I was watching a show on History last night (The Universe, IIRC), and they said that over the life of our solar system, there is a 1% chance that Mercury will become unstable in it’s orbit, and that there is a small chance that if this happens it could smash into the Earth, killing all life on the planet. Assuming this is the case, seems a perfect opportunity for us to kill everything. Simply figure out a way to make Mercury unstable in such a way as to cause it to smash into the Earth, wiping out all life on the planet and fulfilling our contract.
I’d say Mercury smashing into the Earth should do the trick.
One problem with any external heating method (such as mirrors, or converting the Sun into a laser, and so on) would be that heating the surface would form an expanding cloud of vapour, which would make a bigger target to heat, and would cool more quickly; it would also have the added side effect of shielding the surface.
I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, but any direct heating method gets increasingly difficult the more heat you apply.
All of you guys talking about freezing the planet are drastically underestimating the ability of life to adapt and exploit vacant ecological niches. If everything else dies out, then the extremophiles will occupy the empty space.
You might end up with life that is confined to the immediate vicinity of energy sources such as vents, you might end up with life that has no real prospect of evolving into sentience (although I wouldn’t bet the bank on either of those things if I didn’t have to), but you aren’t going to wipe out life that way.
Bacteria go a long way down, so if you want to get rid of them with meteorites, then you are going to have to shatter the planet, which would take a heck of an impact. Even then I wouldn’t be against some of the little buggers sticking around, flash frozen until gravity pulls things back together. Even if the bacteria don’t survive, just shreds of organic molecules floating around would dramatically speed up life reestablishing itself.
Once life has evolved to a certain point it’s incredibly tenacious.
Only way to be sure is to destroy the planet completely.
Easiest way to do that probably involves finding a way to create a black hole large enough that it won’t evaporate immediately or drift into space.
Float it to the center of the planet, wait a variable amount of time (depending on the mass of the singularity, this could take anything from 10 thousand years to “I’ve always loved you Silvia, hold me”).
Job done.
Honestly. it’s like some of you people don’t plan for this kind of stuff, at all.
All life? In short, HELL to the NO. Bacteria, viruses, Protozoa, incects, plants, moss, fungi, etc. etc. that would take one heck of a thorough nuclear mishap to say the least. In fact , Just picking one life form to wipe out, such as ants for example, would be next to if not totally impossible for humans to wipe out entirely 100%. And for the burn to death vs freeze to death question, scientifically speaking from my training in Paramedic school, freezing would be infinitely more pleasant. You would actually feel warm, sleepy and confused when freezing. Burning, however, would be every nerve in your body experiencing extreme unimaginable pain before you finally go unconscious. Think of 9/11, those people jumped for a reason, ie. to avoid burning. Bless their souls RIP.
A steady stream of diverted asteroids trajectorised to slingshot Earth (stealing momentum) and brake around Jupiter, then come back around for more. Over time (someone else can do the math), we could drop the Earth into a closer orbit around the sun.
Or maybe just perturb the orbit to make it very much more elliptical so that the closest approach to the sun is close enough to melt everything - not sure what would be harder.
Or use the same asteroid transfer method to do something to the moon - crash the moon into the Earth and everything will melt (although some hardy bacteria might survive by escaping in a chunk of ejecta)
ETA: NB - I don’t mean to underestimate the magnitude of any of the above. Moving the Earth or moon is an absurdly big endeavour.
I don’t think so. When we’ve tried to wipe out some form of life in various places, our record hasn’t been so good. The usual problem was that some members of the species we wanted to eradicate evolved so they could survive whatever it was we were trying to use to wipe them out.
It’s possible, if you were using asteroids, that some hardy bacteria or what-have-you could survive in ejecta, then come back to Earth after the crust re-solidified, and re-establish itself.
I’m telling you, smack Mercury into the Earth at high speed and we’ll get even those little suckers miles below the surface! And their little dogs too!!
Sounds like we might as well bite the bullet and plan for the cost and effort of hurtling the planet into the sun. Might make that old (1970’s) SNL “Weekend update” joke topical:
“The Earth is headed directly to the Sun. Film at 11. In other news…”