How much force to move the Earth?

[Crewman47]

Earlier I saw a billboard of the Earth with one those cartoon faces on it and a cloud of green gas coming out it's rear end which it made it look like the earth was being propelled forward (one of those pollution awareness billboards) and I wondering as we've seen that the moon can be moved by a massive nuclear explosion on one side (Space 1999 - although I know it's not be taken as scientifically acurate), could a similar massive force knock the Earth out of it's orbit and cause the planet to drift though space? I realise that any nuclear blast larger than the one in Space 1999 would probably destroy the Earth but is there anything that could do it?

Any ideas?

 

[Neopeius]

Earlier I saw a billboard of the Earth with one those cartoon faces on it and a cloud of green gas coming out it's rear end which it made it look like the earth was being propelled forward (one of those pollution awareness billboards) and I wondering as we've seen that the moon can be moved by a massive nuclear explosion on one side (Space 1999 - although I know it's not be taken as scientifically acurate), could a similar massive force knock the Earth out of it's orbit and cause the planet to drift though space? I realise that any nuclear blast larger than the one in Space 1999 would probably destroy the Earth but is there anything that could do it?

Any ideas?

Any single explosion capable of throwing the Earth out of orbit would be sufficient to destroy it. You could use a lower thrust for longer--perhaps by flinging pieces of the Earth at relativistic speeds although that won't be healthy for the vicinity and perhaps for the entire Earth

The best way to move the Earth is to use another planet. This is how Niven does it in "A World out of Time" and how Leiber did it in "A Pail of Air." As long as the planet doesn't get close enough to cause horrible tides, Earth won't even know what's happening--until it's too late.

 

[Jadzia]

In order to move off into space, the earth would have to pay off the debt of gravitational potential energy it has to the sun, which is enormous.

This GPE is estimated to be 2.485 × 10^32 Joules.

The output from nuclear fission weapons is typically 70 x 10^12 Joules / kg of Uranium.

So doing the division, you would need a warhead with 3.55 million billion tonnes of uranium... which would be a sphere of uranium around 60 kilometres diameter!

Not likely to be much left of the Earth.

For comparison, the sun outputs 386 x 10^24 Joules every second, so with a big enough magnifying glass, you wouldn't need the uranium.

 

[CorporalClegg]

A fulcrum and a leaver?

 

[Meredith]

A fulcrum and a leaver?

There are already plans formulated for using an asteroid that uses ion engines for propulsion that would take a long complicated path through the solar system, stealing kinetic energy from planets like Jupiter and Saturn and dumping the energy bit by bit into the earth's gravity field. You then swing the asteroid back out to Jupiter to steal more energy from it and repeat the process.

Slowly over a couple million years you could move the earth from it's current orbit out to the orbit of Mars.

And that is with one medium sized asteroid, with hundreds or thousands of them you could accelerate the process.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1154784.stm

This could even be the key to eeeking out another billion years of life out of the planet before the sun gets too hot.

 

[Brent]

A TARDIS of course!

 

[yellowdingo]

Any single explosion capable of throwing the Earth out of orbit would be sufficient to destroy it. You could use a lower thrust for longer--perhaps by flinging pieces of the Earth at relativistic speeds although that won't be healthy for the vicinity and perhaps for the entire Earth.

Alternatively (considering Gravity is attraction between Strings of a Common -for sake of a direction- clockwise - twist) you could twist all the strings of the planet earth "counterclockwise" and we would be repelled outward...

 

[yellowdingo]

A fulcrum and a leaver?

There are already plans formulated for using an asteroid that uses ion engines for propulsion that would take a long complicated path through the solar system, stealing kinetic energy from planets like Jupiter and Saturn and dumping the energy bit by bit into the earth's gravity field. You then swing the asteroid back out to Jupiter to steal more energy from it and repeat the process.

Slowly over a couple million years you could move the earth from it's current orbit out to the orbit of Mars.

And that is with one medium sized asteroid, with hundreds or thousands of them you could accelerate the process.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1154784.stm

This could even be the key to eeeking out another billion years of life out of the planet before the sun gets too hot.

Its probably a good idea that they went with the Hollowed out Asteroid...O'Neill Cylinder is definatly out.

 

[Icemizer]

Strings??? Bwahahahaha. I cant wait till this theory falls out of favor. Silly humans nothing is truely connected to anything. Interact yes, connected no.

 

[Starbreaker]

Just one turtle... duh.

 

[Lindley]

One Newton.

With the right frame of reference, that is.