Ways to Destroy Earth/Life on Earth

[keinve]

i am not sure if this is the corect place to put this, but i guess it's right. I'm wondering about plausible ways to destroy the earth, or destroy all life on earth, the probablitlity, about how long it would take, and if it can be orchestrated by humans. stating which it would be (death of earth, or death of all life on earth) is preferable. methods that are not plausible are appreciated as well, if only to hear about the mechanics involved.

 

[Soff]

As you may know, our sun is going to explode in about five billion years. Surely, that must be the end of our live on earth. The only way of surviving is to escape.

However, I think it is highly probable that we're going to destroy the Earth much earlier. Since our climate is changing, I think it's possible that our atmosphere will loose it's protective nature in about a few hundred years.
Maybe there will take place a third world war or something like this which can end in the extinction of the humanity. Although human beeings are vulnerable, it's not that simple to wipe out the whole civilization (eventually, some out of around 6 billion people will survive).

 

[Math Jeans]

release an enhanced version of smallpox. That'll do it.

 

[Asphodel]

Well, if you count helium flashes as exploding...but if you do, then you get coronal mass ejections much more often and earlier that are functionally the same thing? (Which themselves have a good shot of causing severe havoc well before another 5 billion years pass.) Either way...it's a sure bet that the planet's going away for sufficient \Deltat.

If you tried hard enough, you could probably crash a large rock into the planet well before that. Wouldn't do much to the planet, but if it's big enough you could do away with many of the molecules needed to re-form life...at least until they get re-seeded.

You can probably get *most* humans with a nuclear war or disease (just make sure the incubation time is long enough for it to spread first, total noob mistake there). But probably not all, so you're back to where you started in a few hundred or thousand years.

Earth's a damn anomaly...once you manage to actually get life going, it's hard to turn off without something astronomical happening.

 

[keinve]

well, everyone seems to be focusing on humans. even a few of the 'blow up earth' ones can still leave some small bacteria. no one seem to think about that. but they do have merrit for getting US off of earth.

 

[Colin1]

Maybe a catastrophic pole shift round about, say, 21 December 2012?
That oughta do it for the 'all life on Earth' school of thought...

Well OK, most of it then

 

[mgb_phys]

Seems to be a constant coffee break topic for astronomers, see here -
http://qntm.org/destroy

 

[keinve]

yes... but not all of it. to put it simply, the only way to really destroy all life on Earth is to destroy earth. everything I've seen that leaves Earth intact, results in a still diverse life on earth. not as diverse as right now, but radiatition will cause mutations, causing the diversity to pack up again.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

When the sun expands we will actually orbit within the sphere! That should do it.

Another planetary collision, or a collision with a large enough asteroid would do it. Earth 1 was hit so hard that we got the moon!

 

[G01]

Maybe a catastrophic pole shift round about, say, 21 December 2012?
That oughta do it for the 'all life on Earth' school of thought...

Well OK, most of it then

I thought the last pole shift happened with humans around? It couldn't have been that catastrophic if we're still here. Plus, that date is the end of the long count on the Mayan Calendar, as I'm sure you were aware. A lot of people consider that date as an "end of the world date," but by what I have heard it is more of a "There will be big changes." date. In other words, I don't think the world is going to end on that date just because the Mayan Calendar is starting a new long count.

 

[RetardedBastard]

Maybe a catastrophic pole shift round about, say, 21 December 2012?
That oughta do it for the 'all life on Earth' school of thought...

Well OK, most of it then

A Mayan prediction? Heck, we've got a card carrying *physicist* by the name of I. Newton who predicted the end of the world was scheduled *NO EARLIER* than 2060! So, who are you going to base your eschatological beliefs upon, the Mayans or an actual respected physicist? :)

 

[Ki Man]

release an enhanced version of smallpox. That'll do it.

Russia's already taken care of the development of it. All they need to do is execute it.

Something more challenging... airborne polio? Super Spanish Flu?

a pole shift might not be immediately deadly but we'd see an epidemic of cancer patients

 

[Art]

Wandering into the sphere of influence of a black hole should do it nicely and won't even leave a mess to clean up.

 

[EnumaElish]

Merger with the Andromeda?

 

[kach22i]

Some scientist believe that a huge methane gas explosion is responsible for the largest mass extinction on record. Most methane on Earth is frozen on the oceans floor.

Most other's blame huge asteroid/meteor/comet's for all six mass extinctions.

