Timeline for What would be the quickest way to sterilize a planet from several light-years away?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 15, 2022 at 20:37 | comment | added | Mindwin Remember Monica | Just a FYI, I didn't state a distance nor the Q demands one. You are reading too much into it, @ethanmaness. They could very well send a swarm to enemy's stars and then beam stuff inside the system. | |
| Jul 15, 2022 at 18:03 | comment | added | Ethan Maness | @BlackThorn My concern is the diffusion of the beam as a result of matter, like a laser pointer through fog. The fog is thin, but the distance is very far. You're right, the beam will carry any particles it hits with it, but matter necessarily travels slower than light and thus will constantly be blocking photons for the entire journey, deflecting them out of the beam. Making the beam thinner won't help as the reduction in surface area is counteracted by the increase in energy blocked per particle. The only affecting variable is the interplanetary dust density, which can't really be changed. | |
| Jul 15, 2022 at 17:01 | comment | added | BlackThorn | @Ethan is your concern obstruction by interstellar matter or is it the diffusion? If the former, it is literally not a problem. Any matter hit by a beam of this power will turn into a rocket until it exits the beam's path. If the latter, I think your concern is overblown. Modern astronomy mirrors are precise down to the 10s of nanometers. Add to that the ability to put a lens/mirror several light minutes or hours away from the source in order to refocus or lase the light and that will refine the beam's precision by orders of magnitude. | |
| Jul 15, 2022 at 14:31 | comment | added | Ethan Maness | @BlackThorn It's not about if you can make the beam, its about whats between you and the target. The beam must pass through our solar system's interplanetary dust, the Oort cloud, lightyears of interstellar space, another Oort cloud, and more interplanetary dust, before finally reaching the target. For example, if you are firing the beam at an Earth-sized planet from 100 ly away, even an average diffusion angle of 0.000000000001 degrees will reduce the beam's intensity by 99%. Every zero you remove from that number is another 99% loss, because inverse square law. Good luck frying anything. | |
| Jul 14, 2022 at 22:18 | comment | added | BlackThorn | @Ethan a K2 civilization could surely manage the details of focusing light sufficiently over a couple of light years. They can surely build lenses that can encapsulate their own star, by definition. Our star's diameter is about 1 million miles, but some get up to half a billion. Hand wave the lens diameter to about 1 billion miles. 1 light year is about 6 trillion miles. That means you need a focal accuracy of about 1/6000 per light year. Seems pretty doable. | |
| Jul 14, 2022 at 20:07 | comment | added | Ethan Maness | Microwaving a planet from many light years away is going to require a very precise beam. I doubt that a beam would be able to make it that far without diffusing too much to be effective. | |
| Jul 13, 2022 at 15:05 | history | answered | Mindwin Remember Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |