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

[PB666]

39 minutes ago, wumpus said:

 Humans have managed to develop tech and side effects sufficient for self-extinction,....

So far as yet we cannot destroy our own planet, if we were to vanish tomorrow, the planet would respond, it would remediate and we would be back to having 100ky ice ages interrupted by 15 ky climate optimums.
Lystrosaurus was the most popular therapsid after the Permian-triassic extinction event represent 95% of the terrestrial fossils, within 5 million years it was gone. Past success is not an indication of futrure performance. The essential problem with being king of the mountain is that you are necessarily set for a fall, its not possible to move any direction but fall. ON the micro scale just about every empire that has ever risen has fallen, just the name empire appears to be a curse, but its not the style of the politics, its simply the arrogance of success and getting set in ways that are inflexible. Lystrosaurus.

 

[Brotoro]

Stupid_Chris is correct. The only way to destroy the Earth (and not just obliterate its ecosphere and such ideas) with CURRENT technology is to calculate and execute a series of gravitational assist encounters, staring with moving small asteroids that deflect bigger asteroids that deflect even bigger asteroids into orbits where there give resonance tugs on Mars to shift its orbit to the point where it can be made to encounter Earth and slowly shift its orbit down to Venus...

But I don't think your end target needs to be sending Earth out to Jupiter... a head-on collision between Earth and Venus would leave nothing recognizable as Earth behind (whether it makes lots of chunks or a new super-Earth planet as a result).

Start calculating the trajectories...it's going to be a long project.

[Shpaget]

I believe you guys seriously underestimate the energies required to move the Earth. Even with all the gravity assists you can find and all the asteroids you smash into the planet, it's entirely unrealistic.

[Green Baron]

Of course we cannot "destroy our planet", but we can turn the surface into an uninhabitable place with the release of the nuclear weapons. And with our behaviour and impact on the environment we have a bad effect on the biospehere, especially an biodiversity and climate as well as resources. But that wasn't the question ...

[kerbiloid]

We should study this option for success.

Nukes would just cause the terrain recultivation problems and create a fork of current biosphere, eliminating most of big animals, but allowing the smaller ones to grow up.

Edited January 10, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Rickert-A33]

we could dig to the deepest point where we can go and let some of the hot stuff get up and use that stuff and some nuclear stuff to make a really strong nuclear bomb just a idea  

Edited January 10, 2018 by Rickert-A33
spell

[Just Jim]

I've been thinking about this, and I honestly don't know if it can be done, short of sun-diving, or a supernova.

Wiping out all life is super-easy compared to obliterating the entire planet... Even if you hit it with another planet, Earth's own history, according to the giant-impact hypothesis, shows it may eventually reform into another planet! Might take a few hundred thousand years... but in the end, you still have a planet... and maybe a large moon.

My point is, depending on how much time we're talking... it may be impossible to completely obliterate a planet.

I need to think about this some more...

Edited January 10, 2018 by Just Jim

[Shpaget]

5 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

My point is, depending on how much time we're talking... it may be impossible to completely obliterate a planet.

I need to think about this some more...

If we give it enough time, and the Big Rip turns out to be a thing, we don't need to do anything but be patient.

But I'd say the spirit of the OP is not dealing with cosmological time scales.

[NSEP]

I don't think there is a way to completely obliterate a planet, beshides throwing it into a Black Hole or let it be röched apart by another body.

Although nuclear weapons might seriously damage life on Earth, i don't ALL multicellular life will die off. Maybe sea creatures like fish can handle it.

[DarkOwl57]

Death Star. Done

[PB666]

4 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Of course we cannot "destroy our planet", but we can turn the surface into an uninhabitable place with the release of the nuclear weapons. And with our behaviour and impact on the environment we have a bad effect on the biospehere, especially an biodiversity and climate as well as resources. But that wasn't the question ...

You cannot kill everything on the surface that easily. . . . . . .its difficult to make something foolproof because fools are damn clever . . . .some of those bugs would thrive on your radiation.

