The news lately is full of reports that our planet may come to an end soon. Nuclear war, shrinking rainforests, more pollution of the atmosphere - and that's it, the planet will die. We want to reassure you: it is too early to despair, it is not so easy to destroy the Earth, it will not survive that.
Our "blue ball" weighs 5.97361024 kg, and it is already 4.5 billion years old. During this time, he got more asteroid impacts than the average person eats suppers in his life - and nothing, it still rotates, and many species live and thrive, including ours. So, what must happen for the Earth to be destroyed? Blogger Sam Hughes tried to answer this question.
1. The Earth may just cease to exist
You don't even have to do anything. Some scientists have suggested that one day all the countless atoms that make up the Earth, suddenly, spontaneously and most importantly, at the same time, will cease to exist.
In fact, the probability of such a turn of events is roughly a googolplex to one. And the technology that allows to send so much active matter into oblivion will hardly ever be invented.
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2. Will be absorbed by stranglets
All that is needed is a stable stranglet. Take control of the Heavy Ion Relativistic Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and use it to create and maintain stable stranglets. Maintain their stability until they get out of control and turn the entire planet into a mass of "strange" quarks. True, keeping stranglets stable is incredibly difficult (if only because no one has discovered these particles yet), but with a creative approach, anything is possible.
A number of media outlets some time ago talked about this danger and that this is exactly what they are doing now in New York, but in reality the chances that a stable stranglet will ever be formed are practically zero.
But if this happens, then only a huge ball of "strange" matter will remain in place of the Earth.
3. Will be swallowed up by a microscopic black hole
It will take a microscopic black hole. Note that black holes are not permanent, they evaporate under the influence of Hawking radiation. For average black holes this takes an unimaginable amount of time, but for very small black holes it will happen almost instantly: the time of evaporation depends on the mass. Therefore, a black hole suitable for the destruction of the planet should weigh about the same as Everest. This is difficult to create because it takes a certain amount of neutronium, but you can try to get by with a huge number of atomic nuclei squeezed together.
Then you have to place the black hole on the surface of the Earth and wait. The density of black holes is so high that they pass through ordinary matter like a stone through the air, so that our hole will fall through the Earth, making its way through its center to the other side of the planet: the hole will scurry back and forth like a pendulum. In the end, having absorbed enough substance, it will stop at the center of the Earth and "eat up" the rest.
The likelihood of such a turn of events is very small. But it is no longer impossible.
And in place of the Earth, a tiny object will remain, which will begin to revolve around the Sun, as if nothing had happened.
4. Explode as a result of the reaction of matter and antimatter
We will need 2,500,000,000,000 antimatter - perhaps the most "explosive" substance in the universe. It can be obtained in small quantities with any large particle accelerator, but it will take a long time to get the required amount. You can think of an appropriate mechanism, but it is much easier, of course, just to "flip" 2.5 tril. tons of matter through the fourth dimension, turning it into antimatter in one fell swoop. The result is a huge bomb that will immediately blow the Earth apart.
How difficult is it to implement? The gravitational energy of the planetary mass (M) and the radius (P) are given by the formula E = (3/5) GM2 / R. As a result, the Earth will need about 224 * 1010 joules. The sun has been producing this much for almost a week.
To unleash that much energy, all 2.5 trillers must be destroyed at the same time. tons of antimatter - provided that the losses of heat and energy are zero, and this is unlikely to work, so the amount will have to be increased tenfold. And if so much antimatter still managed to be obtained, it remains to simply launch it towards the Earth. As a result of the release of energy (the well-known law E = mc2), the Earth will scatter into thousands of pieces.
At this point, the asteroid belt will remain, which will continue to revolve around the sun.
By the way, if you start producing antimatter right now, then given modern technology, by the year 2500 you can just finish it.
5. Will be destroyed by detonation of vacuum energy
Don't be surprised: we need electric bulbs. Modern scientific theories say that what we call a vacuum, in fact, cannot rightfully be called that, because particles and antiparticles constantly appear and are destroyed in it in colossal quantities. This approach also assumes that the space contained in any light bulb contains enough vacuum energy to boil any ocean on the planet. Consequently, vacuum energy can be one of the most accessible forms of energy. All you have to do is figure out how to get it out of the light bulbs and use it in, say, a power plant (it's pretty easy to get in without arousing suspicion), trigger a reaction and let it spiral out of control. As a result, the released energy will be enough to destroy everything on planet Earth, possiblytogether with the sun.
A rapidly expanding cloud of particles of different sizes will appear in place of the Earth.
The likelihood of such a turn of events, of course, is, but it is very small.
