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Aliens could plausibly sterilise earth from light years away using an electron beam, according to a great Kurzgesagt episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t
by animatethrow 3y ago
Aliens could plausibly sterilise earth from light years away using an electron beam, according to a great Kurzgesagt episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tybKnGZRwcU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tybKnGZRwcU
An electron beam seems to be the stealthiest of the three extermination options, the other two being a star laser and antimatter "rods from God."
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>An electron beam seems to be the stealthiest of the three extermination options Or they could just false flag a nuke strike and watch us sterilize ourselves.
- gridspy 3y agoA lot of effort is currently put into tracking missile launches and predicting ballistic trajectories. The goal is to give some warning if a nuclear strike is launched. It would be obvious if a strike came from an extraterrestrial source, there would be no terrestrial launch detection. In addition, such a attack is unlikely to succeed. It would take a long time to arrive on earth and by the time the result of the attack was known there could be angry Earthlings counterattacking.
- Onavo 3y agoIf they entered the atmosphere stealthily and launched from sea level, then it would appear to be similar to a submarine launched missile.
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoThe state actor would probably assume a surreptitiously placed space-borne nuke, like on a "space telescope" or other larger satellite. You don't need all that fuel to get it into space, it's already there. You just drop the warhead.
- sneak 3y agoTo deorbit things requires delta-v, not “just drop it”.
- dylan604 3y agoThe aliens would have superior tech, so hacking into our systems would be trivial. They could just launch an actual nuke rather than lobbing one in from space.
- throwanem 3y agoPeople assume this and I never understand why. Even if we postulate highly complex realtime computing as a necessity for controlling a superluminal engine, why assume an entire technological history unrelated to ours would make it trivial, or for that matter possible, that even FTL-capable extraterrestrials can compromise earthly systems? 'The thing about aliens is they're alien.' - why assume this only works in one direction?
- dylan604 3y agoYou're assuming that the aliens are alien.
- throwanem 3y agoIf there's a reason to assume otherwise, I've yet to become aware of it. Or are you getting at something more earthly in scope?
- nextaccountic 3y agoA common trope in sci fi is that aliens are actually people from the future traveling back in time
- krisoft 3y ago> It would be obvious if a strike came from an extraterrestrial source, there would be no terrestrial launch detection. There would be no launch detected, that is true. That doesn’t mean that it would be obvious that the attack was extraterestrial. The alternative hypothesis would be the that the known terrestrial enemies developed some technique to confuse your sensors, or cloak themselves, or bribe your watchdogs, or pre-position warheads in space, or any other similar deception. People would be sooner thinking that their enemies smuggled nukes in overland than to think that aliens attacked them.
- consumer451 3y ago> A lot of effort is currently put into tracking missile launches and predicting ballistic trajectories. The goal is to give some warning if a nuclear strike is launched. Less advanced nations such as North Korea and Pakistan have nukes. Do you think that their monitoring systems are really that good?
- gambiting 3y agoNo, but they won't destroy the earth with what they have - untold destruction of couple other nations, with millions dead and extreme humanitarian and economic catastrophe - sure, but not extinction of life on earth.
- consumer451 3y agoYeah that's true, I just worry that things could escalate quickly once there is any exchange of nuclear weapons. It would certainly be destabilizing to a great extent. My concern is that it would possibly snowball and draw in other actors.
- consumer451 3y agoTo expand on my previous comment, one of the routes to armageddon that I have been imagining for years is something along the lines of: 1) A surprise meteor hits Pyongyang or Islamabad. 2) Their military hits their preprogrammed nuclear targets. 3) This draws larger powers into a nuclear exchange. 4) Fin. But really, I think a bioweapon made by some kid in >2070 is probably more likely.
- gambiting 3y agoI don't see why or how the step 3 would happen. Even if NK nuked South Korea, and even if theoretically US responded with a nuclear strike(and that is already really stretching it), why would other superpowers respond with their own nuclear strikes? China would be super unhappy, sure, but would they attack US with nukes over destruction of North Korea? I don't see it. I can see Pakistan and India exchanging nukes, but why would anyone join in that?
- shkkmo 3y agoOr just nudge a couple of big asteroids into collision courses
- randomname93857 3y agoThey probably can do that much cheaper: just come up with two opposing conspiracy theories, and people will naturally divide into 2 camps and will eagerly kill each other.
- perihelions 3y agoThat's probably physically impossible for a charged-particle beam (like electrons). It would defocus itself from its own self-interaction, as well as from interaction with intervening magnetic fields. On this theme: we know several types of natural, astrophysical accelerators of charged particles—but none of those are observed as a localizable source of charged particles, from the perspective of astronomy. We just see secondary photons.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> probably physically impossible for a charged-particle beam (like electrons) That’s the point of the relativistic part of a relativistic electron beam. Time dilation doesn’t give the beam internal time to self interact.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]