A lot of information is written and shown that our planet will soon come to an end. But destroying the Earth is not so easy. The planet has already been subjected to asteroid attacks, and will survive a nuclear war. So let's look at some ways to destroy the Earth.
The Earth weighs 5.9736·1024 kg and is already 4.5 billion years old.
1. The earth may simply cease to exist
You don't even need to do anything. Some scientists have suggested that one day all the countless atoms that make up the Earth will suddenly spontaneously and most importantly, simultaneously, cease to exist. In fact, the odds of this happening are about a googolplex to one. And the technology that makes it possible to send so much active matter into oblivion is unlikely to ever be invented.
2. Will be absorbed by strangelets
All you need is a stable strangelet. Take control of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and use it to create and maintain stable strangelets. Keep them stable until they get out of control and turn the entire planet into a mass of strange quarks. True, keeping strangelets stable is incredibly difficult (if only because no one has yet discovered these particles), but with a creative approach anything is possible.
A number of media outlets talked about this danger some time ago and that this is exactly what is being done now in New York, but in reality the chances that a stable strangelet will ever be formed are almost zero.
But if this happens, then in place of the Earth there will only be a huge ball of “strange” matter.
3. Will be swallowed up by a microscopic black hole
You'll need a microscopic black hole. Please note that black holes are not eternal, they evaporate under the influence of Hawking radiation. For medium-sized black holes, this requires an unimaginable amount of time, but for very small ones this will happen almost instantly: the evaporation time depends on the mass. Therefore, a black hole suitable for destroying a planet should weigh approximately the same as Mount Everest. It is difficult to create one, because a certain amount of neutronium is required, but you can try to make do with a huge number of atomic nuclei compressed together.
Then you need to place a 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 rock through air, so 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. Eventually, having absorbed enough matter, it will stop at the center of the Earth and “eat up” the rest.
The likelihood of such a turn of events is very low. But it’s no longer impossible.
And in place of the Earth there will be a tiny object that 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 produced in small quantities using any large particle accelerator, but it will take a long time to collect the required amount. You can come up with an appropriate mechanism, but it is much easier, of course, to simply “turn over” 2.5 tril. tons of matter through the fourth dimension, turning it into antimatter in one fell swoop. The result will be a huge bomb that will immediately tear the Earth into pieces.
How difficult is it to implement? The gravitational energy of the planetary mass (M) and radius (P) are given by the formula E=(3/5)GM2/R. As a result, the Earth will need approximately 224 * 1010 joules. The sun produces this amount for almost a week.
To release that much energy, all 2.5 trils must be destroyed at once. tons of antimatter - provided that the loss of heat and energy is zero, and this is unlikely to happen, so the amount will have to be increased tenfold. And if you still managed to get so much antimatter, all that remains is to simply launch it towards the Earth. As a result of the release of energy (the familiar law E = mc2), the Earth will shatter into thousands of pieces.
In this place there will be an asteroid belt that will continue to revolve around the Sun.
By the way, if you start producing antimatter right now, then given modern technologies, you can just finish it by the year 2500.
5. Will be destroyed by vacuum energy detonation
Don't be surprised: we will need light bulbs. Modern scientific theories say that what we call a vacuum cannot, in fact, rightfully be called that, because particles and antiparticles are constantly being created and destroyed in colossal quantities in it. This approach also implies that the space contained in any light bulb contains enough vacuum energy to boil any ocean on the planet. Consequently, vacuum energy may be one of the most accessible types of energy. All you have to do is figure out how to extract it from light bulbs and use it in, say, a power plant (which is pretty easy to get into without raising suspicion), trigger the reaction, and let it get out of control. As a result, the released energy will be enough to destroy everything on planet Earth, possibly along with the Sun.
A rapidly expanding cloud of particles of different sizes will appear in place of the Earth.
Of course, there is a possibility of such a turn of events, but it is very small.
