What would be the easiest way to OBLITERATE THE ENTIRE PLANET?

[Kerbface]

I mean we could destroy the crust with nuclear bombs, but would that count as obliterating the entire planet? What if we (Inspired by the moving the Earth thread, but easier!) blasted nuclear bombs retrograde on the moon and caused it to veer it's course enough to collide with the Earth?

[OtherDalfite]

Even the moon, if trying to even bother moving it, would take millions of years, even with a very strong and efficient engine.

[stupid_chris]

The easiest way would probably involve creating a black hole in the center of the planet. But that's way out of current technology.

I guess the moon idea isn't bad, but that wouldn't totally destroy the planet.

I think what would be really cool would be slightly moddifying Earth's orbit to send it on a close encounter with Venus and use gravity assists to slam Earth directly into Jupiter.

[Kerbface]

The easiest way would probably involve creating a black hole in the center of the planet. But that's way out of current technology.

I guess the moon idea isn't bad, but that wouldn't totally destroy the planet.

I think what would be really cool would be slightly moddifying Earth's orbit to send it on a close encounter with Venus and use gravity assists to slam Earth directly into Jupiter.

If you have enough thrust to send Earth that far out of it's way, I'm sure whatever you made the thrust with would be enough to blow it up.

[stupid_chris]

If you have enough thrust to send Earth that far out of it's way, I'm sure whatever you made the thrust with would be enough to blow it up.

Note "gravity assists". If done very cleverly, a slight modification of Earth's orbit and then using a Venus - Mars gravity slingshots would probably get us rather close to Jupiter's orbit. Of course a huge amount of thrust would still be needed, but it doesn't have to be done in a five min burn, it can be done over the course of a few years if you do it properly, so that kind of thrust doesn't have a huge destroying power.

[WestAir]

Launch a diamond ball at Earth.

0.9999999999999999999999951c

The fastest object (with mass) in recorded history might be the Oh-My-God particle (no relation to the God particle), a proton from space that plowed into the atmosphere over Utah in 1991. It was moving at 99.99999999999999999999951% of the speed of light, which meant it packed the kinetic energy of a baseballâ€â€in a single proton. The cascade of particles it blasted apart dwarfed anything the LHC could produce.

Nobody knows how it got to be moving so fast. Particles moving that fast hit the Earth a handful of times a year. They seem to come from the general direction of exploding galaxies, but what happened to to make them leave in such a hurryâ€â€and why they haven’t slowed down more before they got hereâ€â€is something of a mystery.

Let’s give Aidan’s diamond meteor the speed of the Oh My God particle.

These speeds are so high that my copy of SRIM flatly refuses to simulate them. However, we can get some idea from looking at how cosmic rays cascade through rock.

The diamond sweeps out a column of atmosphere without seeming to notice and disappears into the crust. A cloud of expanding plasma and radiation grows around the entry point as the energy ripples outward through the body of the planet. Forty milliseconds later the entire far side expands outward in an incandescent cloud.

The diamond meteor, and the cascade of particles it created as it collided with the crust, is spread out throughout the body of our planet. The superheated planet glows brighter than the sun.

The momentum would be enough to knock the Earth into a different orbitâ€â€but the Earth is no more. The energy deposited is ten thousand times greater than the planet’s gravitational binding energy, and the planet is blown into an expanding cloud of plasma, with a particularly energetic streamer extending away from the far side of the impact site, out into space.

The Sun hiccups and flares as it absorbs waves of dust. The surfaces of Mars and Venus are scoured clean by the waves of incredibly high-energy plasma.

[an alien comment creates a cavalcade of theological and linguistic conundrums]

And in the distant future, an alien astronomer on a world hundreds of light-years from Earth frowns at a beeping detector, and wonders what violent event would make a particle move so fast.

[Kerbface]

Note "gravity assists". If done very cleverly, a slight modification of Earth's orbit and then using a Venus - Mars gravity slingshots would probably get us rather close to Jupiter's orbit. Of course a huge amount of thrust would still be needed, but it doesn't have to be done in a five min burn, it can be done over the course of a few years if you do it properly, so that kind of thrust doesn't have a huge destroying power.

I meant to get to Venus. Isn't that actually rather difficult?

[stupid_chris]

It would be, but you can't just strap a gigantic rocket to a planet and change it's orbit. There's other slower, but less expansive ways of doing it. Example, setting an asteroid on an orbit that brings it periodically on flyby's with earth, would, over the course thousands of years, significantly change it's orbit. Or the orion drive method could work, but instead of a pusher plate, you use the surface. Not very safe, but heh, it works.

