Thanks so much for watching! If you would like to see my reaction to Kurzgesagt’s what if we nuke a city video, please check out: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KpFFcLFUtM4.htmlsi=jIks0tHAq-3-NZAM
To answer your question for alternatives: self-replicating and propagating AI seeds or other grey goo tech, will always beat any other. Simply because of how rather silent/passive such seeds are (near-impossible to identify all of them, even more to actually intercept them all). And the decentralization makes all the weapons mentioned utterly impotent for actually winning a war (on account of unknown widespread numerous targets) - all you can do is get rid of the humans that created the seeds, likely triggering a doomsday-/deadmansswitch-protocol turning your civ into an eternal target of the seeds/weapons as they continue to spread, replicate, and eventually leverage entirety of universe to wipe you out. Such a seed/weapon wouldn't even need particularly good tech to eventually win such a war, as the moment it converted most of the mass in the galaxy to propelled kinetic weaponry, they could just congregate it towards the targets and saturate bomb your civ (maybe even so much mass that the sheer gravity is enough to do the job). ps: you asked what the reason for the war was. They mentioned it at the start: a hyperlane bypass. Which is also why that last option is the very worst, since colonizing just means you then have to annihilate your own colonies as now _they_ are in the way.
Ok... so my question is: why don't they build their hyperspace highway as far as here, destroy us, then finish the hwy? Not like the needed to get permits or anything...
Accelerate asteroids to a high rate of speed and shoot them at your target this would appear as a natural event keeping yourself hidden yet destroying the enemy.
Honestly the Laser is the coolest one but if we were talking about the smartest option, I would definitely say the 3rd option. Cause it leaves the planet intact and in perfect condition for colonization
it definitely doesn't, they are just completely wrong on the actual effects on those electrons. At those energies, they won't just ionize some DNA, any interaction with another anything will trigger a cascade reaction similar to what you get inside a collider. Instead of an invisible, delayed death, it would light up the atmosphere like infinitesimal, diffuse fireworks covering the whole world and do a shitload of damage other than DNA ionization, like triggering nuclear reaction everywhere by giving nuclei enough energy to create some exotic and very unstable crap.
The obvious solution is to convert a WWII Japanese battleship into an interstellar spacecraft, with a giant laser cannon, powered by alien technology, and send it on a special mission across the galaxy… Just a thought
The most promising options are either wormholes or Alcubierre drives. But both have their problems. One requires a form of matter that we don't even know if it exists or not. The other creates very strange and potentially dangerous temporal effects that the ship, crew and potentially even universe at large need to be protected from.... somehow.
@@killman369547 Yeah, and from what I gathered, most need so much energy that we have no idea how you could power them even if they were somehow possible.
@@killman369547 the biggest issue would be energy consumption. Alcubierre drive would require all the energy from a T2 civilization for one! ship. It also would be extremely hazardous to use, because it creates a ridiculous gravitational wave when in use.(White-hole and black hole mergers in essence) Wormholes are essentially tears in space-time and would require insane power to be kept wide enough for use as a travel method (based on current understanding). Only truly feasible travel methods are sub-light. And best options are anti-matter drives, orion drive or figuring out cryogenics and using generational ships. FTL is cool sci-fi.. but i don't see that ever happening.
@@killman369547 The Alcubierre Drive also requires Exotic Matter, as you need a massive object n front to create positive curvature, and an anti-massive object behind to create negative curvature. Basically, without imaginary mass, causality always wins.
The time delay is pretty interesting, in the setting of the TTRPG Lancer, Union (under the second committee) launched a salvo of projectiles at a significant fraction of C at the homeworld of the Aunic people (who are also humans). Seccomm has been overthrown by the third committee (thirdcomm), and the Aun had their own revolution too, and the projectiles are still in transit. It brings up a very compelling point about interstellar warfare: by the time you hit, it’s possible that neither of the governments involved will still exist.
This is why I think the best option for interstellar war is a near C missile armed with a somewhat intelligent AI. If the AI is about to hit the target but analyzes radio signals and decides the enemy no longer poses a threat, it can self destruct before killing anyone.
The funniest part of those projectiles is that paracausal technology exists by the time most campaigns happen. In short, projectiles that hit before being fired can (and thus do) come into existence while the sublight projectiles were flying.
