I don’t know about that… It seems to me that that would rather prevent the destruction of the Earth.
According to comedian Lewis Black, the end of universe has already transpired. It is in Houston, Texas, in the form of a Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks.
Hmm…a thought: If you could slow the speed at which Earth is orbiting the sun, could you cause Earth to plummet swords the sun like an Earth-orbiting artificial satellite that doesn’t have orbital velocity? Anyone know? BadAstronomer? Bueller?
Ranchoth
Psst, Ranchoth, a few posts up, there.
OK, I’m pretty sure we don’t have the power to destroy even the Earth ourselves, yet, but what if we get help from aliens? Now this will only work if aliens exist, which is a big if. But this so easy and simple to do while we make plans to build the really powerful weapon that will destroy the Earth, we can’t afford not to do it. Take all those special radios that are sending out messages into space and change the message from, " we want to meet you and be friends" to, “we are here on Earth and soon we will destroy you, you is a goin’ down you alien losers.” Hopefully, this will get the aliens to destroy the Earth. The big problem with this plan is The People’s Federalist Party of Ultimate Destruction may be caught on the Earth when it is destroyed and will not have a chance to destroy the universe. Any ideas on how to improve the plan?
By the way this is not a joke, I am totally serious.
Nah, don’t say that. If you were serious, I would have to move this thread to indicate how silly the premise is. As it is, we’re on our way to creating a classic.
Let’s leave the aliens out of this.
if the moon fell into the earth, would that destroy it? is seems to me that it would be a lot easer to mess with the moons orbit then earths.
Looks like it’s starting:
Wow! It sure is great to know that I’ll probably see the end of the world within my lifetime!
Take that, Space Coyote!
You’re taking a huge risk here. What if the aliens get your message and think “Awwww, they’re threatening us. That is so cute!” and they come here and cure cancer, and solve world hunger, and eliminate poverty, and clean the water and the air, and get rid of all the nuclear weapons, and shut down the particle accelerators, and prove strangelets aren’t dangerous, and generally make Earth a wonderful place to live, and now most people don’t even want to destroy the Earth anymore. Now what are you gonna do?
You never know with aliens. Better just leave them out of it.
Seeing the name Recursion reminded me of the Tower of Hanoi.
According to the page I linked to, it will take 18 446 744 073 709 551 615 moves to complete the task and that would take five billion centuries. But, those lazy Brahmins are probably moving the disks at about one per second. You just have to get them off their lazy duffs and move it!
You will also have to ignore the fact that this old Indian legend was invented in 1883 by the French mathematician Edouard Lucas.
ZenBeam wrote:
"You’re taking a huge risk here. What if the aliens get your message and think “Awwww, they’re threatening us. That is so cute!” and they come here and cure cancer, and solve world hunger, and eliminate poverty, and clean the water and the air, and get rid of all the nuclear weapons, and shut down the particle accelerators, and prove strangelets aren’t dangerous, and generally make Earth a wonderful place to live, and now most people don’t even want to destroy the Earth anymore. Now what are you gonna do?
You never know with aliens. Better just leave them out of it."
I understand the risk involved, but feel it is a relatively minor risk. We don’t know if aliens even exist. We also don’t know if aliens do exist, if we will be able to get a message to them. Then, once the aliens have the message, we have no way of knowing if they will be able to understand the message. If they do understand it will they care? Want to destroy us? Want to help? These are questions we just can’t answer.
The reasons for trying to get aliens to help are: 1. It is easy to send the signal 2. We don’t have the technology to destroy the Earth ourselves, yet.
If you have a better idea for how to destroy the Earth now, I (and my party) would be happy to see it. However, as I see it we can’t destroy the Earth ourselves, so we need help.
Moderators, can the subject of this thread be changed to, “How Can We Destroy the Earth” Since plans for the complete destruction of space/time are being put on hold.
Awright, seeing as how we have switched to a smaller scale, I think I got an idea. I’m thinking you don’t need to destroy the planet per se, just what’s on it. Scrub it clean, just like using DD7 on the bathtub.
But how do you obtain the scrubbing bubbles to leave the Earth squeakie clean and lemon fresh? Send me, Beeblebrox (c/o Magrathea Enterprises), your $83 and I will send you a revolutionary new product guaranteed to break down all proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, starches, chitins, and any other pesky organic molecules that are clinging to the planets surface. And if you act within the next ten minutes I will send you not one, but two test tubes of nanotech assemblers. These phenomenal little buggers will break apart all Carbon chains, leaving behind only a grey goo that can be easily wiped up with one simple swipe of a paper towel.