You can make the earth inhabitable to certain species. . . .but wait. . aren't we already doing that.

[Green Baron]

We certainly are doing that. Sure, crustal life will survive as well, at least the initial blow. Correction then: "uninhabitable to humans and most if not all higher life if distributed well enough". But that multiple times with the available stuff. So is the advertisement since the '60s.

Apart from that this threatd has lost contact to reality.

:-)

Edited January 10, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

That anthropocentric chauvinism...

I believe, humans would be one of the very last species to disappear, right before bacteria.

They can use almost any another species as food, clothes, fuel or glue.
They can dig artificial vaults to withstand a several years long winter or fallout, cover the skin with other species' fat to protect it from the sun light, filter and boil the contaminated water, take the radioactive layer of the ground off and put it aside, and so on.

Can't say about other countries, but a usual jokes like "only cockroaches would survive" already have lost their sense because cockroaches already have vastly disappeared from houses for unknown reasons.
I have seen them last time maybe ten years ago.

[Green Baron]

12 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

That anthropocentric chauvinism...

I believe, ...

:-) Message intentionally mutilated.

Quote

Can't say about other countries, ...
I have seen them last time maybe ten years ago.

Yesterday. I kill one every week that gets into the house, and i live on the mountain slope in an area atypical for them. The problem is bigger in the towns and down at the sea were warmer and/or wetter. Oh, i have centipedes as well, 12cm long the biggest. Shall i fry it for you or do you prefer it salted and dried ? :-)

Edited January 10, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

8 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

20 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

That anthropocentric chauvinism...

I believe, ...

:-) Message intentionally mutilated.

Any opinion is someone's belief.

8 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Yesterday. I kill one every week that gets into the house, and i live on the mountain slope in an area atypical for them. The problem is bigger in the towns and down at the sea were warmer and/or wetter. Oh, i have centipedes as well, 12cm long the biggest :-)

You see? If your protein facility will be out of cockroaches, you can utilize centipedes.
No another biological species can do this. You even don't need to wait several hundred thousand years to evolutionize, just adjust the kitchen equipment.

Edited January 10, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

5 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

No another biological species can do this. You even don't need to wait several hundred thousand years to evolutionize, just adjust the kitchen equipment.

That is not correct. There a quite a lot of omnivorous species besides humans.

And humans cannot eat everything, uncooked green stuff is indigestible excluding fruits, meat is ok but we could not chew it uncooked (try it !), carrion is deadly, many plants and fungi are poisonous, some deadly. You should update your view ;-)

Btw., i wouldn't recommend to eat grown stuff after the said scenario.

[kerbiloid]

57 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

There a quite a lot of omnivorous species besides humans.

Specialized on several kinds of food. Maybe rodents, of course, are really omnivorous. Hens and more or less pigs, too.  And rodents are edible, too. (And tasty if speak about nutria).

57 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

And humans cannot eat everything, uncooked green stuff is indigestible excluding fruits, meat is ok but we could not chew it uncooked (try it !), carrion is deadly, many plants and fungi are poisonous, some deadly.

Humans can make compost of everything from your list and so grow food of anything they can't eat directly.
Also they are the only species except bacteria able to produce nitric fertilizers just from the air.
Almost everything except metals are either food itself or a precursor for food for humans.

57 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

i wouldn't recommend to eat grown stuff after the said scenario.

A wild-grown stuff. You can cultivate the soil in your kitchen-garden, use greenhouses, filter the water, etc.
Lions and deer would just die.

Edited January 10, 2018 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

Put in more planets.

 

Or, spin it.

[PB666]

3 hours ago, Green Baron said:

We certainly are doing that. Sure, crustal life will survive as well, at least the initial blow. Correction then: "uninhabitable to humans and most if not all higher life if distributed well enough". But that multiple times with the available stuff. So is the advertisement since the '60s.

