Yes. That’s actually been seriously suggested as a method for preserving the Earth; to move it outwards as the sun grows warmer with age. The biggest problem with it is the chance of a screw up slamming an asteroid into the planet - but if your goal is to destroy all life on it anyway, that doesn’t matter anymore
Whatever approach we choose, the environmental movement isn’t going to be happy. I don’t think this is what they meant by “one planet, one experiment.”
Another little snippet demonstrating how difficult it is to eradicate life, fruit frozen in permafrost for 30,000 years has been successfully planted and grown.
More like Class X. Class 6 apocalypses leave the ugly possibility open for microbes and bacteria to survive - we’re trying for total annihilation of all life here, no slackers need apply.
I’m sure people here have seen that video simulation of a 500-km asteroid hitting the earth. It causes a crater thousands of kilometres wide, brings enough energy and throws up enough debris to convert the atmosphere to rock vapour at 2000C, which burns all the continents and boils away the oceans, and melts the very texture of the surface… And I’m not sure even that would get bacteria kilometres down. No, we need to covert the top five kilometres of the crust to an ocean of lava just under the boiling point. Only then can we be sure.
Pffft. Lily livered, bleeding hearts pansies, who needs 'em ? We’re trying to achieve something here, in the original meaning of the word !
I don’t know… I think we must crack the thing open like a 4 year-old breaking an egg: messy, with the innards all over the place. Only once we start the Earth along the path of becoming another asteroid belt can we rest easy - until then, our job here is not complete.
I think you could argue that the nanomachines themselves would just become a new form of life. Granted, you could try to program them in a suicidal way–“Convert everything to more of yourself, then after 127 generations, quit reproducing and die”–but given the staggering large numbers of the little guys you’d wind up with, there’s an unacceptably high risk of “mutation” (copying error) leading inevitably to natural selection and the mere replacement of Earth’s current biosphere with a potentially thriving new gray-goo-based biosphere. Maybe even (a few billion years later) a new form of intelligent life.
(As an aside, I think Fred Saberhagen’s “Berserkers” also have somewhat of the same problem–machines programmed to “destory all life” that arguably are themselves a form of life. I also think that Saberhagen Berserkers are sufficiently logical and adaptable that if you pointed this out to one, it would simply agree and put “destroy ourselves” on its To Do List right after “confirm all [other] life in the Universe has been destroyed”. And then it would kill you.)
Which of course brings up the age old question of, if you had to choose, would you rather burn to death or freeze to death. Someone should start a poll before we decide on a course of action.
Read through and still think this is the best bet.
I agree, into the sun is the only way to be sure, (or some other way to turn the earth back to magma. Into the sun seems easiest.)
I suggest we ring the equator, (and a hundred miles on each side of the equator,) with engines or mass drivers. A large band of engines. Every time they start to near the leading edge of our orbit, turn them on for an hour, (or so, don’t know what an appropriate thrust window would be.)
rough estimates.
The earth weighs about 6x10^24kg. It’s moving around the sun at about 30km/s. A Saturn V rocket engine produces about 7740N of force. (1N accelerates 1kg by 1m/s^2.) I calculate that it would take a single engine 24.6 trillion years, (firing continuously in the same direction,) to change the velocity of the earth by 1m/s. If we could ring the equator with engines such that there are always 1 million of them in the thrust window, it would take 24.6 million years to slow the earth from 30km/s to 29.999km/s.
…
I’m not thinking into the sun seems easiest anymore. Wow. Anyone want to come up with an estimate of how much energy to melt the crust of the planet instead?
My first thought had been:
“No, we can’t possibly kill every microbe on the planet… unless we crashed into the sun.”
My second thought was:
“what if we crashed the earth into the sun?”
As you can see from above, I don’t think we can do that anymore.
And change the previous post to read…
Anyone want to come up with an estimate of how much energy to melt the solid portions of the planet instead?
Just the top 1m of the crust (i.e. not to the depth a lot of stuff live at): 2 x10[sup]24[/sup] J Reading that site, I see that it would take a lot more asteroids than I initially thumbsucked.
Looks like a 10km impactor would carry 4 x 10[sup]23[/sup] J. So let’s say 100 of those, would exceed by an order of magnitude the energy needed to slag the planet down to 1m over the entire surface. Plus I think the effects of impacts would be likely cumulative…
Remember that we have 100 times that amount of 10km+ asteroids to play with.
Meh. Asteroids would throw off a lot of rubble. Rubble would freeze, and possibly carry extremophiles to another viable habitat.
What if we parked a bunch of MRI machines around the LHC, and turned them on just at the right moment to prevent the control mechanisms from stopping a fusion reaction once it started? By creating a black hole we should be able to destroy the structure and therefore the replicability of any particle, even viruses. Obligatory link: http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
Also a note to those recommending molten lava solutions - are prions life? They are almost as qualified as viruses, after all. I ask because you can incinerate them and they’ll still be dangerous. Of course, they (like viruses) need active DNA in order to replicate, so they’d need to find their way to a new host. But the consensus above seems to be that we’re looking to destroy any possibility of a return to life for any Earth creature, so I’m just saying, if prions count, burning is out.
You realize, of course, that we have collectively destroyed the whole “Nuke it from orbit” meme, which will forevermore be met with a link to this thread and a snarky, “Nope, that won’t be enough.” 
Defeatism will not be tolerated! 
What about crashing the moon back into the Earth? That should melt the crust again. Could we fling the asteroids into the moon to slow it down and cause it to collide with the Earth?
Yeah, the moon has 1/80th the Earth’s mass, and an orbital velocity of only 1km/s.
Can’t seem to quickly convert the joules of a 10km impacter into the change in velocity of the moon, though. Gotta go soon.
Prions are not life, as such. And they only replicate themselves with a source of their source protein, (not DNA.) If we kill all the creatures that have that protein, any aliens that come around aren’t likely to be affected.
My aluminium mirror method should work; if you make a mirror large enough. The mass per square metre mustn’t exceed 0.78 g/m[sup]2[/sup], or the mirror would not balance on the sunlight as a statite; but this means a mirror big enough to melt the Earth’s crust could be made from material available in Mercury’s crust, or Venus’ crust.
I’m reminded of a series of books I very much enjoyed reading by John Ringo… Troy Rising. (First book was titled Live Free or Die.)
Alien species travels to earth through a stargate. Alien species attempts to enslave earth due to superior technology. Earth places billions of mirrors in orbit to move and focus light to attempt to repel the next invasion…
I’ve got an idea. We would need to thoroughly desiccate the planet, right? Once we have nuclear fusion power plants (NIF or tokamaks or whatever, only 30 years away ;)) with positive energy output, we can electrolytically separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. We use the hydrogen to power the reactors, when in turn fuses the hydrogen into helium, which is a nice side-effect because this makes it impossible for the hydrogen to recombine with the oxygen to form water. In this way we irreversibly and systematically destroy all of the water in the planet’s oceans. Another nice side-effect is the release of a tremendous amount of oxygen, which can be used to efficiently oxidize the planet’s remaining hydrocarbons to maximize our production of greenhouse gases. Once the oceans are gone, we can continue by extracting water vapor from the air until there is not enough remaining water vapor to support life.