That’s great, you say, but how can I do a whole planet sized load of laundry on a single test tube? Simple, through my patented self-replication technology, these nanotech assemblers will use the very carbon chains they break down to make more of themselves at a geometric rate! And the energy source? Why the carbon bonds of course. Just pour one single teaspoon into the Mississippi and watch that powerful cleaning action go. The assemblers will break down the water based organic molecules, and the algae, and the fish, and the seaweed, and the clams, and the water skiers - all the while making more of themselves. They will wash into the the ocean, replicate, and reduce that stubborn scum of life into dissassociated Carbon in no time at all. Even deep ocean vents and glacial bound bacteria can’t hide from this revolutionary new cleaning product, as the assemblers don’t die and passive diffusion will eventually take them everywhere!
Act now and I’ll also throw in a genetically modified Garden Weasel.
Sorry, I don’t want to just destroy the surface of the Earth. I want to turn the planet Earth into something that is not recognizable as a planet.
Something not recognizable as a planet. . . Ah, like Pluto?
So complete destruction of the biosphere isn’t good enough for you, huh? Picky, picky.
Allright, my third idea: The Space Pulley.
First, send up a two-stage satellite into geosynchronous orbit. Lower two cables from the satelite to the ground in say, New Jersey. Attach the ends of the cables and wrap them around a giant pulley anchored to the Earth in the end zone of Giant Stadium next to Jimmy Hoffa. Right now we have a space elevator, but that ain’t visionary enough for me.
OK, now fire the second stage of the sattelite past geosyncronous orbit, giving it escape velocity and laying more cable as you go outward. I haven’t done the math, but I think just over twice the distance should be about right. Attach a bucket to the cable at ground level, pull on the other cable, attach another bucket, etc, until the entire loop of cable has buckets attached to it. It’s going to take some energy to get started, but once it’s started it won’t stop. Fill up a bucket with dirt at ground level, lift it up, fill up the next bucket, lift that up, etc.
Here comes the cool part. If the pulley is long enough, by the time the first buckets reach the outer end they will have gained enough centrifigal force to overcome the force gravity exerts on the buckets inside the geonsychronous orbital point. The thing will just keep spining, throwing dirt away from the Earth like water from a wet tennis ball. Eventually you could throw almost all of the Earth’s mass into deep space, turning the planet into nothing more than a moon sized lump in the middle of a giant dust cloud.
New Jersey is a good place to locate this device for two reasons: 1.) The state can provide you with a ready supply of teamsters needed to drive the dirt trucks, and 2.) No one will be upset that New Jersey is the first to be obliterated. (though you are going to have to save some of it just to anchor the pulley)
Here is a copy of an e-mail I sent Cecil and the response I got (not form Cecil).
I really wanted to destroy all of space/time, but I
see that this beyond the knowledge and power of man at
this time. I decided it would be better to focus my
energy on destroying the Earth. Now, I don’t want to
just destroy the surface. I want to really destroy the
planet or at the very least break it in half. Nobody
seems to know how to do this, but I sure you do. So
how can I destroy the Earth? Also, do you have any
ideas how to destroy all of space/time?
Get a really really big cleaver…
CK Dexter Haven
Straight dope Staff
Can I destroy the Earth with a really big cleaver? How? Was I really given the straight dope?
Yes. With an sufficiently large cleaver, you could destroy the Earth. Hit the Earth with it really, really hard. If the Earth isn’t destroyed with the cleaver you have, get a cleaver twice as big, and hit the Earth twice as hard. Repeat as necessary.
Wouldn’t work. The more stuff you throw out, the slower the Earth would spin, and the slower the Earth spins, the further out you’d have to get things. Eventually, the Earth would stop spinning, and you’d be stuck. The only way this could work would be if the Earth’s rotational energy were greater than its gravitational binding energy, and were that the case, the planet would just fly apart on its own. You could certainly get a lot of material off, and stopping the rotation would have its own implications for life and such, but what’s left would still be recognizable as a planet.
Didn’t Archimedes say that if he had a sufficiently large cleaver and a place to stand, he could whack that baby right in half like a rotten apple?
At least, I think that’s how the quote went…
Actually, if you read “The Day the Earth Screamed”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, it becomes obvious that all we have to do is brew up a virus that causes shedding of the skin, then inject it below the earth’s crust into the living tissue…