Apart from that this threatd has lost contact to reality.

:-)

It did not start in reality. Or lets put it like this . . . .how could something else destroy earth. Thats easy:

Alpha centauri prime at closest approach goes super nova.
a black neutron star passes by planet 9 and throws its orbit into earth.
a black hole passes through our solar system barely missing the sun and orphaning all of the planets.
a black hole or dark neutron star passes close to earth and tosses it from our solar system.
The earth passes so close to a black hole part of it is spagettified.
The earth collides with a black holes and it ceases to exist.
The cosmological constant suddenly increases by a factor of 10 and  begins spreads through non-vacuum space gravitational constant drops by a factor of 10.

A set of scientist in a far off galaxy 10 million years ago unable to detect quantum gravity, and frustrated by the fact that entropy and time is rooted in a particle that they cannot observe, realize that the only solution might be in the scalar. The idea was to impart so much energy on two protons that they would form virtual black holes that would collide and demonstrate a super massive quantum gravity particle. The experiment went according to plan until the potent singularities (moving so close to the speed of light that space-time curvature was infinitely abrupt) and virtually reached  a single quantum foam element within a measure of quantum time statistically sufficient that both singularities merged but the black holes ceased to exist the quantum space-time element. Energy density went to infinity momentarily causing an inflationary cycle creating a mini-universe (just as ours was created), dark energy from our universe poured into that universe during the inflation and began sucking energy from our universe. We had all of 10^-30 of a second to realize that our universe was caused by careless scientist in a previous universe that were trying to prevent the heat death of their universe by studying quantum gravity, a cycle that has repeated is self an infinite number of times, each time its denizens not realizing that is their vanity encoded in their survival instinct that would ultimately cause the demise of all sentients.

The Vogons being tipped by the galactic hyperspace council decide to put a hyperspace bypass through the Earth, so they blink it.

 

[wumpus]

10 hours ago, Shpaget said:

I believe you guys seriously underestimate the energies required to move the Earth. Even with all the gravity assists you can find and all the asteroids you smash into the planet, it's entirely unrealistic.

Deflecting asteroids from damaging Earth appears to require time in addition to actually being able to spot them and send an intercept (we can't do either right now).  A better question is just how long it would take to get Ceres (or similar) to either Mars/Sun or Earth/Sun Lagrange point 2 and then going wild (presumably getting Jupiter assists until finally hitting Earth with slightly above solar escape velocity).  I'd assume centuries or even millenia (expect for comets to be your dwarf planet mover of choice, probably with large mirrors directly vaporizing bits of comet off to act as cheap delta-v).

Such would be a lengthy project, no amount of launches from roughly the same time period could do it with modern technology, we'd have to build replacements over the centuries.  I can't imagine a culture remaining that suicidal for that long.

But given enough time, you'd be amazed at what tiny usages of delta-v can accomplish in a chaotic gravity system.

[DAL59]

20 hours ago, bigcalm said:

Red Dwarf

red giant, actually

[bigcalm]

20 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

red giant, actually

Sorry, yes you're completely right - Red Giant not Red Dwarf.

Anyway.  The whole question basically boils down to:  How can you generate more energy than the gravitational binding energy of the earth in a very short period of time.  2.487 x 10³² Joules.

[Mukita12]

Put the planet into the star

 

 

 

EASY RIGHT?!

[ChrisSpace]

Okay, here are my ideas, ranked from least to most destructive:

11. Slaughterbots

Mass produce these (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw) once they've been developed. Wiping out most of the planet's population should be doable with enough resources and funding.

10. Send nukes

If the world's nuclear arsenals are brought back to the sizes they were at in the 80s, less than 20% of the global population could be left alive after the initial nuclear exchange and nuclear winter, especially if the warheads are "salted" with cobalt. Also try using nukes to set off some supervolcanoes.

