Why don't the attackers just crack the planet?

[TheEndIsNigh]

I'm sensing a new thread here -

End of the world in less than 100 words.

It could be a competition too judged obviously by Pyan?

 

[dustinzgirl]

Well, I don't understand why they would crack a planet. Generally the idea behind invading a land is to take over its resources (human and environment) for gain of the invaders.

Even in genocide, there is a general reason of greed behind it.

It would have to be a pretty strong emotional motive, an utter hatred of everything and anything the invaded people touched or possessed to warrant the destruction of an entire planet.

Or to get the princess to fess up to the location of rebel troops.

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Dustingirl: Maybe they're not like us

Pyan:

I have taken the liberty of starting a thread with your efforts included. I hope you don't object?

As far as the story goes I particularly liked the last sentence

 

[dustinzgirl]

Dustingirl: Maybe they're not like us

Likely not. But an advanced race that exists far beyond our understanding would ...

OK Well I don't know where I was going with that.

Wouldn't they need some reason for cracking a planet? Harvesting the energy, or other reason?

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Maybe they just don't like us. Who can blame them for that?

Maybe Junior has been let loose and he's just kicking over the sandcastles everyone else has built.

 

[Scifi fan]

If they want the resources (particularly biological resources) of the planet, then yes, they wouldn't want to destroy it; but, if they don't, then they would want to destroy it. Far easier to destroy a planet that's housing the enemy than to go down and engage the defenders, who would presumably be dug in.

 

[Zubi-Ondo]

You folks are just too funny. Stop it! (My gut hurts - and it wasn't those raspberry scones I had this morning).

When I first saw TEIN's post in the "writers workshop" I thought he was talking about the beginning, not the end. You know that silly theory that silly guy Stevie Hawking began to prove? (or was it Stevie Nicks?) ~ (I don't know who originally suggested it)

If Chris is still about, I'd like to pose this question to him - (or anyone who'd care to answer): If the core of the Earth is really as hot as they say, why not use that as a source of energy? The initial amount of energy required would just be enough to "poke" a hole deep enough to plant a million megaton bomb inside the middle somewhere. Say even just at the border of the mantle and the outer core. Seems like that would be enough to create a "Mega-volcano" that would eventually cause the Earth's demise. Supposedly, estimate put the core's heat at around "The temperature of the inner core can be estimated using experimental and theoretical constraints on the melting temperature of impure iron at the pressure (about 330 GPa) of the inner core boundary, yielding estimates 5700 K . The range of pressure in Earth's inner core is about 330 to 360 GPa (over 3,000,000 atm), and iron can only be solid at such high temperatures because its melting temperature increases dramatically at these high pressures." - Wiki.

So, basically my notion is to start the chain reaction, and let it finish itself. At those temperatures, and pressures there's a good chance the system would seek to balance itself any way possible, and high temp/pressure seeks low temp pressure, so fissures would inevitably radiate out from the original hole.

- Z. (I'll put this in the other thread too),

 

[ktabic]

It should cause lots of damage to the surface, and would probably wipe of all life on the planet. For a while anyway. But there isn't really that much energy in a million megaton explosion.
A million megatons is roughly 10x1021 Joules.

Just to show people what they are up againist, early in Earths history, it was hit by a Mars sized object, with energy somewhere between 9x1032 and 1.81033 Joules, so 11 to 12 orders of magnitude greater. And inside 600 million years, life had appeared.

Bear in mind here, that being caught in the supernova of the Sun isn't even a guarantee of destruction of the Earth - there won't be anything living on it, the planet would be a husk, but still there.

Gotta think bigger people.

 

[Somni]

Hmm, I'm sure I read about a huge planet-stripping mining ship in some scifi book. Could we not just send in one of those to deal with the defenders and get the resources at the same time?

Anyone know how to build one?

 

[Zubi-Ondo]

It should cause lots of damage to the surface, and would probably wipe of all life on the planet. For a while anyway. But there isn't really that much energy in a million megaton explosion.
A million megatons is roughly 10x1021 Joules.

Just to show people what they are up againist, early in Earths history, it was hit by a Mars sized object, with energy somewhere between 9x1032 and 1.81033 Joules, so 11 to 12 orders of magnitude greater. And inside 600 million years, life had appeared.

We were talking about blowing the earth into bits, not vaporizing it. What I was suggesting is like pulling a cornerstone out of a building that is holding up the entire structure. Finding the chink in the armor so to speak. I don't think you are actually getting the whole picture. At the point where the mantle meets the core, there is ultra-extreme high temperature, and ultra-extreme high pressure, and it's liquid to boot. the liquid would now have a place to go. Like the hole on top of a pressure cooker that lets out steam, only the pressure cooker is not meant to withstand those kinds of pressures or temperatures. As the highly pressurized, superheated lava began flowing up through the hole, it would make the hole bigger and bigger and the earth would start to crack up near the top where it's very cool by comparison. I'll concede that it is not a guarantee, but I don't think you can disprove what I'm saying with numbers alone. Besides, you were talking about a collision from the outside of two bodies that have the same general consistency. I'm talking about a system that has to equalize itself.

