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How to Destroy the World
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We currently possess the technology to completely and
utterly destroy the Earth. I'm not talking about that worn-out
old cliché of "Let's set off all the nuclear bombs
on the face of the planet. That'll destroy everything!"
That's the first (incorrect) idea most people have when someone mentions destroying the Earth.
I'm not just talking about destroying all life on the
planet Earth, I'm not even talking about destroying everything
on the surface of the planet Earth, either of which is the only thing you could hope to do by setting off a bunch of nuclear weapons, and probably neither, in actuality. I'm talking about
a complete and utter eradication of everything that currently
exists as something you can point at and say, "That's Earth."
It wouldn't be easy, and it would probably have to be done covertly, I can't think of too many people out there who could drum up serious grassroots support for this kind of project,
but it could be done, with today's technology, and at a reasonable
cost. (Reasonable to someone who wants to totally annihilate
the entire planet, of course. Perhaps not so reasonable to someone
who only wants to annoy his/her neighbor.)
My solution is lacking in some specific technical details, because
I'm not an Engineer or Physicist and my knowledge of orbital dynamics
is rather limited, but here, in several simple steps, is how to
do it:
- Construct a huge balloon. I'm talking in the thousands of
miles in diameter, although size is not necessarily too important.
The bigger the balloon, the faster the destruction. It also
need not necessarily be too airtight. Some kind of rubberized
fabric would probably be ideal. (A huge Spandex sphere comes
to mind…)
- Launch the entire thing into orbit. Here's where it gets
a little hairy. What we need to do is place the balloon into
an orbit where it is tidally locked between the Earth and Sun
so that the balloon is also rotationally locked between the Earth
and Sun. In other words, the Earth, Sun and balloon should be
points of a rigid triangle, and the balloon should also face the
same position relative to the Earth and Sun. Possibly the leading
or trailing Trojan points in Earth's orbit would be appropriate,
but if we leave it there, there's all kinds of other junk that's
also been picked up to wreck our balloon. Ideally we want an
orbit that leaves it locked into place between the Earth and Sun
with no other floating space junk to knock it out of orbit.
- Once it's in an appropriate orbit, Inflate the balloon. Since
we're in a vacuum, we don't need a lot of whatever gas it is we're
using for full inflation. It also won't need to stay inflated
for very long, hence the laxity on being airtight. (This is an
easy step.)
- Once the balloon is inflated, start it rotating along one
axis. Attach small thruster units or something. We can't have
a lot of acceleration because we don't want to deform the balloon
during this stage. (The idea is to use centrifugal force to stretch
the balloon to a certain paraboloid shape. Further details in
a bit. I don't want to give too much away yet.)
- Once we have it rotating, coat the outside of it with a hard
shell. Something like a quick-drying Styrofoam or something.
We want it to retain its shape when we stop it rotating.
- Stop the balloon from rotating. We can be a little more rough
with it now that its been hardened.
- Cut the balloon in half. This is probably the most dangerous
part of the plan, as whatever we used to inflate it will come
out very quickly in the vacuum of space and try to thrust the
balloon off on some vector. Probably the best solution is to
create some kind of puncture 180 degrees apart along the centerline so
that thrust from escaping gas from either side of the balloon
cancel each other out.
- Once we have the two halves, coat the insides of each half
with something reflective. Mylar or maybe sublimate silver or nickel onto the
surface like creating telescope mirrors, or something like that.
- Once we have the two mirrored hemispheres, position them so
that the focal point of the reflection is on the Earth's surface.
Of course, what we want to reflect into that focal point is sunlight.
The basic idea is to create two, huge parabolic mirrors that we
can place into orbit around the Earth that will reflect sunlight
to a focal point that we place on the Earth's surface. We need
the artificial satellite to always face the Earth, and also stay
in position relative to the Earth and Sun so that the focal point
doesn't wander off of the Earth's surface as one or another of
the bodies involved rotates or revolves or orbits or anything
else.
What this accomplishes, should, I hope, be obvious by now.
If you've ever taken a magnifying glass to an anthill, you're looking at
a similar concept here, except instead of a 4" magnifying glass, you've
got a parabolic mirror thousands of miles in diameter, (well, two, actually.
We can either keep one as a spare, or place them both in orbit and get
double the exposure!) and instead
of an anthill, you've got the Earth. Crackle-crackle.
The two major technical points that I'm not sure on are:
- Where do we orbit the mirrors so that the requirements of
staying in position and rotation relative to both the Earth and
Sun are met?
- How fast do we spin the balloon when we "harden"
it so that the proper parabolic shape is created to cause the
focal point to be at the position of the Earth when the mirror
is in orbit in the location that is determined by (a), above.
(Centrifugal force to create the shape is an elegant idea, but
may not be practical. It may be that we might simply have to
create the mirrors in orbit.)
Another additional idea, suggested by a someone whose name I don't
remember, from MIT or Cornell or some other place like that, is
that if we place the focal point on the trailing edge of rotation
(If the Earth is rotating clockwise, and our balloon is orbiting
along a line that we extend from Twelve O'clock through Six O'clock,
the trailing edge of rotation is Nine O'clock) then some of the
outgassing of molten rock and water vapor and atmosphere that
has turned into plasma, and all those other nice things will reach
escape velocity. In essence, we will be using the vaporization
of the Earth itself to act as a jet engine that will increase
its own rotational speed, causing all kinds of other nasty tectonic
destruction along the way.
We'll probably need to put some sort of control mechanism on the
orbiting mirrors so that as the Earth reduces its mass into a
trail of rock vapor and gasses in a ring 93 million miles from
the Sun, and therefore also reduces its diameter, we can continue
to keep the focal point aimed at the surface.
Also, orbital dynamics will change as the Earth loses mass. As
it loses mass, but retains its orbital speed, it will begin to
increase the size of its orbit. Eventually, it might just wander
off into the asteroid belt, or, if we're very lucky, it could
smack into Jupiter and be completely subsumed by the gas giant.
And that, kids, is how to destroy the earth using today's technology.
This Material is Copyright © 1996 by Derek Glidden, All Rights Reserved.
This essay may not be reproduced in part or in whole without prior written consent of the author.
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