9. "Blight"

You know that thing in Interstellar that was killing all the world's plants? Turns out that can actually happen. In theory at least. I have two ideas for which specific pathogen can be used, both of which should be able to take out maybe 90% of the planet's population.

8. Extreme climate change

By releasing every drop of potential greenhouse gases in the Earth into the atmosphere, we could render most of the planet uninhabitable to all but maybe 5% of the population.

7. Drop a rock

To simplify, this method involves changing the orbit of an asteroid or comet so it impacts Earth. By far the best candidate for this is the comet Swift-Tuttle, although that would require more propellant than you could possibly carry up there, so an ISRU system using the comet's ice for hydrogen or hydrolox propellant would be required. It also would require hundreds of meganewtons of thrust, so the only realistic propulsion method would be a vast array of chemical or nuclear-thermal engines.

6. Snowball Earth

Remember how one of the ideas for terraforming Venus involved using a giant mirror at the L1 point to block out the sun, so the atmosphere would freeze and stuff? If we did that to Earth, the planet could become a solid block of ice very quickly. Still, in well-insulated habitats and underground, maybe 2% of the population could survive.

5. Genetically engineered pandemic

This is the first idea on this list that I think might actually have a possibility of killing the entire planet's population. The genetic codes for Ebola, Avian Flu, Marbug, SARS and many others are all available online, as are the locations for the last 2 samples of smallpox, and instructions on how to modify existing pathogens.

4. Antimatter

Producing enough antimatter to kill the world's population and destroy most of the global biosphere is... probably possible, but would require vast amounts of power and energy.

3. Grey goo

Can a swarm of tiny, self-replicting machines consume the entire Earth's biosphere? Maybe. Could we build such a thing? Not sure.

2. Nicoll Dyson Beam

Turn the sun into one of these and focus it's energy onto Earth. This is the only way I can think of that the planet could be physically destroyed.

1. Call for help

If some genocidal AI or extraterrestrial regime wanted to destroy Earth, I'm sure they'd be even more creative and motivated then I am.

 

Honorable mention 1: Chlorine poisoning

It's number 9 on this list: http://www.toptenz.net/10-events-wipe-humanity.php

Genetically modifying the algae to do this sounds difficult, though.

Honorable mention 2: Black Hole

Even producing a tiny black hole the size of an atom is far beyond our capabilities.

Edited January 11, 2018 by ChrisSpace

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

11. Slaughterbots

1.Say, a 20 km thick (high? deep?) layer of slaughterbots would be crushing any bot beneath. So, probably that would be the same planet with the upper lythosphere consisting of bots.
2.The bots need a lot of energy to extract the metals from oxides. Sun is poor one for a thick bot layer.
3.The bots produce energy and need a cooling. No cooling on several kilometer depth. They would melt.
4.The bots would be made of metals, so they should throw out the pure oxygen. A pure oxygen atmosphere would burn and melt the upper layers of bots.

2 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

10. Send nukes

World reserves of uranium ~6 000 000 t.
Available world reserves of thorium ~1 200 000 t.
Say, we put them all into breeders and get 7 200 000 t of ²³⁹Pu and ²³³U.
~20 kt/kg * 7.2*10⁹ kg * 4.2*10¹² J/kt = 6*10²³ J.

Total planet area = 510 mln km² = 5.1*10¹⁴ m².
Total land area = 140 mln km² = 1.4*10¹⁴ m².
Total ocean area = 3.7*10¹⁴ m².
6*10²³ J / 3.7*10¹⁴ m² = 1.6*10⁹ J/m².
~3 MJ/kg is required to vaporize water.
1.6*10⁹ J/m² / (3*10⁶ J/kg) / (1000 kg/m³) = 0.5 m

I.e. if collect all available reserves of uranium and thorium, and make fission, only 0.5 m thick layer of ocean would vaporize.
This is 3.7*10¹⁴ m² * 0.5 m * 1000 kg/m³ ~= 1.9*10¹⁷ kg.
Total mass of atmospheric water ~=1.5*10¹⁶ kg, humidilty ~1%.
So, average humidity of the air would temporarily rise up to ~12%, then rains _{of Castamere} would return the water back to the ocean.

