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What, no planet kablooey?

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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by cthia   » Mon Jan 04, 2016 3:49 pm

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Daryl wrote:Planets were destroyed to create Ringworld, then the star and ring accelerated to fractional C to escape the core explosion.
Same for Dyson Sphere stories. There was another involving a steerable neutron star, but I can't remember the title. Venging had aliens preempting rivals by using antimatter needles to shatter the Earth's core.

Can anyone remember the story of which Daryl speaks regarding the steerable neutron star?

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by cthia   » Mon Jan 04, 2016 4:01 pm

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Daryl wrote:RFC in the Starfire series used scorched Earth tactics to wipe out the arachnids (The Shiva Option). Ender destroyed worlds in Ender's Game.

Dr Who destroyed the Daelect world, and may or may not have destroyed Galifrey (depending on timelines).

While the Lensman series has been mentioned world destruction was a common ploy.

I admit to stumbling upon Ender's Game by accident. It is only found in the Young Adult/Teenage section in most libraries. I ran into a friend of mine who had her young son and daughter there to listen to a live reading. Her young daughter had Ender's Game in her hand after checking it out. She recommended it to me after having read it a few times herself. (Her mother was like "You're going to check that out... again?") I forgot there was planet killing in it -- be it somewhat downplayed as I now remember it.

****** *

We should also note the Probe in Star Trek: The Voyage Home.

The crew had to go back in time to retrieve a pair of Humpback whales to answer the call of the Probe in whale song. It was an impressive scene.

It was to be five miles long and a mile and a half wide. ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) did a wonderful job on it. Pure unadulterated raw power. Each of the countless times I've seen that episode, I consider the long voyage of it. It was never depicted as traveling at any warp like speeds. It gave the impression that it took a direct line of travel to the Sol system -- completely oblivious to infringing upon any other species' territorial "waters," and gave the impression that any enemies encountered on its way didn't really matter.

ILM really did a bang up job on it. The Probe deployed what appeared to be a small moon when it activated. And the matter-of-fact consequences to befall Earth, had a whale not answered, would have been total destruction -- just by what was happening on the planet by incidental circumstance.

That episode stoked my imagination in more ways than one.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Whale_Probe

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Mon Jan 04, 2016 10:05 pm

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cthia wrote:Now that's a new implementation of pincering between two forces. I have got to read this series. New application of the Kiss principle too. Bend over and kiss it goodbye.


The basic forces at work were that planets can mount better weapons and shields than anything mobile can hope to. Thus no fleet can hope to take a strongly held planet by normal weapons.

They had used a negasphere (a planetary mass of negative matter--while it annihlated normal matter it did so with lethal radiation but no boom) against another planet and they figured any weapon they used would soon be copied and defenses built so they only used such things once.

A free object has a mass of zero and reacts accordingly--smack it and it just drifts away. You can only harm such an object by holding it in place with tractor beams first. Smacking it with a planet would have come down to pitting the power of the tractor beams against the power of the impacting planet--useless. Hence squash it--now it's the power of the planet vs the power of the other planet. It doesn't really matter if you take down the defenses, Jarvenon ended up buried in the mass of the impacting planets.

I can't imagine looking up into the sky and seeing it fill with ominously cloudy planet growing ever so larger. What are you going to hide under? I'm sure people still run for their fallout shelters.


I doubt Jarvenon bothered with fallout shelters. And they wouldn't have had much time--the planets would have been positioned while free, the actual flight time inert was very short.
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by jtg452   » Mon Jan 04, 2016 11:36 pm

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Eleven pages and nobody's mentioned the most famous world destroyer of them all. :lol:

Marvin the Martian and his "Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator" (sometimes pronounced "Illudium Pu-36" or "Uranium Pu-36").
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by jchilds   » Tue Jan 05, 2016 3:25 am

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jtg452 wrote:Eleven pages and nobody's mentioned the most famous world destroyer of them all. :lol:

Marvin the Martian and his "Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator" (sometimes pronounced "Illudium Pu-36" or "Uranium Pu-36").


I did too! (page 6) :P
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by cthia   » Tue Jan 05, 2016 7:16 am

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phillies wrote:In one of the later EE Smith Skylark novels, the heroes blow up an enemy *galaxy*. Furthermore, the weapon acts simultaneously against more-or-less every star in the galaxy, converting the galaxy to a quasar.

In a later Lensman novel the heroes blow up an enemy solar system and everything withina number of light years of it by inserting into the solar system a planet. From another universe. Travelling faster than light on arrival.

1950s Superboy, being not a wimp, diverted a half-dozen stars from their courses, this after being injured by red sun radiation.

This sounds like a really interesting read as well. A Romanian friend wants it included in the order. He says that it should be an interesting read just reading about the formation of a quasar.

My brother is a devout Superman comics collector. He has a lot of unopened comics from the 50s. I wonder...

As a teenager, his room looked like a comic book store at one point.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by cthia   » Tue Jan 05, 2016 7:37 am

cthia
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phillies wrote:If you do not mind war games: In several of the Taurus games intergalactic warfare games, the battlecruisers could take out an enemy solar system, it would appear, by *ramming*.

After all, they were heavily armoured throughout.

And

four light years long.

This should be the ship called Frances. An entire solar system can be destroyed by a simple mistake -- the Navigator screwing up a decimal point entered into the comp. This would eclipse even Shannon's "Oops."

"Did I just do that?"

"You should have turned right! You idiot!"



****** *


The same results are achieved by the seeding of a solar system with an artificially created Black Hole -- another interesting weapon mentioned -- conceived as planet/system destroyers. But I never can figure out whether the Black Hole would be reversed after mission accomplished or would be left to wreak havoc.



****** *


On a non-fiction note, I wonder what unforeseen effects on a neighboring solar system would be set in motion from the total annihilation of it's neighbor -- and on and on in a domino effect of solar systems.

Should give a modeler something to play with for certain.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by niethil   » Tue Jan 05, 2016 11:51 am

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What about the Core Project built by the F'sherl-Ganni in Schlock Mercenary, that destroyed the Milky Way in the Averted Future ? Except it never actually happened.
-------------
'Oh, oh' he said in English. Evidently, he had completely mastered that language.
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by jtg452   » Tue Jan 05, 2016 12:15 pm

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jchilds wrote:
jtg452 wrote:Eleven pages and nobody's mentioned the most famous world destroyer of them all. :lol:

Marvin the Martian and his "Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator" (sometimes pronounced "Illudium Pu-36" or "Uranium Pu-36").


I did too! (page 6) :P

You sure did, my mistake. I missed it. :oops:
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by cthia   » Tue Jan 05, 2016 12:42 pm

cthia
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jchilds wrote:
jtg452 wrote:Eleven pages and nobody's mentioned the most famous world destroyer of them all. :lol:

Marvin the Martian and his "Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator" (sometimes pronounced "Illudium Pu-36" or "Uranium Pu-36").


I did too! (page 6) :P


jtg452 wrote:You sure did, my mistake. I missed it. :oops:

I didn't miss your post either. And I enjoyed a blast of a laugh from the past.

For all who didn't get a ticket to the old screenings...
https://youtu.be/Z40AsPaktzw?list=RDQuUJfYcn3V4

and I properly introduce you to Marvin...
https://youtu.be/-R0iBm0Hzq0?list=RDQuUJfYcn3V4

Thanks jtg452 for the memory.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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