- Z.

- Z.

 

[Ursa major]

By the way, the final line of the forthcoming Wallace and Gromit film, Star Truck: The Undiscovered County**, is reputed to be "Cracking planet, Gromit!"









** - Thought to be based on Hallamshire.

 

[chrispenycate]

I don't think you can disprove what I'm saying with numbers alone.

Ah, but I can; not enough energy. Not by a couple of orders of magnitude. And all that pressure exists because the bits around want to go to the centre of the Earth; they're not going to change their opinion just because there's an alternative escapr route, even if someone shouts 'fire'. Oh, I'll admit you might get a few good sized lumps into orbit; perhaps the size of France. But there's six and a half sextillion tons to get rid of, and to prevent it all falling back when you've finished and rebuilding a planet, you've got to throw it fairly hard.

 

[Zubi-Ondo]

Ah, but I can; not enough energy. Not by a couple of orders of magnitude. And all that pressure exists because the bits around want to go to the centre of the Earth; they're not going to change their opinion just because there's an alternative escapr route, even if someone shouts 'fire'. Oh, I'll admit you might get a few good sized lumps into orbit; perhaps the size of France. But there's six and a half sextillion tons to get rid of, and to prevent it all falling back when you've finished and rebuilding a planet, you've got to throw it fairly hard.

So you're talking about gravity? It was my understanding that science itself can't even explain gravity yet, let alone what's actually going on in the Earths core.

- Z.

 

[Scifi fan]

I think that, if the sun expanded to a red giant, it would envelope the Earth and burn it to ashes and then some. There's be no husk.

As for destroying the planet, in Ender's Game, the child hero had a ship descend to the earth with an "MD" or molecular destabilizer of some kind, which loosened the bonds that bound the molecules of the planet. The MD fired into the atmosphere, which caused a chain reaction, and destroyed the planet, taking the entire Bugger species with it (except for one isolated queen that he would find later).

 

[Zubi-Ondo]

Actually SFFan, that's true. According to current understanding that is what the sun will do when it dies, and perhaps the process would be slow enough tha the earth would not be moved out further into space. Which by the way I believe is the only way it would not be vaporized in the event that the sun went super-nova. The earth might be pushed along like a bulb of kelp in a tidal wave during a supernova event, but if it stayed were it is it would most certainly be vaporized. I took an actual science class where we talked about these things, so if you guys want to argue, I'm game.

- Z.

 

[Scifi fan]

I took an actual science class where we talked about these things, so if you guys want to argue, I'm game.

You're on. But that would be in the science section, under the new thread, "The End of the Earth".

 

[Ursa major]

As for destroying the planet, in Ender's Game, the child hero had a ship descend to the earth with an "MD" or molecular destabilizer of some kind, which loosened the bonds that bound the molecules of the planet. The MD fired into the atmosphere, which caused a chain reaction, and destroyed the planet....

But, as Chris has pointed out, it's gravity that's holding the earth together, not molecular bonds. (It would, however, make chemistry practicals very interesting if when a compound was split into its component elements, these all ceased to be affected by gravity; and rather dangerous.)

 

[Ice fyre]

Isnt there a section of Lava build up under Yellowstone national park that when it bursts (rather like blister) its going to be the equivalent of thousands of Nuclear bombs going off? If someone targeted a iron core asteroid big enough not to burn up on re-entry, couldnt that crack earth like an egg?

 

[Scifi fan]

Isnt there a section of Lava build up under Yellowstone national park that when it bursts (rather like blister) its going to be the equivalent of thousands of Nuclear bombs going off? If someone targeted a iron core asteroid big enough not to burn up on re-entry, couldnt that crack earth like an egg?

If it was big enough, yes. But the question is how big?

 

[chrispenycate]

You don't just want to crack the Earth like an egg, you need the pieces to go flying off fast enough that they don't come back down. That would take a very fast moving asteroid, almost certainly not in solar orbit.

If you really want to go the kinetic route the thing to do is generate something with the same kinetic energy as the Earth (or several somethings, whose combined kinetic energy is the same) and put it into the Earth's orbit in the oppostie direction, so the planet is no longer circling its star and falls into it, to instant vaporisation.

A giant high density dust cloud slowing it by friction could do the same thing (never mind that the friction heating or the impact have already melted the whole thing, we're looking for disposal, not just uninhabibility), and it would spiral down to evaporation, but unfortunately the remaining dust, dragged into orbit by conservation of rotary inertia, might well generate a new planet in a billion years or so.