They gotta big boomba. Very Big boomba bossa

[Candleicious Ghost]

In the words of the immortal Jar Jar Binks "dis is a bomba boomba bossa" a messy day for everyone and you blow up your whole planet

Seriously this was too much even for the defense people so they stopped any progress on this one.

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[Zero Kelvin]

The size of man-made nuclear devices pales into insignificance next to natural events.

A one-megaton TNT explosion is equivalent to 4.2×10¹⁵ joules or 4.2 petajoules (PJ). This is the typical yield of the largest strategic H bombs. The world's total arsenal of nuclear weapons is estimated to be 12,300 warheads.

The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated was the Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba at 50 megatons equivalent or 2.1×10¹⁷ J.

For comparison, the energy needed to accelerate one ton of mass to one tenth of light speed (0.1c or 30,000 km/s) is 4.5×10¹⁷ J or 108 megatons equivalent.

The estimated energy released by the eruption of the Indonesian volcano, Krakatoa, in 1883 was 8.4x10¹⁷ J or 200 megatons equivalent.

The energy released by a carbonaceous chondrite meteor 1 km in diameter striking the Earth's surface at 20 km/s is 2.33×10²⁰ J or 55,476 megatons equivalent. It's estimated that such an impact occurs every half a million years.

The energy released in the formation of the Chicxulub Crater on the Yucatán Peninsula, believed to have been the primary cause of the K-Pg extinction event 66 million years ago, is estimated to have been 3×10²³ J or 71.4 million megatons equivalent.

The total energy that the Carrington Event deposited into the Earth's magnetosphere in 1859 over a couple of days was 4×10²⁵ J or 9.5 billion megatons equivalent.

The total radiative energy output of the Sun is 3.83 ×10²⁶ J/s or 91 billion megatons equivalent per second.

Those examples are mere peanuts compared to cosmic events such as supernovae and black hole collisions.

Orders of magnitude (energy) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

The size of man-made nuclear devices pales into insignificance next to natural events.

A one-megaton TNT explosion is equivalent to 4.2×10¹⁵ joules or 4.2 petajoules (PJ). This is the typical yield of the largest strategic H bombs. The world's total arsenal of nuclear weapons is estimated to be 12,300 warheads.

The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated was the Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba at 50 megatons equivalent or 2.1×10¹⁷ J.

For comparison, the energy needed to accelerate one ton of mass to one tenth of light speed (0.1c or 30,000 km/s) is 4.5×10¹⁷ J or 108 megatons equivalent.

The estimated energy released by the eruption of the Indonesian volcano, Krakatoa, in 1883 was 8.4x10¹⁷ J or 200 megatons equivalent.

The energy released by a carbonaceous chondrite meteor 1 km in diameter striking the Earth's surface at 20 km/s is 2.33×10²⁰ J or 55,476 megatons equivalent. It's estimated that such an impact occurs every half a million years.

The energy released in the formation of the Chicxulub Crater on the Yucatán Peninsula, believed to have been the primary cause of the K-Pg extinction event 66 million years ago, is estimated to have been 3×10²³ J or 71.4 million megatons equivalent.

The total energy that the Carrington Event deposited into the Earth's magnetosphere in 1859 over a couple of days was 4×10²⁵ J or 9.5 billion megatons equivalent.

The total radiative energy output of the Sun is 3.83 ×10²⁶ J/s or 91 billion megatons equivalent per second.

Those examples are mere peanuts compared to cosmic events such as supernovae and black hole collisions.

Orders of magnitude (energy) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But the sundial if built would have been bigger than a tsar bomb.

Sundial (weapon) - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundi...name of,sources, resulting in mass fatalities.

 

[Zero Kelvin]

But the sundial if built would have been bigger than a tsar bomb.

Sundial (weapon) - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial_(weapon)#:~:text=Sundial was the codename of,sources, resulting in mass fatalities.

Twenty to two hundred times the yield, but still just as useless as a strategic weapon. A cobalt device would be a more effective deterrent if one wanted to create a Doomsday weapon. Strategically, dropping small asteroids as kinetic energy weapons - featured in The Expanse - would be simple, just as devestating and not result in radioactive fallout. That's why I mentioned the 1km example, which would be the equivalent of 1,100 Tsar Bombas or 5.5 ten-gigaton Sundial devices.

Cobalt bomb - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[XCV330]

also the problem of how such a weapon would have been delivered. There's no icbm that can launch 30tons, so one would have to design one or repurpose a medium-heavy lift launch vehicle into one. I don't think a B-52 could have carried sundial, but I might be wrong. In any case, it would have been a suicide flight for the crew and any fighter craft flown to protect it or clear the zone.

It's just a stupid concept all around. Using a weapon that will probably leave you almost as much as your enemy and cost an incredible amount of resources (and which cannot be tested prior to use) makes no sense.

 

[publiusr]

It may have use as asteroid deflection.

Gliese 710 is set to come as close as 10,000 to 15,000 AU to us in a million years time or so---and we don't know what it is dragging with it.

Still plenty of time to build this--the Doomsday Orion:

Orion – The Unwanted Blog

That might deflect even larger spacebergs if there is enough lead time.

Here is hoping Stoke is around long enough to build Super Nexus.

 

[Zero Kelvin]

Yes, passing by the Sun at 0.16 light years or 10,520 AU in 1.29 million years time, Gliese 710 will have its own Oort cloud, if not planets, at that distance and pass through the Sun's Oort cloud, so there will likely be plenty of comets headed into the inner Solar System.

Not something that any of us need worry about. If quantum immortality is real, at least one conscious state should survive to branch. If instead we're all mortal in one universe or a multiverse, we won't be around in any case.

 

[XCV330]

I'll leave it to whoever comes along and cares at that point. At best they'll say "excellent.. more mass for the dyson swarm!

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

I'll leave it to whoever comes along and cares at that point. At best they'll say "excellent.. more mass for the dyson swarm!

Or orbital megastructure

 

[Zero Kelvin]

There was a factory game on Steam that I tried which involved turning a solar system into a Dyson sphere by building robot factories that could build copies of themselves or the robot factories to create the robots needed for the necessary mining processing and construction tasks. It was an excruciatingly boring game (for me). The end result would seem to serve little purpose as a physical habitat compared to a Bishop Ring or Banks Orbital. It might be more likely that a Type II Kardashev civilisation* would choose to upload consciousness into a virtual environment running on computronium within a matrioshka brain surrounding the star.

* According to the Sagan definition, a Type I Kardashev civilisation uses more than 10¹⁶ joules of energy per second (2.38 megatons equivalent), Type II uses more than 10²⁶ joules per second (ten billion times more than type I), and Type III would use more than 10³⁶ joules per second (ten billion times more than type II). World electricity generation in 2024 was estimated at 1.125×10²⁰ joules per second or about 26,794 megatons equivalent per second. Recall that the radiative energy output of the Sun is 3.83 ×10²⁶ joules per second. We're between five and six orders of magnitude away from being a Type II civilisation.

According to Kardashev back in the early 1960s, it might take only 3,200 years to achieve Type II status. My estimate is that, at 1.4% growth per year, energy production could double every 50 years, in which case, it might actually take less than a thousand years. My analysis would be that type III status would require well more than 100,000 years if FTL is impossible. Kardashev estimated 5,800 years based on extrapolation the energy production rate. Even given the higher estimate, the Fermi Paradox arises again as there is no definitive sign of the activity of either Type II or Type III alien civilisations.