6. Sucked into a giant black hole
A black hole, extremely powerful rocket engines, and possibly a large rocky planetary body are needed. The closest black hole to our planet is located 1,600 light years away 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 towards the Earth, but it is more effective, of course, to move both at once.
This is very difficult to implement, but definitely possible. In place of the Earth there will be part of the mass of the black hole.
The disadvantage is that it takes a very long time for technology to emerge that allows this to be done. Definitely not earlier than the year 3000, plus travel time - 800 years.
7. Carefully and systematically deconstructed
You will need a powerful electromagnetic catapult (ideally several) and access to approximately 2 * 1032 joules.
Next, you need to take a large piece of the Earth at a time and launch it beyond the Earth's orbit. And so over and over again launch all 6 sextillion tons. An electromagnetic catapult is a kind of huge-sized electromagnetic rail gun proposed several years ago for mining and transporting cargo from the Moon to Earth. The principle is simple - load the material into the catapult and shoot it in the right direction. To destroy the Earth, you need to use a particularly powerful model to give the object a cosmic speed of 11 km/s.
Alternative methods for throwing material into space involve the space shuttle or space elevator. The problem is that they require a titanic amount of energy. It would also be possible to build a Dyson sphere, but technology will probably allow this to be done in about 5,000 years.
In principle, the process of throwing matter out of the planet can begin right now; humanity has already sent a lot of useful and not so useful objects into space, so until a certain moment no one will even notice anything.
Instead of the Earth, in the end there will be many small pieces, some of which will fall on the Sun, and the rest will end up in all corners of the solar system.
Oh yes. The implementation of the project, taking into account the ejection of a billion tons per second from the Earth, will take 189 million years.
8. Will fall to pieces when hit by a blunt object
It would take a colossal heavy stone and something to push it. In principle, Mars is quite suitable.
The point is that there is nothing that cannot be destroyed if you hit it hard enough. Nothing at all. The concept is simple: find a very, very large asteroid or planet, give it mind-blowing speed and smash it into 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 impact was strong and accurate enough, then the energy from it would be enough for new objects to overcome mutual attraction and never gather into a planet again.
The minimum permissible speed for an “impact” object is 11 km/s, so provided that there is no loss of energy, our object should have a mass of approximately 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 accelerate Mars more strongly, then it will also be suitable, but Venus is already an almost ideal candidate for this role. The greater the speed of an object, the less mass it can have. For example, an asteroid weighing 10*104 launched at 90% of the speed of light will be just as effective.
Quite plausible.
Instead of the Earth, there will be pieces of rock approximately the size of the Moon, scattered throughout the solar system.
9. Absorbed by a von Neumann machine
All that is needed is a von Neumann machine - a device that can create a copy of itself from minerals. Build one that will run solely on iron, magnesium, aluminum or silicon - basically, the main elements found in the Earth's mantle or core. The size of the device does not matter - it can reproduce itself at any time. Then you need to lower the machines under the earth's crust and wait until two machines create two more, these create eight more, and so on. As a result, the Earth will be swallowed up by a crowd of von Neumann machines, and they can be sent to the Sun using previously prepared rocket boosters.
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 machine could potentially be created in 2050 or even earlier.
10. Thrown into the Sun
Special technologies will be needed to move the Earth. The point is to throw the Earth into the Sun. However, ensuring such a collision is not so easy, even if you do not set yourself the goal of hitting the planet exactly on the “target”. It is enough for the Earth to be close to it, and then 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 figure out a way. Or an accident could happen: an object would appear out of nowhere and push the Earth in the right direction. And what will remain of our planet is a small ball of evaporating iron, gradually sinking into the Sun.
There is some probability that something similar will happen in 25 years: previously, astronomers have already noticed suitable asteroids in space moving towards Earth. But if we ignore the random factor, then at the current level of technology development, humanity will become capable of this no earlier than the year 2250.
Considering how many risky self-experiments our long-suffering planet had to endure, it is surprising that it is still alive.
The Kola superdeep well is located in the Arctic Circle at the most northwestern point of Russia and is the deepest underground passage dug into the thickness of the Earth.