There's different ways to move a planet, non are simple, but some wouldn't demand as much energy, just much more time.

[ShachonianX]

De-orbit the planet so it crashes into the sun.

[harharluke]

The Osterhagen key

*Reference*

[tomf]

How to destroy the earth

[Holo]

Centrifugal destruction. Get a massive black hole in a 90 minute orbit, and the gravitational gradient will make the Earth spin faster until the centrifugal force makes it detonate.

[Kerbface]

Centrifugal destruction. Get a massive black hole in a 90 minute orbit, and the gravitational gradient will make the Earth spin faster until the centrifugal force makes it detonate.

Why would you bother making it go into a 90 minute orbit? If you've managed to bring a massive black hole to the Earth, it's already dead.

[Mekan1k]

Alcubierre drive, at 3X lightspeed, pass through Jupiter on direct path to earth, deactivate drive 5 thousand km out.

The alcubierre shock would obliterate the planet like a shotgun blast hitting a grape!

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

[legoheli]

Why would you bother making it go into a 90 minute orbit? If you've managed to bring a massive black hole to the Earth, it's already dead.

For Science.

[Person012345]

Death Star?

[Winter Man]

Hit it with an antiplanet.

[Inspector Gadget]

Antimatter astroid. An astroid mad out of pure antimatter when it comes in contact with the earth would explode and completely obliterate everything.

[Inspector Gadget]

Also, the moon wouldn't work. Earth has already been hit by a planet like object before and earth is still here. The planet like object was also the object that ended up becoming our moon.

[nhnifong]

Seriously none of these ideas are within our current technology. We can't have any noticeable effect on the core or the mantle, or the orbit of the Earth or the Moon.

We can however probably wipe out 99.99 percent of all life in a variety of ways.

* Creating a runaway greenhouse effect to ruin the temperature balance and possibly make this place similar to Venus.

* Using nuclear weapons detonated over key Volcanic areas to fill the atmosphere with as much soot as possible and cause a prolonged ice age, although I doubt this would really kill all life on Earth or even all Humans.

* Redirecting one or more large asteroids towards the planet using the same proposed technology we plan to use to deflect them.

* Significantly altering the ph level of the oceans with added chemicals, stunting algal growth and triggering a cascade of extinction up the food chain. (again, not totally effective, life would probably spring back)

I'd say using all of these in combination would be about the most destructive and awful thing we are currently capable of technologically.

[Tex_NL]

...

I'd say using all of these in combination would be about the most destructive and awful thing we are currently capable of technologically.

And still life will prevail.

Life on earth evolved over many millions of years and suffered many catastrophic events ranging from asteroid impacts and ice ages to distant supernovae and GRB's. Though they all devastated life on earth non wiped it out completely. Sure, we humans probably won't survive, but life itself will prevail.

[Holo]

Why would you bother making it go into a 90 minute orbit? If you've managed to bring a massive black hole to the Earth, it's already dead.

Because then you can't use the stuff left over to build houses.

[brooksy125]

Antimatter astroid. An astroid mad out of pure antimatter when it comes in contact with the earth would explode and completely obliterate everything.

Wrong the asteroid would need to be the same mass as the entire earth to completely annihilate the planet,

Why do people assume that antimatter produces mega explosions?

[Holo]

Wrong the asteroid would need to be the same mass as the entire earth to completely annihilate the planet,

Why do people assume that antimatter produces mega explosions?

Because it does. 1000 tons of antimatter/matter liberates 300 teratons of energy.

[Tex_NL]

Wrong the asteroid would need to be the same mass as the entire earth to completely annihilate the planet,

Why do people assume that antimatter produces mega explosions?

If you plan to completely remove the earth then yes, you'll need the same mass. But that would release so much energy it would wipe out not just earth and our entire solar system but probably a few others as well. To destroy earth you need only a fraction of the earths mass in antimatter.

Why do people assume antimatter produces mega explosions? Physics! Remember E=mc²? That's why! Energy equals mass times light speed squared. You do the math.

1 earth mass = 5.97219 × 10²⁴ kilograms (Times 2 as we also have the anti-earth)

light speed = 299.792.458 m/s

An average supernova releases 1–2 ×10⁴⁴ Joules, a hypernova 1 × 10⁴⁶ Joules. According to my calculations earth + anti-earth releases roughly 1 x 10⁴⁷ Joules. Ten times more then a hypernova!

Edited July 6, 2013 by Tex_NL