How to destroy the Earth (completely)

Already discussed here: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=998734" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=998734</a>

One point of note is that is that a small-enough black hole would be essentially harmless.<p>See <a href="http://www.aip.org/pnu/2008/split/871-1.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.aip.org/pnu/2008/split/871-1.html</a><p>Obviously, there is a tipping point where a black hole becomes dangerous - but it's worth remembering that gravity is the <i>weakest</i> of the major forces. Any physics geeks care to calculate how long it would take an Everest-sized black hole to eat the earth?

That article is a good demonstration of scientific entertainment. I liked that method: --- "What you need to do is to point our most powerful radio-telescope transmitters at likely solar systems and taunt them. 'The girly-beings in your miserable solar system could never destroy a planet as cool as this one...'" ---

There are a couple of comments here about the phrase "destroy the world" normally referring to life on earth.<p>In that vein I'd like to say that killing all life currently within 6500 kilometers of the Earth's center of mass is, in some ways, harder than simply destroying the Earth.<p>Take for instance the humble Water Bear they range from microscopic to a millimeter in size and can survive being frozen to within a degree of 0k and have survived 10 days in hard vacuum, during which time eggs were laid and hatched. It seems likely that any of the various "disassemble Earth" methods would fail to kill them. Similarly any chunk of Earth with a sealed ecosystem, like some caves, might continue to keep going indefinitely.<p>Killing everything might <i>require</i> vaporizing the planet in the sun or eating it with a black hole.

They left out one possible solution: create a time machine to traveled back to a minute before 4.54 billion years ago. Equipment needed: high-pressured suction vacuum machine preferably solar-powered with a dustbag hard enough to store around 1.08321 × 1012 km3 mass volume of solar's dust and gas left over. Contrary to popular believe, it is actually easy to shop for a decent time-traveled machine: imdb.com Feasibility: 1/10

"Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth." Archimedes. Said to be his assertion in demonstrating the principle of the lever.

Destroying the Earth is kind of overkill. Unless you're making way for a hyperspace bypass, most supervillains' needs could be served by destroying what makes it different from any other planet. Burn off the atmosphere, melt the crust, release a metagenic virus that kills the biosphere, dump 130 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico...

This is fun and all, but my question is: what happens when all the honeybees die out?

This is completely old, but so funny every time, I have to up it. :)

An Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator will not suffice?

Hilarious.

Talk about exactly the kind of article title I wouldn't want to be easy to find by bad guys.

This is somewhat entertaining, but it's a giant strawman. When someone talks about destroying earth, they don't mean literally making the planet cease to be a such, they don't even mean annihilating humanity. They mean permanently making earth a significantly less pleasant place to live for a significant portion of its population. Such as, cutting down the rain forest, disrupting the CO2 pump (or whatever) and lowering the air quality with more disease to follow (or some variation - either way, it's still a planet, and it's still very much populated by humans).