4 ms·
Manipulating a white dwarf to kill a planet is like using a hydrogen bomb to kill an ant.
by cfadvan 8y ago
Manipulating 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.