How do you detect a rock in interstellar space?

You are on a generation ship in interstellar space, between star systems. We know that there are rocks whizzing around out there - escaped asteroids, bashed planets, we have even put a few artificial ones out there ourselves.

Unless your ship was giving off electromagnetic radiation that could be detected from it bouncing off the rock (radar or similar) how could you detect a boulder sized completely inert rock? Gravity would be negligible, it would have a very minimal heat signature, there is no incident light, nothing to warm it up. Any radiation it emitted would have long since passed its best-by date. So unless you happened to detect it when it passed between you and a star, obscuring the light just enough, how would you detect it?

I want to clarify - I want the system to be passive. I DON'T want the system to be a reflection of something from the ship.

To complicate the issue, this rock is heading straight on your axis of travel, or rather you are headed straight for it, so it does not cross in front of a star.

is a duplicate

This question has been asked before and has already been answered. It should be marked as a duplicate.

Please enter the URL of the proposed duplicate in the details field below.

not constructive

This question cannot be answered in a way that is helpful to anyone. It's not possible to learn something from possible answers, except for the solution for the specific problem of the asker.

Communities

How do you detect a rock in interstellar space?

0 comment threads

0 answers