Ways to destroy the earth / General Chatting / Forums

Forums

4hv.org :: Forums :: General Chatting

« Previous topic | Next topic »

Ways to destroy the earth

1 2 next

Move Thread

LAN_403

Dr. Slack

Sat Aug 06 2011, 08:55AM

Registered Member #72 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:29AM
Location: UK St. Albans
Posts: 1659

So here's the deal, how do I destroy all life on earth?

My first thought was to drop the moon onto the earth. That would do a pretty thorough job of it. Two ways spring to mind, have the orbit decay in a more-or-less circular fashion, or make it more and more eliptical, until it is atmosphere-grazing at perihelion (perigeo-on?), which ought to take less work.

The obvious way to provide the lunar delta-V is to build mass drivers on the surface, assuming we can get enough machinery there. There's no athmosphere to disrupt the projectiles at low altitude, consistent and high solar flux for power, and abundant rock to throw.

The mass driver exit velocity would need to be >>2.4km/s, which is the escape velocity of the moon, as merely heaving stuff ito orbit doesn't change the centre-of-mass momentum of the moon and its satellites. However, the briefest of back-of-envelope calculations showed that the amount of mass that you'd need to drive off the moon to change its orbit enough would be a large undertaking.

So then instead of focussing on the reaction of the moon, my attention switched to the ejecta from the mass driver. It would be not unreasonable to throw a few tonnes (earth tonnes) per shot into moon orbit, and this would require an exit velocity below escape, much more practical. It would take only a few shots to assemble in orbit a Tunuska-size 10m across mass, perhaps held together in a net. It would take only a few billion shots to assemble a Chicxulub 10km sized satellite, held together by its own gravity.

It could then be boosted out of orbit, on an impact course with earth. A 10m satellite held together with a net could use a fairly conventional chemical rocket. A 10km wide satellite is a different proposition, not only is 10^9 more energy required, but a gravitationally bound mass of only 10km across would disrupt unless the differential accelerations within it were kept extremely low, which limits the size of a thruster on the back anyway. There may be a clever low-energy route by considering earth-moon-satellite as a three body system, to progressively slingshot the sateliite, probably using the Earth-Moon Langrangian points. At this point, I discover that although my son has just finished a physics degree, his orbital mechanics is not up to that job. Can anybody help with this one?

Of course, although whatever made the Chixculub crater made a pretty big bang, it still didn't wipe out all life (evidently), so something that size is still insufficient. The factor of a billion between the volume of a 10km satellite and a 10m one is quite telling. A million Tunguska-sized bangs, evenly spaced over the surface, may still do a good enough job, for a saving of 1000 times the launch effort. It may also be more practical to make a single large mass driver, to drive a 10m diameter bag of rock to earth collision trajectory, and don't bother mucking about assembling stuff in lunar orbit. The moon then just becomes a very high place from which to drop rocks.

Must go now, the nice men from the hospital have just managed to wade their way through my drool and ...

Pinky's Brain

Sat Aug 06 2011, 11:15AM

Registered Member #2901 Joined: Thu Jun 03 2010, 01:25PM
Location:
Posts: 837

Be patient, the sun will take care of it.

Mattski

Sat Aug 06 2011, 04:56PM

Registered Member #1792 Joined: Fri Oct 31 2008, 08:12PM
Location: University of California
Posts: 527

After assembling your moon projectile will you call up the UN and demand.... one MILLION dollars?

Also if your 10m moon bomb would preferably be a single chunk of moon rock or held together with a very strong net, because if it breaks up partway through its journey through the atmosphere then more of it will burn up and the impact will not be as strong.