@@saucevc8353 However, building self destruct into your missiles is both dangerous from operational security and also possibly impossible. Other than the relativistic missles, the other 2 methods were energy beams, so you can't build anything into that. AS for the missiles, it was 99% just fuel and thruster mechanism, and 1% just a bullet. In order to make it self destruct without causing harm, you would need to reverse thrust(which means building an almost replica on the other side, and even that probably would ruin the earth if fired close enough from its backwash) or a way to instant annhilate all matter there, which would be the equivalent of them blowing a nuke. So unless done outside of the solar system, it would be hard(almost impossible) to even stop the relativistic missles
@@normalchannel2185 There is an alternative, not a self destruct or a brake but a change in direction. At those distances even a minuscule change in direction can turn a world ending hit into a total miss. All the AI has to do is move 1 degree in any direction.
8:40 To put some (probably very loose) numbers to this: hd40307 has a luminosity about 1/5th that of the sun, and they are taking 1% of its power, so 1/500th of the sun's total 3.86e26 watts. Using this 1/500 factor, and E=mc^2 we get that they could produce ~8600 tonnes of antimatter per *second.* In 2016, humanity apparently dug up 7.6bil tonnes of coal. That's around 235 tonnes per second. When Kurzgesagt says they have enough power to 'mass' produce antimatter, that is a 'MASS!' with a capital exclamation mark.
You were talking about needing advanced materials to deal with encounters with interstellar space dust at relativistic speeds. The Whipple shield they mention is a clever way around that using layers of thin material placed significantly in front of your vessel so that the relativistic particles (relative to you) are spread out and deflected instead of striking your ship directly. It's a bit like deflecting an asteroid far away with less energy so that the effect is magnified.
hmm wont it deflect it though? slight forse slighly in the other diarection and even if soemthing like this affects it a little bit, its croaked will miss
The faster the relative velocity of interaction, the thinner the beam of collision produced particles. It's possible that - drawing conclusions based on modern armored vehicle active protection systems - that in order to reflect a relativistic jet originated from a collision with a particle with a mass exceeding something like a billion+ atoms (such as a dust particle floating in interstellar space) with a velocity mentioned, would require an antimatter actualized "active protection system" -- Since the only thing that can disperse a jet of relativistic particles in the timescales relevant, would be an opposite directional beam of relativistic particles.. Simply speaking; the relativistic kill missile is stationary in its own reference frame after the accelerating forces have deceased, and just like a reactive armor of a tank being hit with an explosively accelerated copper beam of an RPG shot, the narrow angled jet of fundamental particles created from a collision might be possible to expand to a sufficiently wide area of collision to handle only via 'an antimatter powered reactive armor'. Serious shiat:A
@@miikkasalminoja1076 Kinetic energy is ½ * m * v². The v is very close to c. And the antimatter energy release is m * c² so we don't need antimatter for the shield. The containment for the antimatter in the shield would be more than 8x the mass of the antimatter, so it's giving a lot more deflection energy than the antimatter itself would. And you also have the problem of antimatter containment loss from collision, so it's best not to use antimatter. I would add, antimatter only annihilates its counterpart. Storing antihydrogen may sound good for, say, interstellar hydrogen, but while it normally would be attracted to the polar charge of the hydrogen and antihydrogen orbital imbalance, it doesn't have time at this velocity for charge attraction so very little of the interaction is going to be antimatter-matter annihilation.
Really, Tyler is so underrated it is scary. Every single time, he catches on to things and subtle references, both new and old, but they do say that nuclear scientists are the nerdiest ones out there. Even new and old nerdisms he catches onto, Pokemon for one of them, but also Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy... Yeah, your videos are great, and that is why you keep racking up the subscriber count.
One you might intesting if you liked the laser idea is by Isaac Arthur and the Stelaser. It's come up in a number of his videos but I believe it's in the space ship propulsion and beam powered space craft videos, as well as some of the ones in his outward bound series. It's a giant laser were the mirrors are miles wide and the active lasing medium is the corona of a star.
one of these days isaac arthur will be remembered as one of the most brilliant minds of the 21st century for his inventive work designing solutions to exotic problems we haven’t encountered yet but one day will need answers for his channel is a play-by-play encyclopedia to navigating our future that will guide us for generations
6:06 - its true that its hard to aim but you have literally "infinite ammo" and can shoot over a large area for a long time and rotate your laser on a grand-sacle. Maybe 1 Month of moving the mirrors arround. You will definetly make a hit.
