How to destroy the Earth

[N C More]

Dooms Day du jour! (http://www.geocities.com/samdhughes/misc/destroy.html)

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

[TriangleMan]

I like this one. :lol:

Swallowed up as the Sun enters red giant stage
You will need: patience
Method: Simply wait for roughly 5,000,000,000 years.
Feasibility rating: 10/10. Guaranteed to work.
Earliest feasible completion date: AD 5,000,000,000

[Gullible Jones]

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.

[mickal555]

I like this one. :lol:

Swallowed up as the Sun enters red giant stage
You will need: patience
Method: Simply wait for roughly 5,000,000,000 years.
Feasibility rating: 10/10. Guaranteed to work.
Earliest feasible completion date: AD 5,000,000,000
Picking nits
I dunno earth could be ejected from Sol or somthing and this never happen 10/10 hmmmmmm

[TriangleMan]

[quote]Swallowed up as the Sun enters red giant stage

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

[Kesh]

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

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. ;)

[kleindoofy]

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."

Swallowed up as the Sun enters red giant stage
You will need: patience
Method: Simply wait for roughly 5,000,000,000 years.

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 #-o

[Maksutov]

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."

Swallowed up as the Sun enters red giant stage
You will need: patience
Method: Simply wait for roughly 5,000,000,000 years.

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 #-o
Jonathan Swift wrote about a race of immortals in his Gulliver's Travels. The Struldbruggs lived forever, but also aged. (http://www.bookrags.com/notes/gt/PART9.htm) Their life is not enviable.

[ToSeek]

Jonathan Swift wrote about a race of immortals in his Gulliver's Travels. The Struldbruggs lived forever, but also aged. (http://www.bookrags.com/notes/gt/PART9.htm) Their life is not enviable.

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

[Grey]

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

[mickal555]

[quote]Swallowed up as the Sun enters red giant stage

Picking nits
I dunno earth could be ejected from Sol or somthing and this never happen 10/10 hmmmmmm
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. :-?
I ment another star might come by and interact with the sun and usally that means the ejection of smaller masses.

[Kaptain K]

Swallowed up as the Sun enters red giant stage
You will need: patience
Method: Simply wait for roughly 5,000,000,000 years.
Feasibility rating: 10/10. Guaranteed to work.
Earliest feasible completion date: AD 5,000,000,000
The jury is still out as to whether the Sun will expand enough to actually swallow the Earth.

[Maksutov]

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.'"

[cyswxman]

Engulfed in supernova
*
You will need: neutrinos? Or possibly some means of inhibiting nuclear fusion reactions. (Thank you, jasmine.)
*
Method: Simply cause the Sun to suddenly halt all its nuclear fusion reactions, thereby collapsing and then exploding with enough energy to momentarily outshine the entire rest of the galaxy. ..
*
Earth's final resting place: a smear of vaporized iron moving across the universe at roughly 5% of the speed of light.
*
Feasibility rating: 2/10. Highly unlikely. Relies on as-yet undiscovered scientific theories.
*
Source: The Songs of Distant Earth, by Arthur C. Clarke

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

[Celestial Mechanic]

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!) :lol:

[kleindoofy]

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

Proving that 1=0. If one did indeed equal zero, so it is reasoned, then since is one Earth, there must be zero Earths... so, if one could prove it, the Earth would cease to exist.

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

[Swift]

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!) :lol:
:lol:
I got a pile of National Geographics in case you don't have quite enough mass reference (http://www.jir.com/geographic.html). :D

[Maksutov]

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!) :lol:
:lol:
I got a pile of National Geographics in case you don't have quite enough mass reference (http://www.jir.com/geographic.html). :D
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:

If you visit American city,
You will find it very pretty.
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!

Pollution, pollution!
They got smog and sewage and mud.
Turn on your tap
And get hot and cold running crud!

See the halibuts and the sturgeons
Being wiped out by detergeons.
Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly,
But they don't last long if they try.

Pollution, pollution!
You can use the latest toothpaste,
And then rinse your mouth
With industrial waste.

Just go out for a breath of air
And you'll be ready for Medicare.
The city streets are really quite a thrill -
If the hoods don't get you, the monoxide will.

Pollution, pollution!
Wear a gas mask and a veil.
Then you can breathe,
Long as you don't inhale!

Lots of things there that you can drink,
But stay away from the kitchen sink!
The breakfast garbage that you throw into the Bay
They drink at lunch in San Jose.*

So go to the city,
See the crazy people there.
Like lambs to the slaughter,
They're drinking the water
And breathing [cough] the air!

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.

[Evil_Bomber]

I'll give them one thing, they're thorough:
Meticulously and systematically deconstructed

You will need: a powerful mass driver, or ideally lots of them; ready access to roughly 1026J

Method: Basically, what we're going to do here is dig up the Earth, a big chunk at a time, and boost the whole lot of it into orbit. Yes. All six septillion tonnes of it. A mass driver is a sort of oversized electromagnetic railgun, which was once proposed as a way of getting mined materials back from the Moon to Earth - basically, you just load it into the driver and fire it upwards in roughly the right direction. We'd use a particularly powerful model - big enough to hit escape velocity of 11 kilometres per second even after atmospheric considerations - and launch it all into the Sun or randomly into space.

Alternate methods for boosting the material into space include loading the extracted material into space shuttles or taking it up via space elevator. All these methods, however, require a - let me emphasize this - titanic quantity of energy to carry out. Building a Dyson sphere ain't gonna cut it here. (Note: Actually, it would. But if you have the technology to build a Dyson sphere, why are you reading this?) See below for a possible solution.

Earth's final resting place: Many tiny pieces, some dropped into the Sun, the remainder scattered across the rest of the Solar System.

Feasibility rating: 8/10. If we wanted to and were willing to devote resources to it, we could start this process RIGHT NOW. Indeed, what with all the gunk left in orbit, on the Moon and heading out into space, we already have done.

Earliest feasible completion date: Ah. Yes. At a billion tonnes of mass driven out of the Earth's gravity well per second: 189,000,000 years.

Source: this method arose when JoeBaldwin and I knocked our heads together by accident.
Not sure if I would have came up with this one.

[eburacum45]

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

[Inferno]

haha, I love this...

Number of times the Earth has been destroyed: 0

[Gregg_Evans]

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!)

[NoXion]

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!

[drhex]

Swallowed up as the Sun enters red giant stage
You will need: patience
Method: Simply wait for roughly 5,000,000,000 years.
Feasibility rating: 10/10. Guaranteed to work.
Earliest feasible completion date: AD 5,000,000,000
The jury is still out as to whether the Sun will expand enough to actually swallow the Earth.

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?

[tjm220]

Swallowed up as the Sun enters red giant stage
You will need: patience
Method: Simply wait for roughly 5,000,000,000 years.
Feasibility rating: 10/10. Guaranteed to work.
Earliest feasible completion date: AD 5,000,000,000
The jury is still out as to whether the Sun will expand enough to actually swallow the Earth.

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?

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.