We humans spoil our own planet with great pleasure and skill. But who said we can't continue to do this elsewhere? This list contains 12 random ways for you to destroy or seriously damage our solar system.
Particle accelerator accident
By accidentally releasing exotic forms of matter in a particle accelerator, we risk destroying the entire solar system.
Before the construction of the Large Hadron Collider from CERN, some scientists worried that particle collisions created by a high-energy accelerator could give rise to such nasty things as vacuum bubbles, magnetic monopoles, microscopic black holes or strapels (droplets of strange matter - a hypothetical form of matter, similar to normal, but consisting of heavy strange quarks).
These fears were shattered by the scientific community to smithereens and became nothing more than rumors spread by incompetent people, or attempts to stir up a sensation from scratch. In addition, a 2011 report published by the LHC Safety Assesment Group showed that particle collisions pose no danger.
Anders Sandberg, a researcher at the University of Oxford, believes that a particle accelerator is unlikely to lead to disaster, but notes that if strapels appear in any way, "it will be bad":
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“The transformation of a planet like Mars into strange matter will release some of its rest mass in the form of radiation (and splashing straplets). Assuming the conversion takes an hour and releases 0.1% as radiation, the luminosity is 1.59 * 10 ^ 34 W, or 42 million more than the Sun's. Most of it will be heavy gamma rays."
Oops. Obviously, the LHC is incapable of producing strange matter, but perhaps some future experiment, on Earth or in space, will. It has been suggested that strange matter exists under high pressure inside neutron stars. If we manage to create such conditions artificially, the end may come pretty soon.
A stellar engineering project won't go according to plan
We could destroy the solar system by seriously damaging or altering the sun during a stellar engineering project, or disrupting planetary dynamics in the process.
Some futurists speculate that future humans (or our posthuman descendants) may decide to complete any number of stellar engineering projects, including stellar economy. David Criswell of the University of Houston described stellar economy as an attempt to control the evolution and properties of a star, including extending its lifespan, extracting materials, or creating new stars.
To slow down the burning of a star, thereby increasing its lifespan, stellar engineers of the future could rid it of its excess mass (large stars burn faster).
But the potential for a possible catastrophe is prohibitive. As well as plans for geoengineering projects here on Earth, stellar engineering projects can lead to a huge number of unintended consequences or provoke uncontrolled cascading effects. For example, attempts to remove the mass of the Sun can lead to strange and dangerous flares or life-threatening luminosity reduction. They can also have a significant impact on planetary orbits.
A failed attempt to turn Jupiter into a star
Some people think it would be nice to turn Jupiter into a kind of artificial star. But in an attempt to do this, we could destroy Jupiter itself, and with it the life on Earth.
In an article in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, astrophysicist Martin Fogg suggested that we would turn Jupiter into a star as part of the first step in terraforming Galilean satellites. To this end, future humans will plant a tiny primordial black hole in Jupiter. The black hole must be ideally designed not to go beyond the Eddington limit (the point of equilibrium between the external force of radiation and the internal force of gravity).
According to Fogg, this will create "enough energy to create effective temperatures on Europa and Ganymede to make them look like Earth and Mars, respectively."
Nice, if only something goes wrong. Everything will be fine at first, Sandberg said, but a black hole could grow and swallow Jupiter in a burst of radiation that sterilizes the entire solar system. Without life and with Jupiter in a black hole, complete confusion will reign in our surroundings.
Violation of the orbital dynamics of planets
When we start messing around with the location and masses of planets and other celestial bodies, we risk upsetting the fragile orbital balance in the solar system.
In fact, the orbital dynamics of our solar system is extremely fragile. It has been calculated that even the slightest disturbance can lead to chaotic and even potentially dangerous orbital movements. The reason is that planets are in resonance when any two periods are in simple numerical proportions (for example, Neptune and Pluto have an orbital resonance of 3: 1, since Pluto completes two full orbits for every three Neptune orbits).
As a result, two rotating bodies can influence each other, even if they are too far away. Frequent close convergence can cause smaller objects to destabilize and de-orbit - and a chain reaction across the solar system begins.
Such chaotic resonances, however, can occur naturally, or we will provoke them by moving the sun and planets. As we have already noted, there is such potential in stellar engineering. The prospect of Mars moving into a potentially habitable zone, which would be disrupted by asteroids, could also disrupt orbital balance.
On the other hand, if we build a Dyson sphere from the materials of Mercury and Venus, orbital dynamics can change in completely unpredictable ways. Mercury (or whatever is left of it) can be thrown out of the solar system, and the Earth will be dangerously close to large objects like Mars.
Poor warp drive maneuver
A warp-driven spaceship would be cool, of course, but also incredibly dangerous. Any object like a planet at its destination will be subject to massive energy expenditure.