6. Sucked into a giant black hole
What is needed is a black hole, extremely powerful rocket motors, and possibly a large rocky planetary body. The closest black hole to our planet is located at a distance of 1,600 light years in the constellation Sagittarius, in orbit V4641.
Everything is simple here - you just need to place the Earth and the black hole closer to each other. There are two ways to do this: either move the Earth in the direction of the hole, or the hole in the direction of the Earth, but it is more efficient, of course, to move both at once.
This is very difficult to implement, but definitely possible. Part of the mass of the black hole will be in place of the Earth.
The disadvantage is that it will take a very long time for the technologies to emerge to do this. Definitely not earlier than 3000, plus the travel time is 800 years.
7. Carefully and systematically deconstructed
You will need a powerful electromagnetic catapult (ideally several) and access to about 2 * 1032 joules.
The next step is to take a large piece of the Earth at a time and launch it outside the Earth's orbit. And so over and over again to launch all 6 sextillion tons. An electromagnetic catapult is a kind of huge electromagnetic rail gun, proposed several years ago for the extraction and transportation of goods from the Moon to Earth. The principle is simple - load the material into the catapult and shoot from it in the correct direction. To destroy the Earth, you need to use a particularly powerful model to tell the object a cosmic speed of 11 km / s.
Alternative methods for throwing material into space involve space shuttles or a space elevator. The problem is that they require a titanic amount of energy. You could also build a Dyson sphere, but technology will probably make it possible to do this in 5,000 years.
In principle, the process of ejecting matter from the planet can begin right now, humanity has already sent a mass of useful and not very objects into space, so that until a certain moment no one will even notice anything.
Instead of the Earth, as a result, many small pieces will remain, some of which will fall on the Sun, and the rest will end up in all corners of the solar system.
Oh yes. It will take 189 million years to implement the project, taking into account the ejection of a billion tons per second from the Earth.
8. Falls apart when hit by a blunt object
It will take a colossal heavy stone and something that will push it. Basically, Mars is fine.
The point is, there is nothing that cannot be destroyed if you hit it hard enough. Nothing at all. The concept is simple: you need to find a very, very large asteroid or planet, give it a mind-blowing speed and collide with the Earth. The result will be that the Earth, like the object that hit it, will cease to exist - it will simply disintegrate into several large pieces. If the blow was strong enough and accurate enough, then the energy from it would be enough for new objects to overcome mutual attraction and never gather into the planet again.
The minimum permissible speed for an "impact" object is 11 km / s, so, provided that there is no energy loss, our object should have a mass of about 60% of the Earth's. Mars weighs approximately 11% of the earth's mass, but Venus, the closest planet to Earth, by the way, already weighs 81% of the earth's mass. If you overclock Mars harder, then it will also work, but Venus is already an almost ideal candidate for this role. The higher the speed of an object, the less mass it can have. For example, a 10 * 104 asteroid launched at 90% the speed of light would be just as effective.
It is quite plausible.
Instead of Earth, there will be chunks of rock about the size of the Moon, scattered throughout the solar system.
9. Absorbed by the von Neumann machine
All you need is one von Neumann machine - a device capable of creating a copy of itself from minerals. Create one that will run exclusively on iron, magnesium, aluminum, or silicon - in general, the basic elements found in the mantle or core of the Earth. The size of the device does not matter - it can reproduce itself at any time. Next, you need to lower the machines under the earth's crust and wait for two machines to create two more, these - eight more, and so on.
As a result, the Earth will be swallowed up by a cluster of von Neumann machines, and they can be sent to the Sun using pre-prepared rocket accelerators.
This is such a crazy idea that it might even work.
The earth will turn into a large piece, gradually absorbed by the sun.
By the way, such a car could potentially be created in 2050 or even earlier.
10. Thrown into the Sun
Special technology will be needed to move the Earth. The point is to throw the Earth into the Sun. However, it is not so easy to ensure such a collision, even if you do not set yourself the goal of hitting the target with the planet. It is enough for the Earth to be close to it, and then the tidal forces will tear it apart. The main thing is to prevent the Earth from entering an elliptical orbit.
With our level of technology, this is impossible, but someday people will come up with a way. Or an accident may occur: an object will appear out of nowhere and push the Earth in the right direction. And from our planet there will be a small ball of evaporating iron, gradually sinking into the Sun.
There is some possibility that something similar will happen in 25 years: earlier astronomers have already noticed in space suitable asteroids moving towards the Earth. But if we discard the random factor, then at the current level of technology development, humanity will not be capable of this until 2250.