Soviet scientists initiated the drilling of the well back in 1970 and by 1989 they reached a level of 12,262 meters.
They wanted to completely drill through the earth's crust and reach the upper layer of the mantle, but they had no idea what the danger would be. However, fears about the formation of large-scale earthquakes or the appearance of demons from the Underworld turned out to be unfounded.
And work on the project was curtailed due to the fact that at the extreme point of the passage the temperature reached 177 degrees Celsius, which is why molten rock flowed back into the well, preventing scientists from increasing the drilling depth.
Trinity Test
The Trinity test was part of the American “Manhattan Project” program to develop nuclear weapons. This test, which took place on July 16, 1945, was the world's first explosion of an atomic device.
The initial development of the new era weapon was delayed slightly due to the concerns of scientist Edward Teller, who was involved in the project. He assumed that the detonation of a plutonium charge of such power could lead to the initiation of a self-sustaining chemical reaction involving nitrogen, which could theoretically lead to an uncontrolled ignition of the Earth's atmosphere.
However, further calculations showed that the possibility of such a scenario occurring is extremely low, so the work continued. The explosive power generated as a result of the first nuclear test is estimated at 21 kilotons of TNT.
The explosion of this device reminded project leader Robert Oppenheimer of a line from a Hindu sacred manuscript: “Now I am like Death, destroyer of worlds.”
When scientists officially announced the creation of the Large Hadron Collider project on September 10, 2008, some began to believe that this device would lead to the destruction of the entire world.
The $6 billion particle accelerator project was created to accelerate beams of protons through a 27-kilometer tunnel loop and then collide, resulting in the formation of microscopic black holes believed to have appeared in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang.
Some believed that the resulting black holes would grow uncontrollably until they engulfed the Earth. However, scientists reject these rumors, since it has already been calculated that every black hole has a limit, after which it evaporates. This phenomenon is known as Hawking radiation.
The Earth's magnetosphere is an important protective layer containing charged particles that protect the Earth's atmosphere from the harmful effects of the solar wind. What would happen if a large nuclear bomb exploded in this magnetosphere?
The United States decided to find out in 1962. Well, among other things, the purpose of the experiment was to find a possible way to intercept Soviet nuclear missile charges while still in space orbit.
Therefore, the explosion of a thermonuclear warhead was initiated at an altitude of 400 kilometers above Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
The 1.4-megaton explosion was visible from 1,450 kilometers away in the Hawaiian Islands, where the electromagnetic pulse damaged lighting lines and telephone communications.
Also, an artificial radiation belt formed in lower Earth orbit, which lasted for five years and damaged more than a third of all satellites located at that time.
This project of searching for contacts with “extraterrestrial intelligence” (“Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence”) includes a set of activities to detect and attempt to communicate with representatives of extraterrestrial civilization.
Back in 1896, he suggested that radio communications could be used to establish contact with aliens. In 1899, it seemed to him that he even received signals from Mars. In 1924, the United States government proclaimed “National Radio Day” from August 21 to 23, 1924, when scientists could scan the airwaves for radio frequencies from the red planet.
Modern methods of research under the SETI program include the use of ground-based and orbital telescopes, large radio telescopes with distributed data processing.
However, some are wary of such attempts by humanity to get closer to representatives of extraterrestrial civilization - after all, this may attract unnecessary attention to our planet.…
Thus, cosmologist Stephen Hawking recalls that the history of mankind already knows cases and results when a less technically developed civilization collides with a more advanced one.
We've all seen movies about the end of the world - events in which the Earth is in danger of being completely destroyed, whether it's the work of some "bad" guy or a huge meteorite. The media constantly exaggerates the same topic, terrifying us with nuclear wars, uncontrolled deforestation of tropical forests and total air pollution. In fact, the destruction of our planet is a much more labor-intensive process than you might think.
