We all saw Star Wars, when the death star blows up a planet. Can man actually devise anything that would blow up a planet?

I certainly believe that we could.

There is no need of devices,
we can blow with our activities

Well, couldn't we use a rocket to move a very large near Earth object's orbit so that it crashes with the Earth? Of course, it probably wouldn't be big enough to blow up the Earth.

You mean if we knocked the moon out of its orbit and crashed it into earth?? It might end life, but I don't know if it would make the earth blow up.

I don't think we can currently, but if we made it the primary focus of our species we chould manage it within the century.

Lets be generous and agree that "blowing up" the earth only requires that it be broken into two pieces of substantial size. Has anyone calculated the amount of energy needed? I don't see how we could produce it.

Changing the orbit of an asteroid so it would hit us would, in itself, require a huge amount of energy. But for it to hit us hard enough to fracture the planet would mean that it was moving pretty fast to begin with. Ignoring the semantics of whether we "made that contraption" when it already had the necessary kinetic energy to do the job, changing the orbit of a fast-moving asteroid would require an even huger amount of energy.

The moon is moving at a good clip relative to us, 20,000mph. But that motion is precisely at a right angle to the direction needed for a collision. We couldn't possibly generate enough power to alter its course by 90 degrees and crash it into the Earth anytime soon.

Nuclear bombs maybe? All the bombs we already have, if piled together and detonated, wouldn't make a crater more than several miles deep, if that big.

I don't think we can do it.

And ya know, I feel pretty good about that. :)

It would be really challenging.

If we did not succeed at first, it might be too hard to try again.

I like the idea of a huge piece of metal. Like a big, solid corkscrew. This thing would be about a quarter of a mile across, with fins so that it would spin like mad as it dropped out of the sky.

The idea is - take it up to the edge of the atmosphere and drop it. Or sixteen around the world. It will gain speed, spin like crazy and hopefully make a big hole in the earth. Unlikely, but hey, I think it would be cool.

As a geologist an unqualified

NO.the dedicated application of our technology would amount to no more than leaning a grain of sand against Mt. Everest and expecting Everest to collapse. The mass of the Earth and the energy holding it together will be here until the Sun turns into a big BBQ in 5 or so billion years.

Paul Dixon believes that we could turn the Earth into a supernova via Fermilab experiments.

It's been hypothesized that CERN's LHC might create strangelets, which would release a huge amount of fusion energy if they persisted/escaped, and explode the planet.

I think they already have such explosives.

but whats even worse is weapons which could wipe out life without destroying buildings and of course... the earth

Sucks to even discuss it.

will be here until the Sun turns into a big BBQ in 5 or so billion years.
Or faster: via Nova Bombs! :)

Seriously, of blowing up the earth, the best idea sofar seems to be redirecting an asteroid. The energy required wouldn't necessarily be that great: If it were a long distance away, we may only need to change its momentum slightly to produce a huge change in its course. The major problems would be the precise measurements needed to directe it toward earth. It may require 'course corrections' too due to the finite precision of our instruments, thus perhaps a few shuttle teams full of nukes could do it given quite a few years...

Blowing it into 2 halves seems to be the least likely solution (and sounds like Armaggeddon meets The Core) The tremendous amount of energy needed even to make 2 halves move apart at any appreciable rate is big eanough. Add in the fact that it's 'bound' together makes it even harder. Furthurmore you would have to make sure it fragmented rather than just made 2 large volcanos releiving the pressure (although that would do plenty of damage, but not accomplish our goal.)

Another methode may be to slow the earth down and let it fall into the sun, via perhaps detonating bombs on one side against its orbit path, however that too would require much too massive amounts of energy I think.
Perhaps however if we used our re-directed asteroid's momentum to accomplish this, via some hybrid approach we could get somewhere... Mercury might be a good planet to test on due to its small mass, though it orbits faster because it's closer to the sun, it's overall momentum, I think, should be less.

-Andrew

Id say we just place nuclear and atom bombs strategically within the eraths crust. If we used like 10000000 bombs of the mentioned types woulndt that be enough?

And like I said it would be difficult to try again if we failed. So it would be important to make the first time a success. We would have to underestimate our technology alot to succeed.

That's a lot of bombs. Why not make one bomb the size of the Earth. That should do it.

