Dooms Day du jour!

This fellow is quite creative, I liked the "giant black hole method".

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I like this one.

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Now while I might be amused by Cthulhians, I don't necessarily distrust them to carry out the functions of government. -- JayUtah

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Probability for the vacuum energy thing is more like 0/10, incredibly difficult to pull off. And if you did do it, the energy would only stay there for an unimagninably short amount of time.

Picking nits
I dunno earth could be ejected from Sol or somthing and this never happen 10/10 hmmmmmm

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If this writing is blue you're going too fast!

[quote="mickal555"]I thought that a star entering a red giant stage did not change its mass, if so then the orbit of the Earth would not be affected. :-?

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Now while I might be amused by Cthulhians, I don't necessarily distrust them to carry out the functions of government. -- JayUtah

What's it like being a skeptic in the Middle East? Check out my blog.

Except that I don't know of anything that could cause such an event, aside from a direct collision with another large planetary body at just the right velocity. At which point, we're more likely to get smashed and have pieces still remaining in their natural orbit, and this scenario is still effectively true.

Very amusing!

And most of the methods suggested confirm my expectations that if the earth were destroyed, it would go out with a "plop" and not with a "bang."

This fits very well to one of my pet peeves: immortality.

How often have we heard people say: "I want to live forever." They usually envision this as: "I'll be able to see my greatgreatgreatgrandchildren." Actually this would mean them experiencing, in relatively short order, the extinction of the human race - oh, in say so and so many ten thousand years. Then they would be very, very loney with nothing to wear, to eat, nowhere to live, etc., - but they would still be alive. Then after another +/- 5 billion years of absolute unbearable horror, it would, as cited above, get really, really hot and they still wouldn't be able to die.

What a *****! #-o

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Credis in alienos extraterrenos terram visitantes? Credis in celeritam super lucem?
Credis in viam inter tempores? O tu stulte, aquire vitam.

Jonathan Swift wrote about a race of immortals in his Gulliver's Travels. The Struldbruggs lived forever, but also aged. Their life is not enviable.

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There's also a Greek myth along the same lines. I think the immortal ended up being nothing but a disembodied voice.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Yup, Aurora and Tithonus. She falls in love and persuades Zeus to make him immortal, but neglects to ask for eternal youth, too. He ends up a chirping cicada.

[quote="TriangleMan"]I ment another star might come by and interact with the sun and usally that means the ejection of smaller masses.

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If this writing is blue you're going too fast!

The jury is still out as to whether the Sun will expand enough to actually swallow the Earth.

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I liked that part in article about destoying the Earth by ceasing all thought. That means that a lot of HBs, Lieder, Sitchin, etc., are well down the path to destruction.

Whoops, that was under the section titled "Things which will NOT destroy the Earth". A reread of the particular paragraph revealed that further on it says "Philip K. Dick said it best: 'Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.'"

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But what if I just use that old coffee can full of tri-lithium that's sitting in my basement ??? :wink:

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Maybe we can collect all the AOL CD's together in one heap and collapse the Earth into a black hole--I figure there should be enough to do it by (dare I say it?) 2012. (Ducks and runs for cover!)

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The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

I now officially condemn CM's skits as smartaleck, ignorant, sophomoric, inflammatory and and a poor reflection on the level of discussion in BAUT. -- Bob Angstrom

This also from the section of things that will NOT destroy the Earth:

This would of course also necessitate accepting that 0= nonexistance to begin with. Apart from axioms, that would be a ***** to prove, even if it is/were true. #-o

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Credis in alienos extraterrenos terram visitantes? Credis in celeritam super lucem?
Credis in viam inter tempores? O tu stulte, aquire vitam.

I got a pile of National Geographics in case you don't have quite enough mass reference.

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One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

The concerns there about pollution are well-founded. This stuff's been going on for at least 41 years.

As Tom Lehrer sang in 1964:

7. Pollution

Time was when an American about to go abroad would be warned by his friends or the guidebooks not to drink the water. But times have changed, and now a foreigner coming to this country might be offered the following advice:

Notes

* Since this album was recorded in San Francisco, this is the California version of this verse. In some live performances, he also sang a New York version, that went:

The breakfast garbage they throw out in Troy
They drink at lunch in Perth Amboy.

And a Generic version that went:

Throw out your breakfast garbage and I have got a hunch
that the folks downstream will drink it for lunch.

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I'll give them one thing, they're thorough:
Not sure if I would have came up with this one.

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::Evil Bomber
"Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things."
--Robert A. Heinlein

That is a bit of a chicken and egg scenario; to dismantle the Earth, you need the energy collected by a Dyson Swarm; (not a continous sphere, which would fall into the Sun). To build the Dyson swarm, you need to dismantle the Earth.

Actually, I suggest we start with Mercury, which is closer to the Sun so gets more energy, has a lower escape velocity andso mass drivers would work better, and is nice and dense so it probably contains some useful materials of various kinds.

Build a dyson swarm from Mercury then you can use the energy to dismantle Venus, then the Earth (if you must).

I've just finished a Celestia model of a Dyson Swarm, by the way;
this one need a few more layers before it is finished.
http://tinypic.com/18geg0

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haha, I love this...

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Time cube is evil.

This is beginning to remind me of about 16 different things that Douglas Adams either wrote, or could have, or should have. What we need are Vogons and WowBanger the Infinitly Prolonged!

G

(we miss you Douglas, and I always know where my towel is!)

My favourite ones were 3: Destroy the Earth in a supernova and 8: Via a matter-anti-matter reaction. Relatively simple in principle and VERY cinematic!

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Happiness is the Earth in your rear view mirror.

Even if it did, would that truly destroy the Earth?
The average density of the sun is about 1.3 times that of water.
Now let it expand to 100 times its current diameter to "swallow" the earth.
It will gain no extra mass by doing so, in fact it will have lost about 5% of its mass to produce light over the coming 5e9 years.
The outer layers of teh expanded sun will be pretty thin (1 million times lower density, and the density will be higher in the core than in the outer layers).

Isn't it possible for the earth to survive as a (somewhat scorched) planet barely inside the sun that will reappear once the sun cools down to a white dwarf?

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I have a much better signature in a parallel universe

Even if the outer layers are real thin, the drag on the Earth will slow it down and the planet will spiral in further to eventual destruction. The other possibility will be that as the sun loses mass the orbit of the Earth will expand enough to avoid being swallowed.