After all, the Earth is already more than 4.5 billion years old, and its weight is 5.9736 * 1024 kg, and it has already withstood so many shocks that it is impossible to count. And at the same time it continues to revolve around the Sun, as if nothing had happened. And yet, are there ways to “liquidate” the Earth? Yes, there are a dozen such methods, and now we will tell you all about them.
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Simultaneous disappearance of atoms
You don't even need to do anything to do this. Just one day, all 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms that make up what we call the Earth will spontaneously cease to exist at the same moment. The odds of such an outcome are actually slightly better than a googolplex to one. And the technology that would allow a person to do this is simply unimaginable from the point of view of modern science.
Absorption by strangelets
For this extravagant method of destroying our green ball, you will need to capture the relativistic heavy ion collider from Brookhaven Laboratory in New York and use it to create an “army” of stable strangelets. The second point of this diabolical plan is to maintain the stability of the strangelets until they turn the planet into a mess of strange matter. We will have to approach this problem creatively, since no one has even discovered these particles yet.
Several years ago, a number of media outlets actually wrote that this is exactly what insidious scientists are doing at Brookhaven Laboratory, but the bottom line is that the chances of ever obtaining a stable strangelet are approaching zero.
Absorption by a microscopic black hole
By the way, black holes are not immortal; they evaporate under the influence of Hawking radiation. And if it takes an eternity for this to happen for medium-sized black holes, then for small ones this can happen almost instantly, since the time spent on evaporation depends on the mass. Therefore, our black hole should weigh about the same as Mount Everest. Creating it will be difficult because it will require an appropriate amount of neutronium.
If everything worked out and a microscopic black hole is created, all that remains is to place it on the surface of the Earth and sit down and enjoy the show. The density of a black hole is so great that it passes through matter like a stone through a piece of paper. The black hole will make its way through the core of the planet to its other side, simultaneously making pendulum-like movements until it absorbs enough matter. Instead of the Earth, a tiny piece of stone, covered in through holes, will rotate around the Sun, as if nothing had happened.
Big bang resulting from the reaction of matter and antimatter
You'll need 2,500 billion tons of antimatter, the most explosive substance in the entire universe. It can be obtained in small quantities using a particle accelerator, but it will take a very long time to gain such a mass. It is much simpler, of course, to rotate a similar amount of matter through the fourth dimension, thus turning it into antimatter. At the exit you will receive a bomb so powerful that the Earth will simply be torn to pieces, and a new asteroid belt will begin to revolve around the Sun.
This will be possible by the year 2500 if we start producing antimatter right now.
Denotation of vacuum energy
What we call vacuum, from the point of view of modern science, cannot be called that, since particles and antiparticles constantly arise and mutually destroy in it, releasing energy. Based on this position, we can conclude that any light bulb contains such an amount of vacuum energy to bring the world's oceans to a boil. All that remains is to figure out how to extract and use the vacuum energy from the light bulb and start the reaction. The released energy will be enough to destroy the Earth, and possibly the entire solar system. In this case, a rapidly expanding gas cloud will appear in place of the Earth.
Being sucked into a huge black hole
Everything is quite simple here: you need to place the Earth and the black hole closer to each other. You can either push our planet towards the black hole using super-powerful rocket engines, or the hole towards the Earth. Of course, it would be most effective to do both. By the way, the closest black hole to our planet is located at a distance of only 1,600 light years in the constellation Sagittarius. According to preliminary estimates, the technologies that will allow this to happen will appear no earlier than the year 3000, plus the entire journey will take about 800 years, so you will have to wait. But, despite the difficulties with implementation, this is quite possible.
Thorough Systematic Deconstruction
You will need a powerful electromagnetic catapult (or better yet, several). Next, we take a large piece of the planet and, using a catapult, launch it beyond the Earth’s orbit. And behind it are the remaining 6 sextillion tons. In principle, given that humanity has already launched a bunch of useful and not so useful things into space, you can start throwing out substances right now and until a certain moment no one will even suspect anything. Ultimately, the Earth will turn into a pile of small fragments, some of which will burn up in the Sun, and the rest will scatter throughout the solar system.
