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what really happened to the Titanic (lemmy.world)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] 2 points 7 months ago (14 children)

Nah, there's literally not enough nukes or even fissile material to make an Earth-shattering bomb. It takes a lot of energy to shatter something the size of Earth.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (11 children)

    Not enough fissile material on earth. With enough asteroid and planetary mining, and .... ah never mind. You are probably still right. "Shattering" implies breaking apart and defeating earth's gravity well.

    We'll have to get started on antimatter bombs for the required energy density, I guess.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (4 children)

    Correct. Even with perfect conversion of mass to energy, it would still take converting the mass equivalent of a 16+ km asteroid directly into energy.

    Even antimatter explosions are not anywhere near 100% efficient. They produce many subatomic particles with high energy. Much of the reaction will quickly (on the order of 1x10^-16 seconds (... ok ok pions take 1x10^-8 seconds to decay, which is much longer)) settle into neutrinos or electrons. About half of the energy would nigh-instantly convert to neutrinos. Neutrinos will not care or contribute to ripping Earth apart even if they're produced in the Earth's core.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (3 children)

    What are your recomendations? Assuming Earth had to be shattered in a kaboom.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (2 children)

    A very large asteroid (>500km) would be a good attempt at 'shattering'. (much like how the moon formed, in theory) Otherwise, a "small" black hole or other cosmic-scale forces would do the trick. A near by blazar would easily sterilize the planet if it were aimed at us, but there are none such objects we have yet observed. (luckily)

    The sun itself is easily capable of smearing Earth out, but the real question is "how?". Even a crazy CME aimed directly at Earth would barely be able to wipe out technology, let alone life. A close call with another solar system would definitely stand a solid chance of wiping out life as we know it, but it wouldn't necessarily be terribly quick.

    It'd be very predictable in that we'd be able to see another solar system coming for decades/centuries/longer, and many changes would still be longer than a human lifespan (outside of the final 'kick' event, which could be over in a matter of weeks/months and leave the surface freezing and potentially devoid of much atmosphere).

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    So we can consider our sun dying and Andromeda colliding with the milky way as crappy backstops.5 billion years for a maybe is not great. I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of patience. We need fresh ideas. I like your singularity idea, but getting crushed isn't as artistically coherent as a quality shattering and if you've checked the price of singularities these days, its not really in the budget.

    I think the most viable option I've heard so far is a mega asteroid. Do you know any suitable candidates for rent?

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Well there's always Ceres (~945km), Pallas (~512km), or Vesta(~525km), though they're more dwarf planet than asteroid, so that might be pretty pricy to aim at Earth.

    There are several asteroids in the 200-500km range (5-10 if you're lucky), but not too many. It seems Earth shattering is a pretty premo business in this solar system!

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago* (5 children)

    Deep core mining is the real tech we need. Blow up a 10 gigaton device on the surface and you'll melt a hemisphere of the upper layer of the crust and create a 30 mile diameter crater. Bury that baby 5,000 miles into the planet and blow it up? The Earth is gonna need help opening it's ketchup bottles for a few billion years until it reforms, potentially around the moon which I suppose would actually stabilize the moon's orbit, but would probably make neo-Earth uninhabitable.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago* (4 children)

    lol no. 10 gigatons is a yawn to the Earth. It's still 14 orders of magnitute too weak to blow up the Earth. That's trillions of times less than what it would take to "blow up" the Earth, and 10000x less than Chicxulub, which the Earth already survived.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    You are, again, orders of magnitude off, and have no clue what you are talking about. I'm an actual nuclear power scientist, so yeah. I'm gonna ignore all the lies you tell from now on.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    rofl you are an ignorant fool, then. Seriously, you are genuinely stupid if you think something 10000x smaller than chicxulub would make half the planet molten.

    Seriously, you are a joke and should be fired if you work in any related industry...

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    Ladies, Gentlemen, Nuclear Engineers, Aliens bent on conquest and demi-gods or demons bent on wrath and destruction; Look, we have a job to do. The earth probably isn't going to shatter on its own. At least not with that attitude. We need teamwork. Collaboration. Hard math. Next, next-next-next-gen explosives and a lot of them.

    We can do this!

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    The bigger problem is Earth is gooey at scale. Seriously, the mantle, which is most of Earth's mass, is gooey rock. "shattering" as if it were solid simply isn't going to happen. Most of the Earth is like thick caramel or worse as far as "shattering" is concerned.

    The best you could hope for is something like how the moon formed; an impact (very) roughly 10x less than the gravitational binding energy of the Earth itself (which is crazy in and of itself!). If you'll note, the Earth 'survived' that impact, but was forever changed in significant ways.

    What's even crazier, is that Earth had single celled organisms growing on it less than 500 million years later! For reference, the oldest mountain ranges are 2-3x older in relative terms.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    If you blow it up on the surface or in the atmosphere, sure. Blow up a 10 gigaton device, which we absolutely can make and have the materials to do so, buried as deep as you can possibly get it, so about 1.5-1.6 miles in the crust, and you're gonna wreck a significant portion of a hemisphere.

    Especially since U-238 is one of the most abundant elements in the crust. Literally every single shovel full of dirt that you pick up has several hundred to several million atoms of U-238

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    lol no. Genuinely, no. You are a clueless fool playing with numbers you cannot comprehend.

    Even earthquakes within recorded history have released more energy than 10 gigatons. By an order of magnitude.

    You are seriously a fool that does not begin to fathom the scale of Earth.

    Look up how much energy the Valdivia, Chile earthquake in 1960 released and get back to me. Again, you petulant child failing to comprehend the topic...

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