4 ms·
> In short, if I lost 1% of my electrons, I would not be a person anymore. I would be a bomb. A Coulomb bomb, if you will, with an energy equivalent to that o
by HenryKissinger 5y ago
> In short, if I lost 1% of my electrons, I would not be a person anymore. I would be a bomb. A Coulomb bomb, if you will, with an energy equivalent to that of ten billion (modern) atomic bombs. Which would surely destroy the planet. All by removing just 1 out of every 100 of my electrons.
The Chicxulub impactor struck with the force of ten billion Hiroshima bombs, and while the world underwent a mass extinction event, the planet itself was fine.
- datameta 5y agoIt's possible that by "(modern)" the author means hydrogen bombs which are 3 magnitudes more powerful than the fission devices used in WW2.
- Ekaros 5y agoPlanets are tough things. Destroying them is hard, oh the things on them sure. But the whole planet no. It will just probably gather itself together in a while anyway...
- zaphar 5y agoMight have a few new moons afterwords.
- lisper 5y ago> the planet itself was fine That depends on your quality metric. I don't think the dinosaurs thought it was fine. IMHO, destroying all of the things that are cool and interesting (to me) about this planet counts as "destroying the planet" even if there is still a hunk of rock orbiting the sun afterwards.
- dylan604 5y agoMercury, Venus, Mars are all planets. None have organic life on them. What you "consider" a planet is not what science calls a planet. Just ask Pluto.
- ben_w 5y agoThe spherical cow in a vacuum approximation I used in a different thread gave me 1e33 J, which is 4.78e15 Tsar Bomba nukes or 1.6e19 Little Boy nukes. This was unnecessarily compact (because the suggestion there was drinking antimatter) and thus high-energy, but it’s 4 times the gravitational binding energy of planet Earth.