Top ten tips which might destroy the earth

[Ronnie67]

1. Total existence failure

You will need: nothing

Method: No method. Simply sit back and twiddle your thumbs as, completely by chance, all 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms making up the planet Earth suddenly, simultaneously and spontaneously cease to exist. Note: The odds against this actually ever occurring are considerably greater than a googolplex to one. Failing this, some kind of arcane (read: scientifically laughable) probability-manipulation device may be employed.

2. Gobbled up by strangelets

You will need: a stable strangelet

Method: Hijack control of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island, N.Y. Use the RHIC to create and maintain a stable strangelet. Keep it stable for as long as it takes to absorb the entire Earth into a mass of strange quarks. Keeping the strangelet stable is incredibly difficult once it has absorbed the stabilizing machinery, but creative solutions may be possible.

A while back, there was some media hoo-hah about the possibility of this actually happening at the RHIC, but in actuality the chances of a stable strangelet forming are pretty much zero.

Earth's final resting place: a huge glob of strange matter

3. Sucked into microscopic black hole

You will need: a microscopic black hole. Note that black holes are not eternal, they evaporate due to Hawking radiation. For your average black hole this takes an unimaginable amount of time, but for really small ones it could happen almost instantaneously, as evaporation time is dependent on mass. Therefore you microscopic black hole must have greater than a certain threshold mass, roughly equal to the mass of Mount Everest. Creating a microscopic black hole is tricky, since one needs a reasonable amount of neutronium, but may possibly be achievable by jamming large numbers of atomic nuclei together until they stick.

Method: simply place your black hole on the surface of the Earth and wait. Black holes are of such high density that they pass through ordinary matter like a stone through the air. The black hole will plummet through the ground, eating its way to the center of the Earth and all the way through to the other side: then, it'll oscillate back, over and over like a matter-absorbing pendulum. Eventually it will come to rest at the core, having absorbed enough matter to slow it down. Then you just need to wait, while it sits and consumes matter until the whole Earth is gone.

Highly, highly unlikely. But not impossible.

Earth's final resting place: a singularity of almost zero size, which will then proceed to happily orbit the Sun as normal.

Source: "The Dark Side Of The Sun," by Terry Pratchett. It is true that the microscopic black hole idea is an age-old science fiction mainstay which predates Pratchett by a long time, he was my original source for the idea, so that's what I'm putting.

4. Blown up by matter / antimatter reaction

You will need: 2,500,000,000,000 tons of antimatter Antimatter - the most explosive substance possible - can be manufactured in small quantities using any large particle accelerator, but this will take some considerable time to produce the required amounts. If you can create the appropriate machinery, it may be possible - and much easier - simply to "flip" 2.5 trillion tons of matter through a fourth dimension, turning it all to antimatter at once.

Method: This method involves detonating a bomb so big that it blasts the Earth to pieces.

How hard is that? The gravitational binding energy of a planet of mass M and radius R is - if you do the lengthy calculations — given by the formula E=(3/5)GM^2/R. For Earth, that works out to roughly 224,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules. The Sun takes nearly a WEEK to output that much energy. Think about THAT.

To liberate that much energy requires the complete annihilation of around 2,500,000,000,000 tonnes of antimatter. That's assuming zero energy loss to heat and radiation, which is unlikely to be the case in reality: You'll probably need to up the dose by at least a factor of ten. Once you've generated your antimatter, probably in space, just launch it en masse towards Earth. The resulting release of energy (obeying Einstein's famous mass-energy equation, E=mc^2) should be sufficient to split the Earth into a thousand pieces.

5. Destroyed by vacuum energy detonation

You will need: a light bulb

Method: This is a fun one. Contemporary scientific theories tell us that what we may see as vacuum is only vacuum on average, and actually thriving with vast amounts of particles and antiparticles constantly appearing and then annihilating each other. It also suggests that the volume of space enclosed by a light bulb contains enough vacuum energy to boil every ocean in the world. Therefore, vacuum energy could prove to be the most abundant energy source of any kind. Which is where you come in. All you need to do is figure out how to extract this energy and harness it in some kind of power plant — this can easily be done without arousing too much suspicion — then surreptitiously allow the reaction to run out of control. The resulting release of energy would easily be enough to annihilate all of planet Earth and probably the sun too.

