Everyone knows that people—guys, especially—love to blow things up. Being a guy myself, I’m no exception. So I was amused, while reading an article about how Gamma Ray Bursts are probably not going to destroy the Earth, after all (Interstellar Deathray Not Likely to Hit Earth), to see a link to another page entitled How to Destroy the Earth. It’s pretty cool. It’s not about how to destroy humanity, which we can probably manage by just keeping doing what we’re doing now, but about how to demolish the Earth itself. The proposed methods range from nano-agents (NAGs) to strange matter to vacuum energy. Some of the related pages include Why Destroy the Earth? as well as a completely unwatchable video shot on a cell-phone camera. (Okay, never mind the video.)
As I’m sure you all know, there has been some real concern about the possibility of Gamma Ray Bursts torching our home planet. But as you know if you’ve followed the first link above, it’s a probability game, and according to Krzysztof Stanek from Ohio State University and others, the probability of such a burst occurring in our metal-rich galaxy is low, low, low. But not zero. So I think, really, it’s safe to keep worrying about that if you want to.
On the other hand, all this speculation about blowing up a planet is small potatoes. I demonstrated in my novel, From a Changeling Star, how one might blow up a star. Now, that was fun. (Okay, I admit, the engineering details are a little shaky. But it was, after all, science fiction.)
Okay, I’m going back to work on Sunborn now.
Or maybe I’ll just take a nap. All this blowing up of stuff really takes it out of you.
tsmacro
Love space.com and livescience.com
Did you see that Rush Limbaugh commented on the “How to Destroy the Earth”? Paraphrasing here; he said that since this said that it was nearly impossible to destroy the earth that we can all keep driving our big honking SUV’s and not have to worry about the consequences. Yikes! There’s a reason that even most politically conservative individuals don’t listen to much he has to say these days!
Anyway on a completely different aside here: I went to Amazon.com today and who’s face did I see on my amazon home page? None other than our very own favortite author Jeffrey Carver! He was welcoming me to his corner of his universe on my new “PLOG”. You sure do get around cyberspace Jeff! *L*
Jeffrey A. Carver
You mean that thing on Amazon finally worked?? Halleluiah! I signed up for it over a month ago, and couldn’t figure out the interface. I still don’t understand why it pops up when and where it does–why you, for example, saw it when you logged on. I wonder if you’ll see a rotation of all the authors whose books you’ve bought (or maybe looked at) who’ve signed up for plogs.
tsmacro
Well I just checked again and so far it’s just you. But now it’s just small oval in the upper right corner of the page that says “Marco’s Plog”. Maybe when you get something new it comes up bigger across the top of the page like it did yesterday.