So, fission nukes are not an option.

***

Total mass of the Earth hydrosphere ~=1.5*10²¹ kg.
Hydrogen mass = 2 / 18 * 1.5*10²¹ kg = 1.67*10²⁰ kg
Deuterium mass = 1.67*10²⁰ kg / 6500 = 2.6*10¹⁶ kg
One gram of deuterium results in 10¹² J of energy.

So, total available fusion energy ~= 2.6*10¹⁶ kg * 1000 g/kg * 10¹² J/g = 2.6*10²⁹ J.

Total mass of the hydrosphere ~= 1.5*10²¹ kg.
Total energy of vaporization = 1.5*10²¹ kg * 3*10⁶ J/kg ~= 4.5*10²⁷ J.

So, almost all energy would heat the Earth rocky body.
For metals (and stones) energy of vaporization ~= 5 MJ/kg.

So, the fusion energy would vaporize ~= 2.6*10²⁹ J / 5*10⁶J/kg / 2500 kg/m³ = 2*10¹⁹ m³ or rock.
Thickness of the vaporized layer = 2*10¹⁹ m³ / 5.1*10¹⁴ m² = 40 km.

Earth mass ~= 6*10²⁴ kg.

Average energy/mass = 2.6*10²⁹ J / 6*10²⁴ kg = 43 kJ/kg.
I.e. the whole Earth would warm up for several tens kelvins.

So, all theoretically available nukes would just vaporize the lythosphere.
Then the ash rains would return the lythosphere back.

***

If treat that 43 kJ/kg as a kynetic energy, delta-V ~= (43000 * 2)^1/2 = 300 m/s.
Not enough to significantly change the Earth orbit.

So, nukes are not an option, too.

2 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

9. "Blight"

You know that thing in Interstellar that was killing all the world's plants? Turns out that can actually happen. In theory at least. I have two ideas for which specific pathogen can be used, both of which should be able to take out maybe 90% of the planet's population.

and

2 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

5. Genetically engineered pandemic

The planet survives, immune species survive. Just a temporary drop in population.

2 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

8. Extreme climate change

By releasing every drop of potential greenhouse gases in the Earth into the atmosphere, we could render most of the planet uninhabitable to all but maybe 5% of the population.

Unless it becomes a total Venus.
Also the planet itself stays.

2 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

7. Drop a rock

To simplify, this method involves changing the orbit of an asteroid or comet so it impacts Earth. By far the best candidate for this is the comet Swift-Tuttle, although that would require more propellant than you could possibly carry up there, so an ISRU system using the comet's ice for hydrogen or hydrolox propellant would be required. It also would require hundreds of meganewtons of thrust, so the only realistic propulsion method would be a vast array of chemical or nuclear-thermal engines.

Total available fusion energy calculated above is 2.6*10²⁹ J.
If the rock velocity is 15 km/s, it is like a 2.3*10²¹ kg rock, i.e.3% of the Moon. It is like a total asteroid belt mass, but as you can see above, doesn't eliminate the planet at all.

2 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

6. Snowball Earth

Total fission energy calculated above is 6*10²³ J.
It's enough to warm the houses until the Ice Age stops.

2 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

4. Antimatter

Producing enough antimatter to kill the world's population and destroy most of the global biosphere is... probably possible, but would require vast amounts of power and energy.

To produce antimatter one should spend more energy than it holds.
So, total available antimatter energy would be several times lower than the mentioned total fusion energy. Just more compact.

2 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

3. Grey goo

See above about bots.

2 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

2. Nicoll Dyson Beam

If you can turn a Sun, you don't need a beam to turn the Earth. Just do it directly.

2 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

1. Call for help

They will copy/paste this post and send it back.

Edited January 11, 2018 by kerbiloid