Collision with a large space object
In theory, everything is simple: find a huge asteroid or planet, accelerate it to breakneck speed and point it at Earth. If the impact is strong and precise enough, the Earth and the object that struck it will break apart into pieces that overcome their mutual attraction, and therefore they will never be able to reassemble into a planet. The ideal object for a deadly experiment would be Venus, the closest planet to Earth, which weighs 81% of the Earth's mass.
Absorption by a von Neumann machine
It is necessary to create a von Neumann machine - a mechanism capable of recreating copies of itself from minerals, preferably exclusively from iron, magnesium, silicon and aluminum. Next, we lower the car under the earth’s crust and wait until the machines, the growth of which will grow exponentially, swallow the planet. This idea, although absolutely crazy, is quite feasible, because potentially such a machine will be created by 2050, and maybe earlier.
Throw into the Sun
You will need the same rocket engines as in the case of a giant black hole. You don’t even have to aim accurately - it’s enough for the Earth to move close enough to the Sun, and then tidal forces will tear it apart. Moreover, it may turn out that this does not require special technologies: a random object emerging from space can push the Earth in the right direction. Then the planet will turn into something like a scoop of ice cream melting in the hot sun. But if we ignore random factors, humanity will come to the necessary technologies no earlier than 2250.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion!
How to destroy planets?
Demolition of planetary systems is like peeling an onion. Layer after layer, layer after layer... Simple, but you will have to cry.
"Dreams of a Siege Frigate"
Sooner or later, your fleet will fall into orbit of an enemy world. There could be anything like laboratories, frigate factories, defensive buildings, or just asteroids with extractors. The important question in this case is: “What to destroy first?” Let's look at the key targets for attack.
Once the defenses are neutralized, you can calmly deal with extractors, trade ports, civilian laboratories, and more. However, even if all the structures are blown up, the planet will continue to generate income for the enemy. It must be destroyed and colonized. How can I do that?
Destroying a planet with a flagship.
A long time, especially if the flagship does not have the ability to bombard planets. In addition, while you are doing this, the rest of the fleet will either have to move on without a flagship, or it will be idle. The first option is so-so, the second is even worse.
Destruction of the planet by siege frigates.
This method is much better, but it requires additional costs. You need to research special ships, you need to build them. If you have started to retake planets, but see that the war will not end quickly, we advise you to acquire a group of anti-planet bombers (the siege frigate "Krosov", the inquisitor or the destroyer "Karrastra"). These ships can be driven in a separate fleet, jumping to the planet after the demolition of the protection or immediately if nothing threatens them there.
By the way, siege frigates can be used on their own. If the planet is unprotected or very weakly protected, we simply fly up, ignore the buildings and bomb! After this, the enemy loses access to all orbital structures; they seem to belong to him, but it is no longer possible to build frigates at the local plant, because the planet has been destroyed. This is a very insidious tactic, effective against players who are carried away by the attack, but forget to cover their home world.........
Ecology of life: We humans spoil our own planet with great pleasure and skill. But who says we can't continue doing this elsewhere? In this list, io9 has collected for you 12 random ways to destroy or cause serious damage
We humans take great pleasure and skill in ruining our own planet. But who says we can't continue doing this elsewhere? In this list, io9 has collected for you 12 random ways to destroy or cause serious damage to our solar system. Oh, I'm looking forward to noisy debates.
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 CERN's Large Hadron Collider, some scientists worried that the particle collisions created by the high-energy accelerator could produce such nasties as vacuum bubbles, magnetic monopoles, microscopic black holes or strange matter (droplets of strange matter - a hypothetical form of matter similar to ordinary matter). but consisting of heavy strange quarks). These fears were smashed to smithereens by the scientific community and became nothing more than rumors spread by incompetent people, or attempts to create a sensation out of thin air. Additionally, a 2011 report published by the LHC Safety Assessment Group found that particle collisions pose no risk.