Also known as the Alcubierre drive, the warp drive can one day be activated by generating bubbles of negative energy around it. By expanding space and time behind the ship and squeezing in front of it, such an engine can accelerate the ship to speeds not limited by the speed of light.
Unfortunately, such an energy bubble has the potential to cause serious damage. In 2012, a team of scientists decided to calculate how much damage this type of engine could cause. Jason Major from Universe Today explains:
“Space is not a void between point A and point B … no, it is full of particles that have mass (and which do not). Scientists have come to the conclusion that these particles can "roll" along the deformation bubble and concentrate in the regions in front of and behind the ship, as well as in the bubble itself.
When the Alcubierre-powered ship slows down from superluminal speed, the particles collected by the bubble are emitted in bursts of energy. The splash can be extremely energetic - enough to destroy something at its destination along the course of the ship.
"Any people at the destination," the scientists wrote, "will be lost by the explosion of gamma rays and high-energy particles due to the extreme blue shift of the forward region particles."
The scientists also add that even with short trips, so much energy will be emitted that "you will completely destroy everything in front of you." And under this "everything" there may well be a whole planet. In addition, since the amount of this energy will depend on the length of the path, there is potentially no limit to the intensity of this energy. An arriving warp ship can do much more damage than just destroying a planet.
Problems with the artificial wormhole
Using wormholes to bypass the limitations of interstellar travel is great in theory, but we have to be very careful about breaking the space-time continuum.
Back in 2005, Iranian nuclear physicist Muhammad Mansuryar outlined a scheme for creating a traversable wormhole. By producing enough effective exotic matter, we could theoretically punch a hole in the cosmological fabric of spacetime and create a shortcut for the spacecraft.
Mansuryar's document does not indicate negative consequences, but Anders Sandberg speaks about them:
“First, wormhole throats require mass-energy (possibly negative) on the scale of a black hole of the same size. Second, creating time loops can cause virtual particles to become real and destroy a wormhole in the energy cascade. It will probably end badly for the environment. In addition, by placing one end of the wormhole in the Sun and the other somewhere else, you can move it, or irradiate the entire solar system.
The destruction of the sun will be bad for us all. And radiation, again, sterilizes our entire system.
Shkadov engine navigation error and disaster
If we want to move our solar system in the distant future, we risk completely destroying it.
In 1987, Russian physicist Leonid Shkadov proposed the concept of a megastructure, the "Shkadov engine", which can literally take our solar system, along with all its stuffing, to a neighboring star system. In the future, this may allow us to abandon the old dying star in favor of a younger one.
The Shkadov engine is very simple in theory: it is just a colossal arcuate mirror with a concave side facing the Sun. Builders must place the mirror at an arbitrary distance where the sun's gravitational pull will be balanced by the outgoing radiation pressure. The mirror will thus become a stable static companion in balance between the tug of gravity and the pressure of sunlight.
Solar radiation will bounce off the inner curved surface of the mirror back toward the Sun, propelling our star with its own light - the reflected energy will produce tiny thrust. This is how the Shkadov engine works, and humanity will set off to conquer the galaxy together with the star.
What could go wrong? Yes all. We can miscalculate and scatter the solar system through space, or even collide with another star.
This raises an interesting question: if we develop the ability to travel between stars, we must understand how to control many small objects located in the far reaches of the solar system. We'll have to be careful. As Sandberg says, "By destabilizing the Kuiper belt or the Oort cloud, we will have many comets that will fall on us."
Attracting evil aliens
If supporters of the search for extraterrestrial life achieve what they are looking for, we will successfully transmit messages into space, from which it will become clear where we are and what we are capable of. Of course, all aliens must be kind.
The return of mutated von Neumann probes
Let's say we send a fleet of exponentially self-replicating von Neumann probes to colonize our galaxy.
If we assume that they will be very poorly programmed or someone deliberately creates evolving probes, in the event of prolonged mutation, they can turn into something completely evil and unfriendly towards their creators.
Eventually, our smart ships will return to rip apart our solar system, suck up all our resources, or "kill all humans," ending our interesting lives.
The interplanetary gray slime incident
Self-replicating space probes can also exist in much smaller sizes and be dangerous: exponentially replicating nanobots. The so-called "gray goo", when an uncontrolled swarm of nanorobots or macrobots will consume all planetary resources in order to create more copies, will not be limited to planet Earth.
This slime can slip aboard a ship leaving the dying star system, or even appear in space as part of a megastructural project. Once in the solar system, it can turn everything into mush.
A riot of artificial superintelligence
One of the dangers of creating artificial superintelligence is the potential not only to destroy life on Earth, but also to spread into the solar system - and beyond.