Nah, even one month of continuous firing might not hit earth if you don't aim it and time it correctly. You need to get the Smorpian sun and earth in a straight line without any planets in between, either from their solar system or ours. So the time window of a successful firing is probably very small, and most importantly it needs to be timed correctly. I.e. it needs to be the right time of the year for us and them. It might even never be possible depending on the orientation of their solar system with respect to ours or it might even be always be possible (if the two orbital planes are not in parallel with each other, but at an angle), etc. You get the point. Accurate timing matters, you can't just brute force this.
@@InTimeTravelleralso, you don’t just need to hit earth, but ideally the entire solar system, because who knows if they have colonised and terraformed some of their inner system planets, or outer-system moons
You wouldn't even have to hit the earth. The lazer beam could just be fired through a part of the Earth's orbit, then the earth would just move into the beam
@@hircenedaelenreally the biggest downside here is literally the usage of the gun... Because it's retrofitting of a power generation system, while the gun is firing that also means it's output is going to get cut down by slightly more than half (the amount of lasers that actually have a firing solution on any given target) so they will lose a lot of the benefits of their weapon while under use. However also if they are not sure if they can hit the planet, or if within those 40 odd years the species becomes multiplanetary (and therefore would evade extinction) it's possible to aim the weapon at the sun instead. It will have a far more predictable orbit, is a far larger target, and just like with a star compressor you can force a sun into an unstable state. Essentially by dumping extra energy into the star you force it to enter a violent state of coronal mass ejections and erratic energy output, and both would be just as threatening for the long term habitation of any planet.
Been watching since your first few videos! Amazing stuff, truly you are a beacon of excitement when it comes to anything science and i see a part of myself in your curiosity. Keep it up!
You're the perfect combination of knowledgeable/serious reactions while still completely going along with & appreciating the humor and goofiness of the video.
@6:10 I'm absolutely certain you considered this, but the alien planet would have to aim for 84 years into the future right? Their measurements (if light based) would be operating off of light that left earth 42 years ago, plus the 42 year travel time.
Orbital dynamics are something humans mastered the basics of centuries ago. And a species that can build a Dyson Swarm can also use the swarm to get pretty accurate measurements and calculate the future location of the Earth. Then as another commenter said, just keep firing for an extended period of time to account for any minor errors in calculation you may have had.
this is a common misconception. They're not seeing light from THEIR star bouncing off Earth. They're seeing light from OUR star. The travel time of the light they're observing is only 42 years because it starts on "our" side. That's why the AIMING would be for 42 years in the future, but the visible results of the weapon would take 84+ years to make it back. (42+ to send the attack and 42 for light to make it back)
@@Fyrefrye No he is right. They would have to calculate 84 years in the future. While they need to lead the shot 42 years in the future of Earths current position they are not seeing Earth at its current position. The light they are receiving from Earth is also 42 years old thus they are seeing Earth 42 years in the past. So they need to calculate 42 years ahead of were they see Earth to know where Earth actually is in that present moment, then another 42 years ahead to know where Earth will be when the laser hits, thus 84 years.
@@conmin25 The answer is 42. They will point the laser 42 years in advance form the instant THEY see our planet. It doesn't matter to them if that light is 42 years old. 84 years is from out perspective, not theirs. If WE were the ones firing on ourselves (Why we would do that?), we would had to calculate 84 in advance and then hit the button: 42 years for the signal to get to them, the laser will fire, and 42 years later it will hit us.
@@framegrace1 Incorrect, one needs to calculate involving 84 year old information. Imagine this scenario - there are three houses in a row, and a person parks their car in front of house one, then house two, then house three, with one minute in between. So, at zero time they are at house one, one minute later at house two and a further minute later at house three. A person a light minute away sees the car at house one, at the time it is actually at house two. So, if they sent a signal back when they saw the car, by the time it reaches the houses, the car will be at house three. Also, the time is even longer, for they have to do preliminary observation of the Solar system for decades prior to the project to determine Earth's orbit and also the sun's motion through space.
As a more advanced civilization, I'd be playing the long game. I'd have engineered a natural disaster to befall any competing civilization just before it became technologically capable enough to threaten the galactic status quo. Which coincidentally is a possible solution to the Fermi paradox.