Anders Sandberg, a research fellow at the University of Oxford, believes that a particle accelerator is unlikely to lead to disaster, but notes that if strangelets somehow appear, “it will be bad”:
“The transformation of a planet like Mars into strange matter will release some of the rest mass in the form of radiation (and splashing straplets). Assuming the conversion takes an hour and releases 0.1% as radiation, the luminosity would be 1.59*10^34 W, or 42 million times the luminosity of the Sun. Most of it will be represented by heavy gamma rays.”
Oops. Obviously, the LHC is not capable of producing strange matter, but perhaps some future experiment, on Earth or in space, will be able to. 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 quite soon.
Stellar engineering project goes wrong
We could destroy the Solar System by severely damaging or altering the Sun during a stellar engineering project or disrupting planetary dynamics in the process.
Some futurists theorize that future humans (or our posthuman descendants) may decide to undertake any number of stellar engineering projects, including stellar farming. David Criswell of the University of Houston described star farming 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, future stellar engineers could rid it of excess mass (large stars burn faster).
But the potential for a possible catastrophe is prohibitive. Like plans to implement geoengineering projects here on Earth, stellar engineering projects can lead to a huge number of unintended consequences or trigger uncontrollable cascading effects. For example, attempts to remove mass from the Sun can lead to strange and dangerous flares or life-threatening decreases in luminosity. They can also have a significant impact on planetary orbits.
Failed attempt to turn Jupiter into a star
Some people think it would be a good idea to turn Jupiter into some kind of artificial star. But in trying to do this, we could destroy Jupiter itself, and with it life on Earth.
Writing in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, astrophysicist Martin Fogg suggested that we will turn Jupiter into a star as part of the first step in terraforming the Galilean moons. To this end, future humans will seed a tiny primordial black hole into Jupiter. The black hole must be perfectly designed to stay within the Eddington limit (the equilibrium point between the external force of radiation and the internal force of gravity). According to Fogg, this would create "enough energy to create effective temperatures on Europa and Ganymede to make them similar to Earth and Mars, respectively."
Great, unless something goes wrong. According to Sandberg, everything will be fine at first - but the black hole could grow and engulf Jupiter in a burst of radiation that would sterilize the entire solar system. Without life and with Jupiter in a black hole, our surroundings will be in complete chaos.
Disturbance of the orbital dynamics of planets
When we start tinkering with the positions and masses of planets and other celestial bodies, we risk upsetting the delicate orbital balance in the solar system.
In reality, the orbital dynamics of our solar system are extremely fragile. It has been calculated that even the slightest disturbance can lead to chaotic and even potentially dangerous orbital motions. The reason is that planets are in resonance when any two periods are in a simple numerical ratio (for example, Neptune and Pluto have an orbital resonance of 3:1, since Pluto completes two full orbits for every three orbits of Neptune).
As a result, two rotating bodies can influence each other even if they are too far away. Frequent close encounters can cause smaller objects to be destabilized and thrown out of their orbit - starting a chain reaction throughout the solar system.
Such chaotic resonances, however, can occur naturally, or we can provoke them by moving the Sun and planets. As we have already noted, stellar engineering has such potential. The prospect of Mars moving into the potentially habitable zone, which would involve disruption of its orbit by asteroids, could also upset the orbital balance. On the other hand, if we build a Dyson sphere from materials from Mercury and Venus, the orbital dynamics may change in completely unpredictable ways. Mercury (or what's left of it) could be ejected from the solar system, putting Earth dangerously close to large objects like Mars.
Bad warp drive maneuver
A warp-driven spaceship would be cool, sure, but also incredibly dangerous. Any object like a planet at its destination will be subject to massive energy expenditures.
Also known as the Alcubierre drive, warp drive could one day operate by generating bubbles of negative energy around itself. By expanding space and time behind the ship and compressing it 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 group of scientists decided to calculate the damage an engine of this type could cause. Jason Major of Universe Today explains:
“Space is not a void between point A and point B... no, it is full of particles that have mass (and those that don’t). Scientists have concluded that these particles can “roll” through the warp bubble and concentrate in regions in front of and behind the ship, as well as in the bubble itself.