 

[Colin1]

I thought the last pole shift happened with humans around? It couldn't have been that catastrophic if we're still here. Plus, that date is the end of the long count on the Mayan Calendar, as I'm sure you were aware. A lot of people consider that date as an "end of the world date," but by what I have heard it is more of a "There will be big changes." date. In other words, I don't think the world is going to end on that date just because the Mayan Calendar is starting a new long count.

lol well there was a certain degree of levity in my original entry, perhaps I should have said an instant pole shift would result in global destruction; the last few flips - by all accounts - took around 7,000 years each.
There does appear to be something afoot, the magnetic north pole currently being deeper into Northern Canada than usual.
I'd argue that saying we're still here doesn't mean something wasn't catastrophic, it just means we weren't annihilated.

 

[Colin1]

A Mayan prediction? Heck, we've got a card carrying *physicist* by the name of I. Newton who predicted the end of the world was scheduled *NO EARLIER* than 2060! So, who are you going to base your eschatological beliefs upon, the Mayans or an actual respected physicist? :)

Hi
you might be missing a point there - if we're reducing the Mayans to palm-reader status on the basis of a prediction then the same rule must apply to Newton, why would something so unscientific as a prediction be any more credible just because it came from a paradigm-accepted source like Newton?

The Mayans were competent physicists too, getting to grips with the workings of the universe and they were extremely competent astronomers capable of amazing feats of accuracy. Their abilities have earned them a high level of respect too, I just don't think they carried cards in those days.

Alot of Newton's theories failed under Einstein's scrutiny, you could argue that Einstein lived in more modern times where the effects of speed could be more readily observed but the Mayans came long before Newton, you might question what the end of the long count really means but you don't hear anyone debunking them.

 

[CanadianPhys]

hahaha nice...
Pretty cool
aint going to happens
unless WWIII breaks out

 

[keinve]

the black hole would obviously work, but the merger with andromeda would only affect us if we were at the right place during the merger. but it seems the people here think that humans are the only living creatures on the planet.

 

[RetardedBastard]

Hi
you might be missing a point there - if we're reducing the Mayans to palm-reader status on the basis of a prediction then the same rule must apply to Newton, why would something so unscientific as a prediction be any more credible just because it came from a paradigm-accepted source like Newton?

The Mayans were competent physicists too, getting to grips with the workings of the universe and they were extremely competent astronomers capable of amazing feats of accuracy. Their abilities have earned them a high level of respect too, I just don't think they carried cards in those days.

Alot of Newton's theories failed under Einstein's scrutiny, you could argue that Einstein lived in more modern times where the effects of speed could be more readily observed but the Mayans came long before Newton, you might question what the end of the long count really means but you don't hear anyone debunking them.

Yeah, I know that. I was just being a bit facecious. :)

 

[Phred101.2]

Does someone in this thread really think that "we humans" have the capability to "destroy" the planet?
We seem to be pretty good at changing it, maybe not for the better, especially for all those plants and animals that have been removed from the evolutionary stakes.
I would say planet Earth is probably 'safe' from us, but we can't say the inverse is true, in fact we already know how 'dangerous' this planet can be (for any lifeform).

 

[Ivan Seeking]

What matters is whether we can destroy the Earth as we know it. I really don't care about cockroaches. I'm more worried about people and the quality of life.

 

[Phred101.2]

So what you mean is if we "destroy" our way of life, so that things are, say a lot less "comfortable" for us?
I would say that the planet, even if there were a really big extinction (like a big asteroid or comet hitting us), would probably still be here, and new lifeforms would emerge.
We may only have a million or so years left. We, like most other animals, especially specialised animals, don't usually hang around for more than a few million before being succeeded by the next evolutionary version. So we will be replaced (eventually) by some future Homo species, or maybe by another genus. It's kind of hard to say, but it is inevitable (like evolution).

 

[Colin1]

So what you mean is if we "destroy" our way of life, so that things are, say a lot less "comfortable" for us?
I would say that the planet, even if there were a really big extinction (like a big asteroid or comet hitting us), would probably still be here, and new lifeforms would emerge.
We may only have a million or so years left. We, like most other animals, especially specialised animals, don't usually hang around for more than a few million before being succeeded by the next evolutionary version. So we will be replaced (eventually) by some future Homo species, or maybe by another genus. It's kind of hard to say, but it is inevitable (like evolution).