The thing is, intersteller war at any distance more than like 10 light years is uselss. So like other than 2-3 systems, nobody else can actually feasibly fight, simply because of information lag, or the fact that their intel would be 20 years(or 84 years in the above scenario) late. Imagine trying to fight germany as UK in 2024, but the only information you have of them is 2004's info. Or in the above scenario, 1940s Basic info such as their tech level. Like you would not know they had freaking instant communications(the internet) So any interstellar war would be operating off of that old info. Which means all their predictions such as where the planet would be when the missiles arrive can also be wrong, since the civilization could have done something(even unintentionally) that would render the predictions wrong. Like imagine if we decided that the solution to our waste crisis is compacting it all and launching it in orbit around the sun, making trash balls the mass of planets, which would mean that the gravity field would get affected. How much would we have changed till 2108? Or if we needed more hydrogen and decided to siphon off Jupiter reducing its mass by a ton. Or if we made a dyson sphere and just shifted the entire solar system's orbit itself. and if we did NOT do any of these changes, then we are a civilisation that doesn't even need fighting with, or getting destroyed, the same way nobody needs to destroy those isolated tribes on earth(like the north sentinelese tribes) And this is still at VERY close galactic distances. If we take 100 light years, the info lag becoms 200 years
They pretty quickly gloss over the idea of "you don't want other civilizations to know where you are," but the trilogy Three Body Problem covers it way more in-depth, and is a great sci-fi series. It's also coming to Netflix (hopefully) in 2024.
I now want to know the timeline process of first contact with a friendly alien civilization that believe they would benefit from having us as allies. From the first signal, to saying hello back and forth and learning each other's languages, to finally meeting in person.
4:28 The mirror is only "a million km wide" if you can synchronize the the lasers as an interferometer and optical interferometers are currently impossible even on a benchtop. You'd need to be able to align all your moving satellites to nm scale precision in real time.
They can build a dyson swarm so they can probably do that too, and they may well be a lot smarter than humans. Neil deGrasse Tyson has talked about that idea, that maybe this stuff is taking so long to figure out because maybe humans are actually not smart enough.
same as with the Death Star though, the star laser also would make their star move a bit I think. It's basically a super amped solar sail thingy in reverse, not sure how fast it would move their star though...
I want to hear more about the hyperspace bypass they're building. Why are they using sublight weapons if they can build one of those? Also no comments on the Alf cameo?
This is an idea that might happen. We could possibly make an Alcubierre drive and shoot it to the destination. Even though this seems quite crazy, there has been some recent developments on the theory. Erik Lentz, a theoretical physicist, published a new theory which eliminated the need for negative mass. However, there are still 2 major issues. The positive mass requirement is still quite high, and getting it to FTL speeds is also another issue. Even though I don’t have any insight on how to get it to FTL speeds, one could possibly starlift the sun to get the positive mass required to make an Alcubierre drive. Then the next step would to accelerate it as fast as possible. Maybe we could use lasers around the sun and a solarsail to push it close to lightspeed. Getting the Alcubierre drive faster than light is an issue which I don’t have a solution for, but building solitons in spacetime using positive mass provided through starlifting is an option for a type 2 civilisation.
I think the amount of protons they are hitting in deep space at that speed will melt their RKM even in the local bubble even with that whipple shield even if the whipple shield is being regeneratively cooled. Also this is like a total war between Australia and North Sentinel Island. Why and when would that ever happen? All of these probably violate the galactic code.
Have you ever considered doing live streams? Since you're mostly reacting to videos, it'd be interesting if people could interact hangout and ask you questions.