Id say we just place nuclear and atom bombs strategically within the eraths crust. If we used like 10000000 bombs of the mentioned types woulndt that be enough?

.

No. That would be a pinprick. Add a couple zeros and it would still be a pinprick.

People confuse blowing up the Earth with destroying life. Life is irrelevent to the existense of the Earth.

To blow up the Earth, as per the Star Wars movie, would require a precise amount of energy- 2.4 x 10e32 joules. A megatonne of TNT liberates 4.184×10e9 Joules; so to blow up the earth would need 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 hundred megatonne bombs.

We all saw Star Wars, when the death star blows up a planet. Can man actually devise anything that would blow up a planet?

No. The Earth is too massive. The energy needed to destroy the Earth in this way is roughly equal to the amount the Sun releases in a week. We can't harnest that much energy, and probably never will.

We cannot even drill down to anywhere near the core of the earth. So if we can't do that then blowing up the earth is many steps more advanced.

The moon is moving at a good clip relative to us, 20,000mph. But that motion is precisely at a right angle to the direction needed for a collision. We couldn't possibly generate enough power to alter its course by 90 degrees and crash it into the Earth anytime soon.
There's also the fact that the moon already crashed into the earth once and it didn't destroy the earth that time (but it sure as hell would have killed every living thing on the planet).
At the time Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, other smaller planetary bodies were also growing. One of these hit earth late in Earth's growth process, blowing out rocky debris. A fraction of that debris went into orbit around the Earth and aggregated into the moon. http://www.psi.edu/projects/moon/moon.html

Was that sentence your interpretation of the psi.edu link?

I'm quite aware of the theories and complexity of the moon's formation. Currently the best one, as simulated by a supercomputer, involves a large body (nicknamed 'Orpheus' by some), which most likely wasn't a satellite of the Earth, crashing into Earth at a very specific angle and velocity, which I do not know. Then a splatter is created, and the debris settles into a ring that around the largest piece, which becomes the moon. So I'm also pretty sure that the moon we see into the sky didn't really crash into the earth since it got up there.

Will anything man-made blow up the entire earth? Or sterilize it? Not a chance at present.

I'm also pretty sure that the moon we see into the sky didn't really crash into the earth since it got up there.
.Some of it did crash into the earth, and the rest is debris from the collision. But no, the moon, of course, hasn't crashed into the earth since it's been in orbit.

I cant find any links or sources about it, but I remember reading about some scientist who proposed that Stalin should keep a oiltanker in the middle of some ocean so If things go bad he could detonate it and then the whole water on oceans would chain react. Luckly Stalin didnt like that idea so much and later scientist proved that there would be only small tsunami.

I cant find any links or sources about it, but I remember reading about some scientist who proposed that Stalin should keep a oiltanker in the middle of some ocean so If things go bad he could detonate it and then the whole water on oceans would chain react. Luckly Stalin didnt like that idea so much and later scientist proved that there would be only small tsunami.

Blowing up an oil tanker would cause water to chain react?
But they proved there'd only "be a small tsunami"?
The energy release from an oil tanker detonating all at once is totally insignificant in terms of the whole world.
The shock waves wouldn't even reach shore if it was in mid-ocean.

Blowing up an oil tanker would cause water to chain react?
But they proved there'd only "be a small tsunami"?
The energy release from an oil tanker detonating all at once is totally insignificant in terms of the whole world.
The shock waves wouldn't even reach shore if it was in mid-ocean.

I forgot to mention that this oiltanker would be full of nukes... and probably it wasnt staling, cos he didnt have any nukes.

I forgot to mention that this oiltanker would be full of nukes... and probably it wasnt staling, cos he didnt have any nukes.

Even if he did the timing would be critical - if one went off before the others it would cause fratricide and render the others useless.

We all saw Star Wars, when the death star blows up a planet. Can man actually devise anything that would blow up a planet?

Yea. A ten million megaton warhead might be able to it. Let's do a 20 million megaton one just to be safe. O.K.?

how much megaton is the 'best' warhead ever made?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

50 megaton - largest ever detonated, apparently scaled down from a 100 megaton.

That's right. And if you look back at my post earlier you will see that you would need 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 Tzar Bomba-type 100 megaton bombs to blow up the Earth completely into separate particles..

