Saturday, September 20, 2008
Top 10 (1) - Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth.
#10 - Total Existence Failure.
Equipment required: Nothing.
Method: Nothing. Just wait and see if all the atoms of the Earth spontaneously cease to exist.
Feasibility: 0/10.
#9 - Eaten by strangelets.
Equipment required: Ion collider.
Method: Generate and maintain a stable strangelet, and wait till it starts transforming stuff around it into strange quarks.
Feasibility: 1/10.
Background knowledge:Strangelets are bound particles (so-called solid) comprising of up-quarks, down-quarks and strange-quarks, the 3 lightest quarks amongst the 6. Quarks are one of the 2 most basic building blocks, the other being leptons - electrons are considered a type of lepton. Quarks basically exist through the 4 fundamental interactions. In order of weakest to strongest, they are Gravity, Weak (lol?!), Electromagnetic and Strong. When a piece of strangelet hits matter, it may convert matter into strange matter. (like our so-called liquid)
This method is also known as the "ice-nine" disaster. If a strangelet were to hit a nucleus and immediately catalyze it, it would transform the latter into strange matter, releasing energy. It would then create a larger, stabler strangelet. This chain reaction would cause the matter around it to rapidly deteriorate, thus transforming the Earth into a large ball of strange matter.
#8 - Eaten by microscopic black hole.
Equipment required: A microscopic black hole. Black holes disintegrate quickly due to Hawking radiation; evaporation time is based on mass, therefore, the black hole would have to have a mass of around Mount Everest.
Method: 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.
Feasibility: 2/10
Background knowledge: Hawking radiation is a form of thermal radiation that is emitted from black holes due to quantum effects. Black holes will all ultimately evaporate when the net loss is more than net gain, causing it to shrink and vanish. To create a microscopic black hole and maintain it isn't easy, but it is possible if the LHC were to malfunction and create a stable micro-black hole.
#7 - Antimatter annihilation.
Equipment required: 2500 trillion tons of antimatter.
Method: Detonate 2500 trillion tons of antimatter at once by hurling it at Earth.
Feasibility: 5/10.Background knowledge:Antimatter is the most volatile substance in the universe - because it is the exact opposite of matter, both would annihilate each other, transforming everything, even the antimatter, into photons. The gravitational binding energy of a planet is
"E=(3/5)GM^2/R", where E = energy, M = mass and R = radius.
Around 224,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 J. That's um...
Who cares. The premise is that if you hurl this much of energy at Earth, it will dissipate. Oh wait. Not THAT much. E=mc^2. So you need about 2,492,336,125,560,100 tonnes of antimatter.
BTW, in case you were wondering why speed of light = c, it stands for
celeritas, meaning "swiftness" in Latin.
#6 - Vacuum energy detonation.
Equipment required: A light bulb (?!)
Method: Contemporary theories tell us that vacuum is only on AVERAGE, that is, particles and anti-particles are constantly appearing and annihilating each other. Another (proven) theory tells us that a light bulb is a vacuum. Therefore, if we were to harness light bulb's particles and toss them into the sea, the whole sea would boil and destroy itself, creating a semi-Big Bang that would wipe the Sun out as well.
Wow.
Feasibility: 5/10.Background knowledge: None needed, except that the light bulb is a vacuum.
#5 - Sucked into a GIANT black hole.
Equipment required: A black hole, rocket engines, and a large planetary body.
Method: Pull both together.
Feasibility: 6/10.
Background knowledge: The closest black hole is 1600 light years from here. Requires no background knowledge, except that black holes tend to absorb matter. If it were fixated enough on the planetary body, you could (theoretically) drag the black hole along with you. Same goes for the Earth - just attach their gravities together.
#4 - Systematically deconstructed.
Equipment required: Piledriver, and 2*10^32 J of energy.
Method: Dig up the ground using a piledriver, and "booster" it into space/the Sun using the 2*10^32 J of energy.
Feasibility: 6/10.
Background knowledge: At a rate of 1 billion tonnes of mass sent out per second, it would take 189 million years.
#3 - Pulverization.
Equipment required: A large rock. VERY large rock. Something like... a planet.
Method: Shoot Venus at the Earth, at 50km/s.
Feasibility: 7/10.
Background knowledge: In order to smash the Earth's gravity well apart, you'd need a projectile about 80% of the Earth's speed, traveling at 11km/s discounting energy loss from heat.
#2 - Eaten up by a von Neumann machine.
Equipment required: A single von Neumann machine.
Method: Unleash it underground.
Feasibility: 8/10.
Background knowledge: A von Neumann machine is one that can clone itself by using only its base materials. Thus, create one that survives on iron, magnesium, aluminum and silicon; these four exist abundantly in the crust and mantle. Thus, it will start eating up the mass of the earth at an exponential speed, leaving a ball of metal flying towards the sun.
#1 - Hurled into the sun.
Equipment required: Earth-moving equipment.
Method: "Booster" it into the Sun.
Feasibility: 9/10. If God hates us.
Background knowledge: Technically, you don't have to hit the Sun. Just send it within the Roche limit, and tidal forces will tear us apart - after all, we're 70% water, we'll be swamped before we get roasted. Fail, and we get 8 months of freezing winter (I'm talking about 0 degree K) and 4 of scorching summer (about 1k degrees Celcius). Unless, of course, an asteroid from God sends us into it.
Posted by Denunciator at 2:44 PM