When an Alcubierre-powered ship decelerates from FTL, the particles collected by the bubble are emitted in bursts of energy. The burst can be extremely energetic - enough to destroy something at the ship's destination.
“Any people at the destination,” the scientists wrote, “would be swept into oblivion by an explosion of gamma rays and high-energy particles due to the extreme blueshift of forward region particles.”
Scientists also add that even on 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 an entire planet. Additionally, 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 incoming warp ship can cause much more damage than simply destroying a planet.
Problems with an artificial wormhole
Using wormholes to bypass the limitations of interstellar travel is great in theory, but we have to be very careful when tearing apart the space-time continuum.
Back in 2005, Iranian nuclear physicist Muhammad Mansouryar 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 spacecraft.
Mansouryar's document does not indicate negative consequences, but Anders Sandberg talks about them:
“First, wormhole throats require mass-energy (possibly negative) on the scale of a black hole of the same size. Secondly, creating time loops can cause virtual particles to become real and destroy the wormhole in the energy cascade. This will probably end badly for the environment. Additionally, by placing one end of the wormhole in the Sun and the other somewhere else, you could move it too, or irradiate the entire solar system.
The destruction of the Sun will be bad for us all. And irradiation, again, sterilizes our entire system.
Shkadov engine navigation error and disaster
If we want to move our solar system into the distant future, we risk destroying it completely.
In 1987, Russian physicist Leonid Shkadov proposed the concept of a megastructure, a “Shkadov engine,” that could literally take our solar system and all its contents to a neighboring star system. In the future, this may allow us to abandon an old dying star in favor of a younger one.
The Shkadov engine is very simple in theory: it is simply a colossal arc-shaped mirror with a concave side facing the Sun. Builders must place the mirror at an arbitrary distance, where the gravitational pull of the Sun will be balanced by the outgoing pressure of its radiation. The mirror will thus become a stable static satellite in equilibrium between the tug of gravity and the pressure of sunlight.
Solar radiation will be reflected from the inner curved surface of the mirror back to the Sun, pushing our star with its own light - the reflected energy will produce a 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 may miscalculate and scatter the solar system throughout 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 the many small objects located in the outer reaches of the solar system. We'll have to be careful. As Sandberg says, “By destabilizing the Kuiper Belt or the Oort Cloud, we'll have a lot of comets crashing down on us.”
Attracting Evil Aliens
If proponents of the search for extraterrestrial life achieve what they are looking for, we will successfully transmit messages into space that will make it clear where we are and what we are capable of. Of course, all aliens must be good.
Return of the Mutated Von Neumann Probes
Let's say we send a fleet of exponentially self-replicating von Neumann probes to colonize our galaxy. Assuming they are very poorly programmed or someone deliberately creates evolving probes, if they mutate for a long time, they could turn into something completely evil and malevolent towards their creators.
Eventually, our smart ships will return to tear apart our solar system, suck out all the resources or “kill all people,” putting an end to our interesting life.
Interplanetary Gray Goo Incident
Self-replicating space probes can also exist in much smaller sizes and be dangerous: exponentially reproducing nanobots. The so-called "grey goo", where an uncontrolled swarm of nanobots or macrobots will consume all planetary resources to create more copies, will not be limited to planet Earth. This slime could slip aboard a ship leaving a dying star system or even appear in space as part of a megastructure project. Once in the solar system, it can turn everything into mush.
The 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.
An often cited example is the paperclip scenario, where a poorly programmed ASI converts the entire planet into paperclips. A runaway ASI would not necessarily make paper clips - perhaps to achieve the best effect it would also require producing an infinite number of computer processors and turning all matter on earth into a useful computer. The ASI may even develop a meta-ethical imperative to spread its actions throughout the galaxy.
Make the solar system useless
What can we achieve if we go extinct? published