How to Destroy Planet Earth

[jtex316]

http://qntm.org/destroy

A Complete Guide on ways to destroy Planet Earth, once and for all.

(Note: You can easily spend an hour reading just that page, it is very large).

[crazy_scar_man]

my favorite method:

Destroyed by God
You will need: God

Method: Far be it from me to dictate whether God does or does not exist, but if he did, and was omnipotent, then no doubt he could destroy the Earth at a mere thought if he should decide to. Of course, the question arises of how we persuade him to do this.

One suggestion - should Judaic mythology turn out to be correct - is finding and killing one or more of the Lamed Vav Tzadikim, 36 righteous men whose role in life is to justify the purpose of mankind in the eyes of God. If even one of these is missing, it is said the world would come to an end. Practically speaking, it would probably be easier to wipe out humanity than to find one these individuals, who do not themselves know who they are.

Comments: It is of course entirely possible that the means God would choose to use to destroy the Earth would be a natural, non-miraculous event such as one of those listed above.

Earth's final resting place: potentially any form, anywhere.

Feasibility rating: entirely subjective.

[Sunstroke]

My favorite...

#7) Pulverized by impact with blunt instrument

You will need: a big heavy rock, something with a bit of a swing to it... perhaps Mars.

[jtex316]

i liked this one:

Existence negated via time travel
You will need: a time machine, heavy rock-moving equipment/explosives.

Method: Using your time machine, travel back in time just over 4,500,000,000 years to shortly (i.e. a few billenia) before the formation of the Earth. What you should find in its place is a young Sun and an accretion disc formed of the dusty/rocky material that will later become our Solar System. Find the patch of material that is likely to condense into the Earth. Now blow up, split apart and otherwise stir up the material so that it never gets a chance to come together and form the Earth. Return forwards in time in several hundred-million-year jumps, repeating the process each time so that no planet of any kind ever forms at roughly 1 AU from the Sun. If you make an error, simply go back in time and try again.

If your time machine is more resilient, or you don't mind dying, you could consider going further back in time. The further you go, the less you need to change the universe to prevent the Earth ever forming. Go back to a few billionths of a second after the universe began and just by being there you'll completely alter the face of the universe to come... although it was pretty hot back then...

Earth's final resting place: When you finally return to the present day, you will be left with a largish asteroid belt where Earth should be. Alternatively, you may find that the matter has been assimilated into the bodies of other planets or the Sun.

Feasibility rating: 1/10. This method relies on fictional technology and has no basis in real events or scientific theory. Time travel in this way is almost certainly impossible.

Comments: My good friend Rob rightly informs me that this course of action does not strictly speaking "destroy" the Earth - there is no actual destruction event in which the Earth goes from existing to not existing. What one ends up with instead is a universe in which the Earth does not and never did exist.