I don't think the question was ever about destroying our way of life (although that would certainly disappear if we did) or making things less comfortable for ourselves; the question seems to be purely and simply about annihilation of either the Earth itself, life on Earth or perhaps life on Earth as we know it. I tend to agree that destruction of the Earth as a physical planet in terms of probability is vanishingly small but there have been a number of 'great dyings' ranging back into pre-history and beyond where we (life) came close.
What would it take in future? There are purportedly several natural phenomena threatening continental North America eg that land-shelf on the W European sea-board that could slide into the sea, sending a mega-tsunami barrelling towards the Eastern US sea-board; there is the Yellowstone Park subterranean magma concentration and probably one or two others but whereas the effects on continental North America would certainly be devastating, could they extinguish life on the whole planet?
I would argue meteorite strike would be the surest method of destroying life as we know it. All the major faunae and florae would be eliminated and microbial life would once again inherit the Earth - what they evolve into in the millions of years thereafter could be near-facsimiles of the faunae and florae they succeeded or they may well evolve into something entirely different.

One final thing, your point about humanity 'not hanging around for long' because we're specialised; we're not specialised, in fact, we're not very good at anyone thing - the reason we're successful is because we have large brains and we're adaptable.

 

[vanesch]

Well, have a look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Bomb

and more specially the Cobalt bomb thought of by Szilard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb

It's on that idea that the movie "Dr. Strangelove" was based.

 

[Phred101.2]

So some think that we are able to destroy all life on the planet (should we choose to). I really don't believe this would happen, even if we did choose to try. What about all those bacteria underground (like kilometers down), or deep beneath the surface of oceans, or way up in the stratosphere? Apart from all the other small and not so small species that might survive our attempt?
We certainly are a specialised animal. Why are we so successful at living in so many different environments? Why are we the only species to co-opt others for our use (or companionship)? How many other species are as successful at exploiting so many different kinds of resource?

 

[vanesch]

There's also this:
http://www.qntm.org/destroy

 

[Colin1]

I really don't believe this would happen, even if we did choose to try. What about all those bacteria...?

as I said in my last post, microbial life will inherit the Earth...

We certainly are a specialised animal. Why are we so successful at living in so many different environments?

You're contradicting yourself - we're successful at living in so many different environments because we're adaptable, not because we're specialised. Take the Polar Bear, very specialised for living at the Pole - not really cut out for life in the Tropics. A better example might be his neighbour, the seal, ideal for cutting through water catching fish, utterly ill-suited for life on a prairie chasing whatever.

We seem to be going off at a tangent with this one by the way.

 

[Phred101.2]

Perhaps your definition of "specialised" is from a different dictionary.
The evolutionary sense, is I think proportional to how well a species is adapted to its niche. Like polar bears or orang-utans they are "susceptible to change" -because of their specialisation- which means they are "stuck" and unable to change their form quickly enough so they may go extinct.
This sort of environmental pressure is what happened to us, so the story goes, somewhere in Africa. We are all descended from the same small group of survivors (of major climate change).
We have since managed to adapt to just about every environment on land. Our specialisation allows this, so it hasn't left us "stuck" somewhere like the polar bear, but that doesn't mean we aren't highly adapted, which I thought meant the same thing.

 

[Moonbear]

Perhaps your definition of "specialised" is from a different dictionary.
The evolutionary sense, is I think proportional to how well a species is adapted to its niche. Like polar bears or orang-utans they are "susceptible to change" -because of their specialisation- which means they are "stuck" and unable to change their form quickly enough so they may go extinct.
This sort of environmental pressure is what happened to us, so the story goes, somewhere in Africa. We are all descended from the same small group of survivors (of major climate change).
We have since managed to adapt to just about every environment on land. Our specialisation allows this, so it hasn't left us "stuck" somewhere like the polar bear, but that doesn't mean we aren't highly adapted, which I thought meant the same thing.

Incorrect. Specialization means being limited by the environment, or adapted to a very specific niche within the environment.

spe·cial·i·za·tion (spsh-l-zshn)
n.
1. The act of specializing or the process of becoming specialized.
2. Biology
a. Adaptation, as of an organ or organism, to a specific function or environment.
b. A character, feature, or organism resulting from such adaptation.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/specialization

If you're not adapted to a specific environment, but can live in a wide range of environments, that's not specialization.

 

[sas3]

How about shorting out the ionosphere by hanging large conductive cables down from space.
With out the protection of the ionosphere I don’t think life would last too long on this planet.

 

[Phred101.2]

Should the special/general argument get forked to a child thread? Is my contention that we are a specialised mammal that has learned to use its special abilities to adapt to non-special conditions, up the scientific creek with no paddle?
Can we really say that H. sapiens is in fact, a generalised omnivore with no specialisation (apart from a big brain, adaptation to upright walking, intricate and delicate interaction with materials to construct equally intricate objects -something no other species, special or general, does, adaptation of symbology and language, etc. and etc.)?