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Here is a handy Euler diagram.

The IEDAB is part of the How To Destroy The Earth web site, which is hilarious and very much worth a read.

And here's the International Earth-Destruction Advisory Board!

That website seems to be out of date. The International Earth-Destruction Advisory Board reports that the Earth has indeed been destroyed by the LHC in preliminary experiments to determine if the Collider would destroy the earth.

earth-shattering (literally)

Not even close.

"The story that is style and allegory, or the one devotes pages of exposition to laughably wrong predictions of a supposedly realistic future? It all might as well be spaceports in Ohio."

"Predictions?" As I said before, anybody since Sir Isaac Newton could easily see that lower latitudes were beneficial. Jules Verne did figure it out. Better still, Bradbury could have set it in segregated Florida and maybe get away with combining a story or two.

And the image of the destruction of Australia (!!!) being visible with the naked eye from the surface of Mars isn't a "wrong prediction," it isn't "obsolete scientific opinion," it's the writings of a man who never actually looked up at the night sky and noticed "Gee, it's just a rust-colored dot, can't really see much from this distance," in spite of writing a book that supposedly takes place there. Aside from being a visual too jarring for the reader to stay in the narrative, it reflects Bradbury's own geocentrism, a notion he spends a great many pages mocking and belittling his characters for showing.

Just as discongruent was the idea that almost everybody on Mars would go back to Earth (even after seeing such a spectacle) to die with that planet, rather than accepting a flood of war refugees. But any amount of believability that gets in the way of Father Bradbury's sermon has to go, he's got A Point to Make.

I hope CERN has done the responsible thing and notified the International Earth-Destruction Advisory Board of an upcoming possible Earth-destroying event.

Asteroid McAlmont

oblig mundicde link: http://qntm.org/?destroy

Here is a nice little short story on the matter. It does my head in to think about this sort of thing.

I read an excellent short story on that subject here: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility

At least they don't have to apologize for it...
Some particles just shouldn't be accelerated

oblig. The Great British Venn Diagram

That entire line of articles on that blog is a complete copy from http://qntm.org/?destroy

The blog author attempts to give some credit in the first post (In a vague, not-actually-giving-credit manner), but I'd suggest reading the original.

*cough* *cough* *cough*

'Abort, Retry, Fail?' was the phrase some wormdog scrawled next to the door of the Edit Universe project room. And when the new dataspinners started working, fabricating their worlds on the huge organic comp systems, we'd remind them: if you see this message, always choose 'Retry.'

Bad'l Ron, Wakener - Morgan Polysoft

(Why? Excellent reasons.)

Well, if we're deep enough in the simulation chain, where the actions of one level are the same as the level below, anything you do to the simulation will be done to the real world. You could alter the universe.
That's what's wrong.

Oh please, it takes a lot of work to destroy the earth. We're really only up to the task of maybe wiping off the top layer of scum called "life", not the planet itself.

Infinite nines (99.999.... per cent) would be the same as the speed of light. I say this only to have an excuse to link to a list of proofs that 0.9 recurring equals 1.

From my (college-level) physics knowledge, the advantage of these colliders is that they come close to recreating the conditions which existed at the time of the beginning on the Universe (according to the Big Bang hypotheses). Whether or not these conditions allow certain never-before-seen particles to be observed is uncertain, but likely, since some kinds of particles (like mesons or bosons) have a tendency to dessapear in less than a nanosecond (1*10^-9 seconds).

On a related note, all the particle colliders of the most recent generation (like the Tevatron at Fermilab or the Relativistic Heavy Ion collider in New York) have the capability (if certain theoretical models are accurate enough) to generate very tiny (around nine millimeters), but stable black holes (though the probability is extremely low). See "How to Destroy the Earth" for more information on this.

Actually, Earth might not be swallowed up when the sun turns into a red giant. The sun will expand to over 1 AU, but that will take several billion years; meanwhile Earth's orbit is slowly drifting outward. By the time the sun expands, Earth might be out at the distance of Jupiter or so.

Don't quote me on this. I don't have any real source; I just read it on How to destroy the Earth.

not quite a cannon, and no pictures, but impressive results: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/

or, for the real BOOM, go here: http://qntm.org/destroy

There is currently ongoing research as to how to most effectively destroy the planet:

http://qntm.org/destroy

Please note that the information at that site should be used for educational purposes only, and by no means should you actually attempt to destroy the world. ^_^

If you need help figuring out how to destroy earth, there are people who have already thought about it...
http://qntm.org/destroy

On that topic, amateur geocide watchers and fans of the International Earth-Destruction Advisory Board will be reassured to learn that unlike the Nuclear Death Clock, the Current Earth-Destruction Status is expected to remain at its current status of "Not Destroyed" for the forseeable future.