Interesting note about missiles: Most modern intercontinental ballistic missiles are already made to travel outside the atmosphere on a suborbital trajectory, using the exact same rocket engines we have on civilian spacecraft. Just strap a booster stage on them and they'll go to Mars no problem. ...Or we could.. Use them to transport *thousands of tonnes* of something that isn't bombs to Mars or Europa or something.. Too bad missile people are busy with war stuff nowadays
Moon is nice. Steep temperature gradient in the poles = available energy (some H2O doesn't do harm) = use the elements available as thou wish. No atmo. Low g. EM-mass drivers. Build like there were no bounds to Earth
@@miikkasalminoja1076 The missiles probably wouldn't even need a booster stage for that, moon isn't very far away on a cosmic scale! Like half of them can probably already reach it. We just aren't doing it. :(
@@mortenrl1946 might be that I'm not aware of all the capabilities of ICBMs, but what I do know is that the hardest part to actually reaching an orbit is not about the height required to be achieved; it's the tangential velocity required to travel so fast sideways, that while staying in a free-wall towards the Earth, the horizon of earth's crust is curved below the orbiting object, such that the distance from the surface such nicely corresponds to that, neglecting the actual approach closer to the surface. And while above the atmosphere, there's not much anything creating friction to diminish that velocity to degenerate the orbit. Ballistic missiles do easily reach space (climbing above the official one hundred kilometes altitude), but they lack the sufficient velocity to stay there. Fuel runs out, not going fast enough, and the payload of multiple physics packages is handly clustered over the other continent being targeted. Considering LEO, the Low Earth Orbit, where majority of non-geostationary or geosynchronous (such as GPS satellites) orbit, the required tangential, or earth curvature aligning velocity is something in the order of 23 machs, or ~7,5 km/s. Once the LEO is reached, it's basically just as easy to transit into a Hohmann transfer orbit towards the Moon, as it is to the Mars - or Jupiter. Or the Alpha Centauri system. But because of relative differences in stable orbital velocities around the Sun, the less than 10% of fuel remaining once accelerated into a speed of almost eight kilometers per second, the 'delta-v budget', - the capability to change velocity relative to the one one remaining after propulsion driven accelerative forces have deceased, is very minimal compared to what it was during the lift -off, some creative solutions are required to use that remaining ∆-V to accelerate/decelerate to be captured in the orbit around the target destination, instead of just doing a fly-by following parabolic escape trajectory. That's where the Moon becomes a true stepping stone to Anywhere. Being able to "throw" a refuelling canister from there to the LEO, changes Everything. The whole solar system suddenly becomes an order of magnitude easier to colonize, mine, study, or play with..
@@miikkasalminoja1076 The delivery system is exactly the same as space rockets - The relevant factor is the payload. Nuclear warheads weigh a lot. Reducing the payload weight increases delta-V by orders of magnitude. They can get pretty far out there.
@@mortenrl1946 They're not that heavy; the "Tsar" -type, multiple tens of Mt:s blast energy releasing weapons are not considered "practical" (even in the rather agitated circumstances leading to use these weapons in a war..), since a singular, powerful explosion, such as produced by the one mentioned & tested by Soviets, instantaneously punctures a hole in the atmosphere, leading up to 1/3 of the released energy to be radiated into space, without increasing the blast yield. They were also a product of an era, when accurate missiles were yet not a thing, so you'd just increase the yield to negate the unimpressive large average radii of error. And the high blast in a singular point dissipates its energy according to the inverse square law - hence, a much more wide destructive area is gained through the use of multiple, smaller yield weapons, dispersed in appropriate distances from each others. This results a more flat, yet wider area coverage with decreased amount of nuclear fuel.. For example, the US produced W87 -package, with a punch of approximately 300-400 kt:s, weighs some 200 kg a piece. That - for what I've gathered - includes the reentry shielding, gliding abilities, etc. "Clustering" an area with these - carried by 10 or so by a single missile - creates a self sustaining weather phenomenon known as a "nuclear fire storm", a lot more insanely MAD version of the firestorm bomber raids that were done during WWII against Japan, and perhaps more widely recognized - against the German occupied city of Dresden.
Suggestion: Try reacting some scps that involve radiation such as 001(The prototype) or 059. I think you'd find them pretty intresting. Even the ones that don't relate to radiation could be cool. honestly just seein you react to them would be cool.
the interstellar laser doesnt need to rotisserie a planet, it just needs to make the core of a planet, not a core of a planet, so making it a shotgun spread might work since the aftermath can clean up survivors
Several errors in the relativistic missile thing. You have to calculated collisions using cross actions and relativistic particle interactions. Each missile is basically a giant neutron. It will pass through the atmosphere untouched in a tiny fraction of a second. The time passed for the missile is practically zero. Then the collision with the matter of the Earth's crust will be very strange. There are probably good analysis on TY somewhere. The same thing keeps hitting dust particles and such from doing any significant damage. Maybe a bit of space debris will quantum tunnel right past it.
