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When things really get going with outer space civilizations, the idea of weaponry and conflict is going to take some surprising and horrifying turns. We bicker
by ifAndOnlyIf 8y ago
When things really get going with outer space civilizations, the idea of weaponry and conflict is going to take some surprising and horrifying turns.
We bicker about islands and aircraft carriers, nuclear arsenals and orbital ballistics, and something like this would rend the entire planet limb from limb in the blink of an eye, without breaking a sweat.
- dvirsky 8y agoYou should read The Three Body Problem trilogy for some interesting ideas in that direction.
- cfadvan 8y agoManipulating a white dwarf to kill a planet is like using a hydrogen bomb to kill an ant.
- wavefunction 8y agoImagine what that bad boy would do to perturb an entire solar system by even a near pass, though..
- ifAndOnlyIf 8y agoGiven that a typical white dwarf is thought to occupy a volume comparable to the volume of earth-like planets, it strikes me as precisely the sort of object one might select to destroy a planet like earth in a single stroke. From wikipedia: The estimated radii of observed white dwarfs are typically between 0.8% and 2% of the radius of the Sun; this is comparable to the Earth's radius of approximately 0.9% solar radius. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf Catapults, naval cannons, carpet bombing cities to hit one obscure factory. War is littered with stories of absurd mismatches in economies of scale.
- cfadvan 8y agoThe problem is while it has a volume comparable to Earth, its mass is comparable to Sol! It would take an unbelievable amount of energy to move something so massive from its original position to a collision course with another body. With a fraction of that energy you could pummel a planet with a swarm of tens of thousands of giant asteroids for years.
- itchyjunk 8y agoMaybe the species in question has colonized an entire star system. This would be a good way to get rid of several nearby planets and the parent star.
- perl4ever 8y agoI liked the story of the interstellar traders, who had a device to set off a nova, in order to ride a light sail to the next star.