6. Sucked into a giant black hole

You will need: a black hole, extremely powerful rocket engines, and, optionally, a large rocky planetary body. The nearest black hole to our planet is 1,600 light-years from Earth in the direction of Sagittarius, orbiting V4641.

Method: After locating your black hole, you need get it and the Earth together. This is likely to be the most time-consuming part of this plan. There are two methods, moving Earth or moving the black hole, though for best results you'd most likely move both at once.

Very difficult, but definitely possible.

7. Meticulously and systematically deconstructed

You will need: a powerful mass driver, or ideally lots of them; ready access to roughly 2*10^32J

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 6 sextillion tons of it. A mass driver is a sort of oversized electromagnetic rail gun, 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 6.8 miles per second (11 kilometers 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?)

8. Pulverized by impact with blunt instrument

You will need: a big heavy rock, something with a bit of a swing to it ... perhaps Mars.

Method: Essentially, anything can be destroyed if you hit it hard enough. ANYTHING. The concept is simple: find a really, really big asteroid or planet, accelerate it up to some dazzling speed, and smash it into Earth, preferably head-on but whatever you can manage. The result: an absolutely spectacular collision, resulting hopefully in Earth (and, most likely, our "cue ball" too) being pulverized out of existence - smashed into any number of large pieces which if the collision is hard enough should have enough energy to overcome their mutual gravity and drift away forever, never to coagulate back into a planet again.

9. Eaten by von Neumann machines

You will need: a single von Neumann machine.

Method: A von Neumann machine is any device that is capable of creating an exact copy of itself given nothing but the necessary raw materials. Create one of these that subsists almost entirely on iron, magnesium, aluminum and silicon, the major elements found in Earth's mantle and core. It doesn't matter how big it is as long as it can reproduce itself exactly in any period of time. Release it into the ground under the Earth's crust and allow it to fend for itself. Watch and wait as it creates a second von Neumann machine, then they create two more, then they create four more. As the population of machines doubles repeatedly, the planet Earth will, terrifyingly soon, be entirely eaten up and turned into a swarm of potentially sextillions of machines. Technically your objective would now be complete — no more Earth — but if you want to be thorough then you can command your VNMs to hurl themselves, along with any remaining trace elements, into the sun. This hurling would have to be achieved using rocket propulsion of some sort, so be sure to include this in your design.

So crazy it might just work.

10. Hurled into the Sun

You will need: Earthmoving equipment.

Method: Hurl the Earth into the sun. Sending Earth on a collision course with the sun is not as easy as one might think; even though you don't actually have to literally hit the sun (send the Earth near enough to the sun (within the Roche limit), and tidal forces will tear it apart), it's surprisingly easy to end up with Earth in a loopy elliptical orbit which merely roasts it for four months in every eight. But careful planning can avoid this.

This is impossible at our current technological level, but will be possible one day, I'm certain. In the meantime, may happen by freak accident if something comes out of nowhere and randomly knocks Earth in precisely the right direction

I hope you enjoyed my little read

[carlc]

Well that brightened up my morning.

Is there any tea (and what do you mean you're from Betelgeuse)?

[Folkert]

Fun read! Thanks! Now far the bad news....

[Syntarsus]

Interesting read. Couple of the more obvious ones:

massive solar expansion

nearby gamma ray burst perhaps?

[L8-Nite]

Here's # 11

You need do nothing, the wheels are in motion, the elected fools of this world will destroy it for you.

[Ronnie67]

To true, that's one of the reasons why I never vote, it does not matter who is elected, they do nothing but lie, the who government is nothing but lies

[ollypenrice]

I think it's much simpler than this. Complex life forms go extinct regularly, for starters. The long lived dinosaurs didn't survive over anything that you'd really call an astronomical timescale. I doubt that ours will be as long. Your best chance is to be a microbe in a rock.

Secondly the sun has a finite life. Then it's curtains.