Our planet is held together by gravity- to supply enough energy so that the entire planet is disintegrated would need enough energy to overcome the entire gravitational binding energy of the mass of the Earth. This turns out to be an awful lot of energy in total.

See this page for more details...
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Beam/Calculator.html

Our planet is held together by gravity- to supply enough energy so that the entire planet is disintegrated would need enough energy to overcome the entire gravitational binding energy of the mass of the Earth. This turns out to be an awful lot of energy in total.

Couldn't you use the gravity to your advantage?
Placing bombs in the right locations at plate fractures could very well cause geothermic chain reactions, making the whole structure unsound and tear itself apart.

I guess its possible in theory, but it wont be anything near practical within the forseeable future.
Also, does it have to be done in one go ? Humans could cause large meteorites to collide with earth, or even moons.
Anyhow, what relevance does this question have ?

If nukes couldn't do it, I don't have time right now to look it up, but I wonder how many kgs (or even tonnes) of antimatter you would need to suddenly make appear in the earth's core to make it shatter?

Why blow up another planet when we could terraform it into something that would be usefull?

"man is capable of as much destruction as he has imagination."

"man is capable of as much destruction as he has imagination."

Being that your text is in quotes, I assume your'e quoting soemone?
But you don't say who.

Actually, I would think that all you would need is the Moon. When Orpheus crashed, it supposedly took of a good 5 or so % of Earth and exposed the mantel. The impact resulted in the near compleate destruction of Orpheus with only a small amount of the side opposite Proto-Earth remaning. The 5% of the Earth and some of the mantel that was blasted into space formed around the gravity that the remains of Orpheus generated, which would explain why part of the Moon is darker then the other ( from cooled mantel). i would thin that the likliest impact point is the Pacific Ocean, given its huge size and depth. The Marianas Trench could also have been formed by the collision. It also might of cuased primitive extreamophiles to evolve into modern life because of the huge amount of heat from the impact. It is possible Humans are creatures litterally born of violence. The rock from the remains of Orpheus mostly formed around the Earths impact crater. But the rock that didn't form around the impact crater stayed in orbit, subjecting Earth to a barrage of meteorites for a good million or so years. The same also happend to the moon, which traveled through the debris. Eventually, Earth's orbit was cleared of debris.

My whole point is, given that Orpheus, which was about the same size as Earth, impacted in only a glancing blow, and caused a huge amount of devistation, imagine what would happen if the moon, which is huge compared to the planet, were to make a direct hit against the planet! I would think that had Orpheus made a direct hit, it would of likely shattered Earth. The same could happen if the Moon were to hit.

Can man actually devise anything that would blow up a planet?

Perhaps a series of giant lenses and huge optical amplifiers close to the sun.

Create a laser powerful enough to slice through (or vaporize) the Earth.

Then use nuclear bombs to drive the two pieces apart.

Couldn't you use the gravity to your advantage?
Placing bombs in the right locations at plate fractures could very well cause geothermic chain reactions, making the whole structure unsound and tear itself apart.
No. It is gravity you are trying to overcome- you can't use the gravity of a planet to overcome its own gravitational binding energy. The interior geothermal energy of the Earth is less than the gravitational binding energy, so you couldn't use it to destroy the Earth either. Mind you, you could use that energy to convert the crust into a molten mess, so that would probably do.
The planet would be completely uninhabitable, so why bother disassembling it?

We all saw Star Wars, when the death star blows up a planet. Can man actually devise anything that would blow up a planet?
Shoot a rocket with a powerful-enough motor straight at the surface in the right manner, and it might hit the core. It'd have to be going pretty fucking fast, though.
Mount either a huge-yield nuke as a warhead, it'll tear a planet into pieces.

But, we don't have a rocket motor quite that powerful. At least not yet.

Not likely.

Can man actually devise anything that would blow up a planet?

http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/sharemed/targets/images/pho/t047/T047577A.jpg

This can kill us ... antimatter particle colliding with regular matter( walls )

Even if you did, it would re-form.

The planets were made of lots of little bits being attracted to each other due to gravity, or colliding and then attracting to one another. Even if you blew Earth up, it would succumb to accretion once again and life would evolve once more. (Just not us)

Q. Could any man made contraption blow up the earth?
A. No way

A detailed website devoted to Geocide:

http://qntm.org/geocide