The laser could be a good idea considering there’s no warning. However, if the one you attack also has a Dyson sphere, the moment you get attacked, you can send a laser beam of your own. So mutually assured destruction.
Nuclear weapons would kinda have a problem in that they are greatly improved by Tritium, but Tritium is a perishable component. You'd need to design nukes that can last long, long periods in deep space.
I think the laser would be cheaper - granted, it would consume all the energy of the Dyson swarm (i.e. 1% of the star output) for firing, but you would need to fire it for a few hours tops. You would have to wait 80 years to confirm the hit, sure. But you could spend the 80 years harnessing the Dyson swarm for other stuff (like producing antimatter for the missiles 😉).
It is certain, that a piece of matter with a high level of complexity can produce a copy of itself. Cells do that. We, as a technological species, cannot - yet. 1) Do the obvious thing as a life form, and expand outwards from your home planet by building a Dyson Swarm. 2) Build copious amounts of space ships, with an unfolding origami light sail, accelerating to relativistic velocities by the power of concentrated laser beam powered by The Star of your system. 3) If not already done, hack the mechanisms of DNA/RNA in cells, giving them ability to reproduce themselves. 4) Program every starship seed blown by the stellar wind to make two copies of itself, while remaining in the destination star system itself, harvesting the nearly unlimited energy available to self-sustainability. Use dozens of copies of the code guiding the self-replication, to avoid harmful mutations during the long lasting hops between star systems. Our genes use just two strands. Still thriving, and needing to mutate for survival. 5) For every system achieved, two copies of your "star seed" go on --> do the math, and observe that the whole galaxy is hosted within a geological eye blink. Few million years or so, assuming less than 10% of light speed as an average between systems. 6) Leave a 'Berserk Lurker' in every star system, programmed to annihilate any lifeforms evolving past a certain threshold to avoid evolutionary competition. 7) Trust yourself to believe this hasn't happened yet. Because none of the life forms we are aware of, wouldn't want to use every tool in their disposal to stay alive.
Assuming future discoveries make it possible to take alcubierre like warp drive from paper to reality then another option is just to drop out of warp in the target system. It would release all the energy accumulated at the front of the warp bubble as a directed gamma ray burst. It would actually be a problem to overcome for practical use if it turns out possible. Bit speculative physicswise compared to the video examples. Given it hinges on if making the right exotic matter is actually possible. Anyway find it an amusing one because it makes one of very few real but flimsy hopes of ftl into a deathstar just by the mere act of arriving.
In my opinion, possibly the best way to avoid being detected when shooting a weapon is setting it up in another solar system. It would take longer as your supplies would first have to reach there, and you'd have to start from the ground up, but when it's fired it couldn't be traced back to you. Imagine some civilization starting a dyson sphere project from the ground up in nearby system to build a superweapon.
He may have missed it but the reason for the war is because the smorpians want to basically make an interstellar highway or whatever was the word they actually used
i have a better weapon concept, send a single stranglet (a strange particle that a civilisation with a dyson sphere might technically be able to create in a laboratory if they are created in neutron stars the way we think they do), the stranglet would convert the entire planet into strange matter and would require significantly less energy than any of the other options
17:13, also if the Earth becomes sterile, nothing will rot or decay. Things on land will desiccate, but things in the oceans won't. Life forms would be intact, mushy fossils, just floating, like something stored in an ocean sized jar for million of years until tidal forces, erosion, and tectonic shifts grind the larger things into pulp.
9:15, Some of the potassium in the human body is radioactive and decay at around 266,000 decays per minute. ~.001% decay via positron. So not a lot of energy release over all, but it can still mess something up if it hits the right thing.
In the book "The Killing Star" novel. Humans were bug bombed by relativistic missiles. The humans used negative energy bombs to cause the sun to go nova.
for those who dont know, from my knowledge i think that the thing that causes things to become "radioactive" is that radioactive material gets on it, radiation doesnt make stuff radioactive
Accelerate asteroids to a high rate of speed and shoot them at your target this would appear as a natural event keeping yourself hidden yet destroying the enemy.
A von Neuman machine attack would be slower, but effective. A probe quietly arrives, finds a nice heavy metal asteroid (or any asteroid/moon with the right nanotech) and sets up a factory. Then produces umpteen million death drones to take out the planet. For added fun, emp the target first then send in the drones. Heck, it would be possible to conquer the planet, if desired
14:20 i think its because of the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. 420 light years away would look like its a joke, and it would take a very long time to do anything. its probably just the writing.
