probably answer, but I am sure Kuroneko (I hope i didn't just butcher his name) will be along to answer before the day is out.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I would assume that the material teleported would displace that which exists before it in that location in space-time. That's if you can get some kind of wormhole teleporter to send such masses away like that, something the Culture does, but with nuclear weapons and AM. I would think displacing pieces of the target would be just as effective rather than sending them lumps of iron.

[Lord of the Abyss]

My guess would be an explosion and some heat; cramming the sphere's atoms and those of the target object into such close proximity would create strong interactions between them.

There was a book years ago called ORA:CLE; it involved using multiple teleporters to send large amounts of Jupiter's atmosphere to the same location - which created a large fusion reaction. Unless your teleporter is restricted to iron it could do that; if it is so restricted, enough iron spheres in the same spot would create a massive explosion due to mutual repulsion of the iron nuclei, just like the core of a star during a supernova. IIRC, that shockwave achieves 25% of lightspeed.

[tharkûn]

The question is: What happens? What are the effects of doing this?

Not much. The vast majority of any matter is empty space filled with wave-particles. You will have some energy generated from electron repulsion and perhaps a trace amount of chemical reactivity. Given that you are dropping iron you get nothing from nuclear reactions. So very shortly you will simply have the atoms reach a thermodynamic minimum which should reflect either increased pressure or increased volume. Most likely you'd shatter/crack/expand solids, displace liquids, and mildly pressurize gases.

[Gil Hamilton]

Why iron? Why not depleted uranium? And why teleport it when you can fire it at high speeds at the target?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

The question is: What happens? What are the effects of doing this?

Not much. The vast majority of any matter is empty space filled with wave-particles. You will have some energy generated from electron repulsion and perhaps a trace amount of chemical reactivity. Given that you are dropping iron you get nothing from nuclear reactions. So very shortly you will simply have the atoms reach a thermodynamic minimum which should reflect either increased pressure or increased volume. Most likely you'd shatter/crack/expand solids, displace liquids, and mildly pressurize gases.

This was about what I feared. The target would concievably have more to worry about from any differences between its own velocity and the sphere's. I suppose that it would've been better had I simply gone with my original concept of the target matter being displaced being converted to energy which is then dumped on the object doing the displacing. The main problem of that being that, depending on the volume of target material being turned into energy, one has a weapon of absolutely stupendous power, among other potential headaches.

[Dark Hellion]

Well, as Tharkun said, you are going to shatter solids and cause displacement of liquids aka bad things would happen to people or vehicles hit still. It isn't bad, but displacing energy/AM would be far better still.