Nah

Sat Aug 06 2011, 05:44PM

Registered Member #3567 Joined: Mon Jan 03 2011, 10:49PM
Location: USA, 1960s
Posts: 260

I'm old fashioned. Just used some good old 50 megaton H-bombs :)

Thomas W

Sat Aug 06 2011, 08:16PM

Registered Member #3324 Joined: Sun Oct 17 2010, 06:57PM
Location:
Posts: 1276

Tesla worked out that you can shake allmost anything to peices if you use the right "resonent" frequency, he calculated that for the earth if you set off a small explosion every ~1 hour and 45 minutes you could brake the world into peices, thankfully tesla never tryed it :)

GluD

Sat Aug 06 2011, 08:32PM

Registered Member #1221 Joined: Wed Jan 09 2008, 06:17PM
Location: Odense, Denmark
Posts: 196

Trick either the americans or russians to start a nuclear war. I'm certain that is easier done than have the moon decend upon us.

Juniortore1

Sat Aug 06 2011, 11:43PM

Registered Member #4014 Joined: Wed Jul 20 2011, 05:31PM
Location: SE Michigan
Posts: 25

HAARP?

Dr. Slack

Mon Aug 08 2011, 06:56PM

Registered Member #72 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:29AM
Location: UK St. Albans
Posts: 1659

From Plan A, which was dropping the moon onto the earth, I've accepted a down-scaling of ambitions to Plan B, which is to chuck large rocks from the moon to bombard the surface.

However, an evil genius doesn't just want to destroy things, he wants those doomed to suffer to be aware of it, and to gloat at the survivors' misery. So it needs a further scaling back to PlanC, which is actually a perfectly reasonable way of making most peoples' life really shitty.

Archeological history gave some quite good pointers as to the size of rocks (Tunguska, Chicxulub) needed to do what sort of damage, so maybe ancient history can help again.

Anyhow, Plan C is to wait until the dominant life-form has established large and difficult to move concentrations of population, say Dehli, New York City, London, Montreal, Shanghai, in low lying areas. Then the plan is to flood them by raising the sea-level, by raising global temeperatures to melt the ice-caps and expand the ocean, perhaps to the same level as during the PETM (Paleoceneâ€“Eocene Thermal Maximum). The easiest way to do that would be by exactly the same mechanism as during the PETM, raise CO2 levels by digging up and oxidising a substantial proportion of the fossil carbon lying around. It would rather hard for one organsiation to do that by itself with nobody else noticing, so the subtle trick will be to get the entire population to dig up all the fossil carbon and burn it themselves.

Now, you may be thinking, no sentient species would do that knowingly. However, if we could invent something that decoupled common-sense from our welfare, let's call it money, and some purpose to serve, let's call it progress and growth, then it may just be possible. Do you recall the child-catcher in ChittyChittyBangBang, "come here children, lots of lovely sweeties, and they're all free!". It might just work if the message was promulgated "come here consumers, lots of lovely automobiles, iPads, long-distance travel and air-conditioning, all you have to do is dig up inexpensive carbon and throw it away very cheaply!"

But wait ...

Thomas W

Mon Aug 08 2011, 07:00PM

Registered Member #3324 Joined: Sun Oct 17 2010, 06:57PM
Location:
Posts: 1276

use CERN's LHC :3

Forty

Mon Aug 08 2011, 08:54PM

Registered Member #3888 Joined: Sun May 15 2011, 09:50PM
Location: Erie, PA
Posts: 649

i once read of a method that would either cause catastrophic climate shift and destroy the world, or completely solve the atmospheric CO2 problem, all for about 5 dollars.
inexplicably there is a region in the pacific (i'd have to dig up the article to find out exactly where) that has very little life thriving in it. if several kilograms of iron oxide powder was dispersed in this area, it would cause a huge blooming of algae that would then consume a huge amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. another possibility is that the algae would raise the temperature of the surrounding water by several degrees, which would offset the oceanic currents, leading to the death of most sea life, vast super storms, and glacial melt.

but i'm sure the best way to destroy the planet is just to continue to let non scientists run most of it.

1 2 next

Moderator(s): Chris Russell, Noelle, Alex, Tesladownunder, Dave Marshall, Dave Billington, Bjørn, Steve Conner, Wolfram, Kizmo, Mads Barnkob