There are advantages to a stellaser, or "star laser", which is pushing large vessels into speeds like 10 percent light speed. Obviously your would use less powerful, less intense beams than the planet killer, but the same amount of energy applied at a lower frequency overtime could accelerate massive colony ships to say proxima centaurii in about 40 years, maybe even more if additional platforms are built on asteroids or icy bodies around the edge of your system, if fusion becomes a thing and you have the tech to synchronize the technology. It is very expensive power wise, but its also only 1% of the star'a output at any given moment, so it's not going to be more than a blip for a Dyson swarm. Isaac Arthur actually breaks down a conceivable way that we could start to colonize the proxima abd alpha centurion system in his video Outward Bound: Alpha Centaurii if you want to check that out it's on youtube
Best way, I'd say is to send an automatic ship that can produce ecocide agents and then release it on Earth. Not just one scary thing, no-no, whole zoo. That would be the cheapest way possible, the downside is that it would still require really fast ship or to send it in advance, so it would reach its target before civillization reaches the point where they can defend themselfs against it.
Wouldn't the missile be the LEAST stealthy of all three? One travels at the speed of light and the other is pretty close. Both would give no warning at all until they impact Earth. The missile one would have a warning of a few days because the flash from launch would just briefly outpace the physical missiles themselves. They are all plenty stealth in terms of "You'll see it when its too late" but if you are going for a technical standpoint, it feels like the missile 'loses' in terns of stealth; but only because we are comparing them to the speed of light...
@@golden--hand The point isn't the target seeing the attack coming, since even the missiles would be too fast to react to. The idea is that two of them shine a gigantic beam through space that would be easily detectable to third parties.
@@nickandres7829 Ah I see. My bad I did misunderstand that. However, in that case wouldn't the electron beam win since produces no flash or light at all? The missiles have the bright flash on launch.
Maybe we dont see obvious life in the galaxy because interstellar life is a cycle of: see other civilization yeet sun laser, build your own sun laser, yeet at that civilization, younger civilization sees your sun laser, builds their own... etc
Of the weapons mebtioned here, they referenced the Nichol-Dyson Beam and Relativistic Kill Missile (RKM) with some embellishments. The last one is unknown to me and likely made up by their team. The RKM would be my pick and to some extent we can already make weaker versions of them today, Think Parker Solar Probe on a more massive scale.
If your light speed electrons get stopped by your credit card, you run into the issue of bremsstrahlung. It'll just fry you with high energy gammas at that point.
Biggest problem I see with those three solutions are how hard it will be to hit earth at that distance even with really good technology.. And if you have that much energy at disposal and such, you might as well target the sun and blow it up to make sure not only to destroy earth, but any and all planets/moons those humans might have colonized (especially after you launched your attack). Easier to hit, 100% lethal and take care of any potential survivors. (also very easy to know that you succeeded or not, stars tends to not be too discreet)
first we need to find how to use energy without no loss and how to change it to mechanic or other type of energy without loss . the second we need to find endless energy source in interstellar space . because there is a really hars condition in there . a lot of gamma rays , extremly energetic particles , star dust . we get bombarded with them because there is no sun magnetic field to save us
That would take hundrets of thousands of years, likely millions. I guess it would work if they were patient, but we surely wouldn't be once we found out.
Not sure why you're saying, that the laser would be the most expensive of the 3. The laser does not need to be "on" for 42 years - it needs to be "on" for just a bit over half a rotation of Earth - if they can build a dyson sphere capturing 1% of their star's light, pretty surely they can overcome not having input from that energy source for ~ 12 Earth hours. The problem I see with the laser, is the "a million km wide" lens, that would need to be able to sustain the "1% of their star's light" energy for said 12 Earth hours.
I believe that the easiest, cheapest, and most effective for cost is the mass driver. And, as far as we know, it may have been used against Earth before. We have no way of determining if asteroid and comet impacts are chance or intelligently directed towards a planet. Like a chance asteroid from a planet being destroy making its way from one star to another over billions of years, only to pass through the solar system harmlessly (Oumuamua).
Artificially constructed black hole deployed into the target's solar system. Or the temporal weapon from star trek voyager which erases species from the timeline