Things which will NOT destroy the Earth: ....
* Detonating all the nuclear weapons ever created simultaneously, either all at one location or strategically placed around the globe. This will irradiate pretty much the entire globe and kill an awful lot of people, animals and plants, but will actually destroy very little of the planet itself.

Do you not think it would be meaningful just to receive the message "hello"?

Meaningful, yes, but let me paint a pessimistic picture for you. What if the ONLY signal we get is "hello"? What if FTL is impossible, and all we get is a random message that their equivalent of SETI beamed out to nearby stars just to show they were trying - just like us, in fact - and we get nothing else from them, ever? No messages, no ships, no magic technology... what if they just quit transmitting, like us, and live in solitude and eventually kill themselves before our reply message can arrive?

I believe there would be uproar and debate for centuries to come in many fields of science. But I believe that the political structure of the world would not change significantly after this news. The average man in the street looks up in the stars a little more often, but his day to day life is unaffected. The way we number our years would not be suddenly restarted. One year later there would still be trouble in the Middle East.

To quote Clarke, there are two possibilities. Either we are completely alone in the universe. Or we are not. In either case, the thought is staggering. But thanks to the experiences of reality we are totally used to the first possibility and thanks to science fiction we cannot fail to be underwhelmed if and when the second possibility becomes a reality.

I hate myself for saying all this, really, I want first contact to permanently unify the whole globe in a single moment, but be honest with yourself, is that at all likely?

This would work just fine, in my opinion.

Antimatter is equally ridiculous as the deathstar, really:

http://qntm.org/destroy#3

Introducing the Seymour Theory:

If you do the arithmetic, Seymour was flash-fossilized in 2012. Cohen O'Brian lost his obscenely long legs in the "War of 2012". David Duchovny's mind (a.k.a. Calculon) was transplanted into a robot arm by the time of Project Satan in 2019. And according to a girl Fry once met, cyborgs once enslaved humanity in the 21st Century... probably the early 21st Century.

Seymour was flash-preserved during the Cyborg War of 2012, which is where human/machine interface technology originates (or at least, started going out of control)!

Y'know, the solar tsunami could cause geocide, if it were to happen in our dear Earth.

Is it that time already? Comment #17,000,000 is a little early, having been predicted to occur on 31st January 2007. The rate of posting has clearly accelerated. Based on this I expect comment #18,000,000 on 25th February 2007. See you then! More here.

"It's quite hard to destroy the Earth."

"It's quite hard to destroy the Earth."

Actually it sounds like a quote from the Earth Destruction Manual, which starts "Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.[...]"

Suuuure! That's what you said the last time the Earth was destroyed.

According to the International Earth-Destruction Advisory Board (IDEAB) the current Earth-Destruction Alert Level (EDA Level) is "green" which indicates that the earth has not been destroyed. Furthermore, the Current Geocide Count (CGC) is zero, indicating that the earth has not yet been destroyed in the past. (In the event of the Earth being destroyed, the CGC will be increased by one, to read "1".)

You must thus be mistaken.

Here's some theory.

Obligatory link

If you offered me a new F-16 at half price it would be a remarkable bargain, but I still couldn't afford it with my combined lifetime earnings., let alone its upkeep.

How's this: Making an F-16 from a cereal box, some Scotch tape, and a penny. That cheap'nuff fer ya?

At bewildering times like this I, personally, reflect back to comment #10,000,000.

(And the rest)

That process might not seem bad to you, but when you're there, in the classroom, going through all these steps - it's an eternity.

It's bad, I'll agree. It helps if you make it clear that you have no patience for nonsense, by having no patience for nonsense, and giving the (at least temporary) boot from the class as fast as justification arises. But no matter what, there system has far too much tolerance built in at the moment, and the "No Child Left Behind" nonsense isn't helping. Some kids need a serious kick in the ass.

In our district, physical science is for 9th graders who are not on the "college track" (although the district likes to pretend no such tracks exist).

They called it "Earth Science" in my district when I went through; some superficial geology, climatology, and so forth that might be of some use for farm kids. (The school district ranged from suburb to rural.) I can see how that one might be a problem. With biology, there's the "gross/yuck" factor to hold their attention (along with the material on sex, if your district will let you teach it); chemistry has the nifty ability to make things go "BOOM" with pretty colors and really disgusting smells; and physics is half about how to throw galonking huge rocks at the castle three countries over, and half about making big honking sparks, lasers, nuclear bombs, and attaching students to the ceiling I-beams by their belt buckle. Or at least that's how our attention was kept fixed by my teachers in school.

