Sat 22 Dec 2007
Take the Earth: orbiting the sun, revolving once every twenty four hours, towing the moon and any number of manmade satellites in orbit.
And then it explodes. So! A few questions:
What happens to the debris? In the short run and in the long run? What happens to the moon? And how does the planet get blown up in the first place? And how blown up does it get, exactly, anyhow?
(Inspired by a classic Ask Metafilter question.)
Posted by Josh Millard4 answers so far!
Okay, let's hear it.
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Say there was a guy who discovered some ancient radioactive goo while spelunking in a cave as a Boy Scout. Then he put it into golf balls and they became scientifically enhanced, hitting far and true no matter who used them. He made millions and went on to become Vice President. The President died so our main man, who strongly resembles Dan Quayle, became the new Prez.
A huge volcano erupted, and the ensuing gases caused total infertility all over the planet. A new religious cult sprang up and its members were sacrificing themselves to the volcano in order to save humanity.
The new President was playing golf during a Middle East summit and whacked one of his super duper balls into the volcano.
Then the Earth cracks in half, whereupon it keeps splitting and replicating, due to the chemical reaction between the radioactive goo and the junk inside the volcano.
Therefore, the pieces would become the fodder for making a giant baby and the Universe would be its womb.
What happens to the debris? In the short run and in the long run?
Sucked into a local black hole, spit out elsewhere.
What happens to the moon?
See above.
And how does the planet get blown up in the first place?
A Lazy Gun.
It would smear out into a ring and the moon would fall into the sun. I guess. Maybe.
And how does the planet get blown up in the first place?
Only by colliding with another massive object. All we can meaningfully say about earth exploding is the amount of energy needed to make it happen.
The Richter scale comes in handy here. A 9.0-9.9 event happens 1 in every 20 years according to Wikipedia, and no event above 10.0 has ever been recorded. Because the Richter scale is logarithmic, a 12.0 event is equivalent to the earth being cleaved in two.
There’s my answer: It takes a collision that has the energy of a 12.0 quake, 160 teratons of TNT, or 672 zetajoules to destroy the earth.
What happens to the debris? In the short run and in the long run?
It depends on how much additional energy goes into the explosion. Just a little, and the earth’s remnants will end up as an asteroid belt around the sun. If the energy is sufficiently large, some of the debris could escape the sun’s gravity and end up hurtling across interstellar space.