I was reading about the chicxulub crater and decided for fun to calculate the approximate velocity of a million-Kg object that would approximate the energy expended by the impact. If I've done my math correctly, about 0.8c (obviously the actual impactor was much, much, much more massive). But this got me wondering.
While a million-Kg object isn't very large in the grand scheme of things, it's humongous compared to what we usually see traveling at reletivistic speeds (light, radiation, etc.). Would an object that massive leave a wake (whether classically in terms of particles of matter or more creatively in terms of warping space-time by its passage)? Something that, theoretically, we could use to detect the passage of a large object moving as such velocities?
Please note that I'm not worried about how my million-Kg rock became accelerated. For the purpose of the question, please assume that it's traveling from T=0 with a velocity of V=0.8c.
EDIT
Jim asked after my math. I used the following equation:
$$ KE = \frac{\frac{mv^2}{2}}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}$$
- From the link above, KE = 1 x 1023J