Imagine, for a moment, that everyone in the world suddenly developed a suicidal impulse to Destroy the Earth. If we all worked together, could we actually pull it off? I’m not talking about just ruining civilization (we could pull that off fairly easily if we were really all into it), but actually significantly destroying the planet so that it could no longer sustain life? I’m not just talking about speeding up global warming and melting all the polar ice caps, because even then aquatic life would thrive. I mean to ruin the place.
Suppose we dug the deepest hole we could dig, and threw in as many nuclear explosives in it as we could possibly make. If we did so, could we blow off a significant chunk of the Earth and throw the rest of it out of orbit enough that it might crash into another planet and be destroyed, or something along those lines? Ideas?
I do not believe that all the Nuclear Weapons together could alter the Earth’s orbit or break the Earth up. We could probably make the entire surface of the planet radioactive and thus wipe out all major large lifeforms. We do not have the ability currently to move enough mass to send the moon down onto the earth. If we set off Super Volcanoes with a huge Nuclear Winter, we might wipe out 99.9% of life, but Life would just come back and evolution would start the next cycle.
We couldn’t possibly blow it up, or even dent it really; we could do the nuclear winter thing.
If we really wanted to smash up the Earth, we would have to crash something into it; maybe by cleverly manipulating an asteroid so that it borrows energy from, say Jupiter, then uses it to slow the moon down in its orbit; do this for maybe a hundred thousand years and we can get the moon to crash into the Earth; that would break it.
There is that other thread around here somewhere talking about the LHC creating mini black holes. There is apparently a 1 in a 10 to the minus 40 power chance that it would suck the whole Earth in. Maybe if they tried to make a bigger black hole.
Whatever method you attempt, it probably helps to speak in that choked-off Marvin Martian voice.
[paraphrasing, lazily, from memory]
“Errr… what’s up, Doc?”
“I am about to blow up the Earth.”
“Blow up the earth!!” [Bugs turns and begins to walk away from Marvin Martian.] “Ha-ha, that’s really funny, Doc! You really got me going there… blow up the earth!” [Stops, looks at the viewer, reconsiders, turns back to M.M.] “Hey, whaddaya mean, you want to blow up the Earth? Whaddaya wanna do something like dat for?!”…
Actually, it is theoretically possible, and we may have the technology for it (never having attempted it, it’s hard to know what practical issues might arise).
Yes. We could probably not get rid of bacteria short of destroying the Earth itself. Some bacteria live within rock layers very deep underground. No matter what we do to the surface, it wouldn’t have much effect on them. Once conditions on the surface improved, they would be able to recolonize the planet again.
Can you suggest how we can do this feat with our current technology? You know with a large enough Lever and a strong enough Fulcrum, I could move the Earth.
I think there is even some proof of microscopic life surviving travel from Mars to Earth on ancient Asteroid strikes. Does that ring a bell? I think I read it about 10 years ago. If true, then even breaking up the planet might not wipe out all bacteria.
A claim was made that a meteorite whose origin was Mars showed evidence of fossils of bacteria-level life. The evidence has been strongly disputed, and at present is not generally accepted by the scientific community. And it was never alleged that the life-forms had survived travel through space to the Earth.
This said, it is possible that subterranean bacteria might be able to survive the breakup of the Earth (depending on the mechanism), and if the chunk were large enough to shield the interior from radiation spores could survive for a long time.
How about placing all those nukes along major fault lines and detonating them simultaneously? Perhaps after a live global broadcast of “Hey Y’all, Watch this!”?
The nuclear winter effects stated in the TTAPS report is certainly overstated in both effect and duration. Given the current reduced size of nuclear arsenals by the superpowers (compared to 1983) we can only assume that the capability to deliberately generate a nuclear winter condition would be less. And while such a hypothetical condition would have an extreme impact on large fauna and flora its effect on microfauna would be substantially less. Heck, even some complex multicellular animals–brine shrimp, for instance–could easily snooze through such an event and hatch after conditions return to livable. Earth has certainly gone through worse, on a regular basis (well, every few tens of millions of years), with complex life continuing to expand and evolve.
Such a small black hole would evaporate rapidly (if Hawking’s assertions are correct). Even if it didn’t, such a small singularity would accumulate mass very slowly; and eletron here, a stray ion there. Even though it nominally compounds, it would be a long time before it would be a threat.
Not possible with current technology. It’s about all we can do to put two guys on the surface of the Moon. And you’d need something the size of Ceres or a mid-sized Jovian moon at least to do world-destroying damage; moving such a body around in anything like a reasonable timeframe is so far beyond current technology not to be worth considering.
The amount of energy released in a middling earthquake is more than the largest nuclear bomb by a couple of magnitudes, and while they may do billions in property damage and kill hundreds of people, they don’t exactly threaten life as we know it.
Want to destroy all life on Earth? What you do is create some organisms that bind up hydrocarbons in the reducting atmosphere and release a highly toxic and reactive waste oxidizer, like oxygen. Next thing you know, rust, fire, and free radicals are all over the place, and then these slimy oh-two breathers start crawling out of the water. It’s a dire environmental problem, and we must do something before the sky turns blue…
As others have said, If we break up the earth, even into comparatively small chunks, the bacteria will survive & evolution begins anew. There’s just one sure way to Destroy the Earth And All Life As We Know It: crash Earth into the Sun.
All we need to do is slow our orbital velocity a few percent and wait. And wait. And wait.