But I can't think of anything quite so effective at holding the attention in "Physical Science", particularly with an uninspired crowd. Maybe a mention of How To Destroy The Earth? It might instill some of them with a sense of ambition, perhaps....

If you want to be the first to know if/when the Earth is destroyed, you can of course subscribe to the mailing list.

You should read some exit mundi for fun and entertaining end-of-world scenarios!

Those are for sizzies. This is for serious evil-doers: http://qntm.org/destroy.html

I know I do this every time but you know you love it. Here they are again for all you wackos. Every Millionth Slashdot Comment:

Slashdot comment #1,000,000 - 15th June 2000

Slashdot comment #2,000,000 - 1st March 1999. It's unknown why the date of this comment is earlier than the previous one. My guess is the comments weren't numbered sequentially this early on in Slashdot's history and were renumbered at some later date.

Slashdot comment #3,000,000 - 13th February 2002

Slashdot comment #4,000,000 - 2nd August 2002

Slashdot comment #5,000,000 - 2nd January 2003

Slashdot comment #6,000,000 - 20th May 2003

Slashdot comment #7,000,000 - 19th September 2003

Slashdot comment #8,000,000 - 16th January 2004

Slashdot comment #9,000,000 - 28th April 2004

Slashdot comment #10,000,000 - 18th August 2004. I can honestly say this is my favourite comment ever.

Slashdot comment #11,000,000 - 5th December 2004. My hat is off to evilmrhenry (542138) for finding this for me.

Slashdot comment #12,000,000 - 21st March 2005

Slashdot comment #13,000,000 - 7th July 2005

Slashdot comment #14,000,000 - 10th November 2005

Slashdot comment #15,000,000 - 27th March 2006 (predicted to be 1st March 2006)

Slashdot comment #16,000,000 - 29th August 2006 (predicted to be 11th August 2006)

Slashdot comment #17,000,000 - predicted by me, right now, to be 31st January 2007 - see you then!

Graph here.

http://qntm.org/destroy

Always good for some yuks!

No, global warming, or an asteroid impact, or a nuclear war, or runaway deforestation or strip mining or anything else of the type won't destroy the world.

I trust you've seen the guide on How to destroy the Earth?

The Earth is built to last.... It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily.

This is not a guide for wusses whose aim is merely to wipe out humanity.... Nor is this a guide for those wanting to annihilate everything from single-celled life upwards, render Earth uninhabitable or simply conquer it. These are trivial goals in comparison.

It is true that actually destroying the galaxy is orders of magnitude harder than actually destroying the Earth.

But there are ways we could end up sterilizing the galaxy, by creating Berserkers; self-replicating machines that either deliberately or accidentally sterilize all life. Odds are that if any such machines are actually created, unlike the stories that the term comes from, they'll actually win, and once established they can't be displaced.

Berserkers are one of the interesting aspects of the Fermi Paradox; is the solution to the Paradox that some dumb-asses actually did create Berserkers that come and wipe out all civilizations as soon as they attract attention? Is our high-tech doombot even now winging its way here at nearly the speed of light?

In more recent fiction, the Replicators of Stargate SG-1 are updated versions of the Saberhagen berserkers, designed with a better understanding of computers and more magical technology, but otherwise almost indistinguishable from the Saberhagen variety. (Saberhagen even had some berserkers that masqueraded as humans at some points, and used time travel, which Stargate hasn't gotten around to, mercifully, though I couldn't tell you why.)

In other words, while on Earth the "Gray Goo" scenario is implausible due to energy requirements and simple thermodynamics, the Galactic "Grey Goo" scenario has no such restrictions.

Whenever the topic of meteors comes up, someone has to post a link to the University of Arizona impact effects calculator. Play with the numbers, see if you can destroy the earth.

Also worth checking out along the Lucifer's hammer line of thought is How to Destroy the Earth

I tried a quick reverse engineering of the meteor with the calculator. An iron meteor 4.5 meters in diameter moving 20 km/s hitting crystalline rock at 45 degrees will have a yield of 18 kilotons...slightly higher than the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima. The average interval of an impact of this size on earth is about once every 5 years. Most go largely unnoticed. The earth is a big place.

I have been using a very low-tech form of this to allow myself to have the same bookmarks on every computer. Basically - I don't have any bookmarks. I have a web page which I use as my homepage on every computer. This means 1) I can access all my bookmarks from everywhere (although not, to be fair, my browser history or cookies) and 2) I can arrange my bookmarks in a much more potentially sophisticated layout than just a stack of menus, using HTML.

I suggest y'all try it!