We are destructive creatures but that's because we want to be, not because politicians make us so. If we didn't want to be destructive we would vote for non destructive policies but we don't. Don't blame the elected, blame the electorate. We could vote for a blanket speed limit, electronically imposed, of 30mph to reduce pollution, which of course it would. If we voted for it we'd get it. We don't vote for it. Come on, be honest.

Behind the post lies a wider question of peoples' view of humanity. I genuinely believe that there are people who think it is rather silly to say that the human race will go extinct. We'll colonize other planets. But then there are others who think it is rather silly to think that will not go extinct. Personally I'm of the latter persuasion. What do others think?

Olly

[Cath]

I tend to agree Olly, we certainly seem doomed to doom ourselves out of existence - if pass/current trends are anything to go by.

And leaving the planet doesn't seem so easy ..

http://what-if.xkcd.com/7/

[Naemeth]

I tend to agree Olly, we certainly seem doomed to doom ourselves out of existence - if pass/current trends are anything to go by.

And leaving the planet doesn't seem so easy ..

http://what-if.xkcd.com/7/

We don't need everyone to move to another planet (well, colonise), I think I read somewhere that around 9,100 people (50% Male, 50% Female) is enough to create a viable human population.

[Treeden]

We don't need everyone to move to another planet (well, colonise), I think I read somewhere that around 9,100 people (50% Male, 50% Female) is enough to create a viable human population.

I suppose it would depend on variables like the environment, availability of food and water, shelter, numbers of natural predators etc.. A perfect environment would flourish with a much smaller number, but a harsh and dangerous one would need many more to have the same chance.

The Apollo moon landings were supposed to be followed in fairly quick succession by similar manned missions to Mars, then onward from there, paving the way for exploration and colonisation of "other worlds", but even the most pessimistic followers have been shocked and surprised at how slow progress has been since those heady days. The staggering and spiralling costs of space programs have proved almost too much for even the most powerful and resource-rich nation on the planet.

What are the chances of the entire human race pooling their resources and working together to overcome the technical, logistical and financial hurdles?

Could we even do it if we were threatened by one of those E.L.E's (extinction level event) that we read about? Say we had 10 years warning. How do you think we would react?

* Like an ant colony, all working together for the survival of the species?

* In mass panic, with total breakdown of social order resulting in a free-for-all that ensures that we fail?

* Something between those extremes?

Maybe it can't be achieved by live humans? Maybe we have to send our seeds out in our stead? Build as many small probes as we can and fill them with our genetic material then fire them off in every possible direction using whatever trajectories are available to us, in the hope that one of them makes it to a new world where the whole process can start again?

I believe we have the potential to do the best, to achieve our goals, but that we will probably never be able to work together as a species for the benefit of the whole. It's just not in us. The instinct to survive precludes such behaviour. The rich and powerful will save themselves.... if they can.

[Cath]

And go where though?

Mars is bathed in radiation due to the total lack of a magnetic field, it also wobbles on it's axis (anything upto 90deg) due to no Moon, the moons of Jupiter are also bathed in radiation (from Jupiter). Leaving the solar system would take a race of beings that are not driven by monetary greed etc.

[JulianO]

Go to the asteroids, where we will no longer have to worry about our weight!

[ollypenrice]

I really don't think we'll be going anywhere. We are creatures of our time. It's just our immense egos that make us reject the idea of our own mortality. Surely we're too marvellous not to march on forever? Um, no we're not!

Olly

[Treeden]

I really don't think we'll be going anywhere. We are creatures of our time. It's just our immense egos that make us reject the idea of our own mortality. Surely we're too marvellous not to march on forever? Um, no we're not!

Olly

... unless a visitor from some advanced civilisation finds us interesting and offers to take some of us back with them?

But yes, I think you're probably right Olly, though I wouldn't be too harsh on our species. If we do have over-inflated levels of expectation regarding our destiny, then it is a result of the way we (as a species) have evolved such vivid imaginations. The ability to reach out with our thoughts, ideas and dreams has served us well so far.

[ollypenrice]

Yes indeed. This lies at the heart of tragedy as an art form. The tragic hero dies because he doesn't accept the limitations of mortality and insists on reaching for more than mortality allows...

Olly