What, no planet kablooey?

As a male teenager the Lensman series fascinated me with its epic plot, and over the top imagination. The handwavium was extreme, physics was whatever felt good to the author on that page, characters were two dimensional and the WASPs always morally superior.
Good fun at the time, but this forum would find faults on every page.
I couldn't work out how, if inertia was cancelled, metabolism and mechanical functions in the ship could continue.

Lensmen was 1950's space opera. Pure and simple. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.

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Daryl wrote:As a male teenager the Lensman series fascinated me with its epic plot, and over the top imagination. The handwavium was extreme, physics was whatever felt good to the author on that page, characters were two dimensional and the WASPs always morally superior.
Good fun at the time, but this forum would find faults on every page.
I couldn't work out how, if inertia was cancelled, metabolism and mechanical functions in the ship could continue.

The magical power of plot.

At least there was some invented mechanism to exceed the speed of light in the Lensman series. In E.E. Smith's other major series, the Skylark series, going faster than light basically boiled down to "huh, looks like Einstein was wrong; if you keep accelerating you end up moving faster than light"

Jonathan_S wrote:

Imaginos1892 wrote:David Weber/Steve White "The Stars At War"

At the end, they fortify three large asteroids and use them to smash the last Bug hive planet.

I was familiar with over half of the one you mentioned, but I was planning to bring this one specifically up if you hadn't mentioned it first.
Though I don't recall 'Bank Shot' actually exploding the world into rubble - though it was more than enough to kill all the Bugs.

cthia wrote:Thanks niethil. But in this case, I'm actually looking for situations where the planet itself is completely destroyed. Not just the life on it. Enough C-fracs impacting a planet in the Honorverse could render it practically uninhabitable.

That's going to be more rare because the energy needed to totally destroy a planet; or even convert it to an asteroid belt, is at least enough to accelerate all it's mass to beyond escape velocity. Otherwise it fairly quickly falls back together and consolidates. And that energy is many orders of magnitude more than it takes to scrape off the biosphere and kill all life.
In other words its usually ludicrous overkill to destroy a planet if you just want to kill all its inhabitants.

The math behind the Giant Impactor theory of the Earth Moon system formation shows that even that strike with an object a good fraction the size of Mars wouldn't be/wasn't enough to totally destroy the Earth.
Launch a bunch of debris into space (mostly at less than escape velocity); yes.
Dump enough heat to keep the crust liquified for years; yes
Actually destroy the planet; obviously not.

So you can literally melt the crust of a planet for far less energy that it take to permanently disrupt and disperse one.

Yes. But. It all is still just a theory. We simply do not know -- not even how our very own moon was formed (or was captured) -- let alone the Earth. (Unless you ascribe to the Christian doctrine.)

And we simply do not know what ill manners a colossal enough of a ginormously gigantic gargantuanly giantesque of a hulkingly huge massively immense monster of a monumental pebble of a behemoth visiting our Earth will exhibit. (Hard to even say - much less replay.)

It may coalesce into one, still living planet. It may coalesce into several -- none of which may remain inhabitable because of a lack of enough remaining water. Or other reasons. See our very own moon. Well, at least inhabitable enough to want to live there.

And if the result is indeed several small rocks made from a larger impact, then these smaller moons that are formed from this cataclysmic event may receive enough impetus to go it alone in the universe looking to be assimilated, captured, by an adoptive system of its own. Again, see => our very own moon.

Handwavium works wonders inside the realm of theories.

Or... it may all remain an asteroid belt. We only think we know how planets form -- how systems form. And under what conditions. And if we don't really know how (all inclusive conditions) they're formed beyond a highly educated guestimate -- then we really don't know from whence it will all settle.

Entropy wants to return everything to its pre-Big Bang of a chaotic state.

If Cataclysm => reconstitution conditions still exist?

Unless... we are alien creatures in our own right in the overall galactic scheme of things and we have carried out our experiments and put our own theories to the test and cracked open a planet and watched the results -- somewhere in a remote Mexican desert of space.

But all of this is a moot point, because I was asking for the object lesson of human, or alien, extinction from an utterly planetary annihilation. Even if the planet coalesces -- the human atoms won't.

An egg cracks differently almost every time.

Do forgive my borrowing an appendage from the body of your post and transplanting, for sake of life, in discussion...

Johnathan wrote:That's going to be more rare because the energy needed to totally destroy a planet; or even convert it to an asteroid belt, is at least enough to accelerate all it's mass to beyond escape velocity.

Which gives chance to elaborate on my sentiment upwind where wielding this kind of destructive power makes traditional warfare pointless. If ever the wielding of this kind of power is realized, then at what point is the threshold crossed from practicality to an irresponsible misuse of energy? If entire planets, suns, galaxies and universes can be obliterated then surely such energies can achieve the same priority of specie extinction in a more eco friendly manner. Planets themselves never insulted anyone or started a war. Only the inhabitants.

It makes me remember an episode I can't remember of Star Trek: TOS where the two adversaries had evolved equally in the wielding of this sort of immense power and saw the insanity and the irresponsible nature of constantly laying waste to ships, infrastructure and planets and decided to leave it all up to the more civilized method of random lottery. "Oh well, fifty million of us has lost the roll of the die this time."

When certain species become space-faring, I can only imagine that some of the more intelligent life forms are justly thinking...

There goes the neighborhood.

In regard to
"And we simply do not know what ill manners a colossal enough of a ginormously gigantic gargantuanly giantesque of a hulkingly huge massively immense monster of a monumental pebble of a behemoth visiting our Earth will exhibit. (Hard to even say - much less replay.)

It may coalesce into one, still living planet. It may coalesce into several -- none of which may remain inhabitable because of a lack of enough remaining water. Or other reasons. See our very own moon. Well, at least inhabitable enough to want to live there."

There is no possibility whatsoever of coalescing into a still living planet. The immense energies would sterilise the planet, along with G forces, and the great bulk of the planet is red to white hot magna. The thin shell and atmosphere have no chance.

Annachie wrote:Lensmen was 1950's space opera. Pure and simple. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.

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Thank you Annachie!

Why didn't my good buddy, who has been trying to sell me on the series since before the Big Bang, just tell me that? I like good Sci_Fi written in that era. The recipe was "meat and potatoes" at the expense of properly constituted gravy. Some people rather prefer a good steak without the ruination of a sauce.

Just as you aptly stated Annachie, it is meant for you to enjoy the ride with a seatbelt deployed. There's going to be turbulence, but oh what a ride!

Lensmen -- in the spirit of an ancient Terran song...

I've put them on my list
Yes, I've put them on my list
These men I can't resist
So, I've put them on my list
Adventures I've surely missed
So, I put them on my list

Daryl wrote:In regard to
"And we simply do not know what ill manners a colossal enough of a ginormously gigantic gargantuanly giantesque of a hulkingly huge massively immense monster of a monumental pebble of a behemoth visiting our Earth will exhibit. (Hard to even say - much less replay.)

It may coalesce into one, still living planet. It may coalesce into several -- none of which may remain inhabitable because of a lack of enough remaining water. Or other reasons. See our very own moon. Well, at least inhabitable enough to want to live there."

There is no possibility whatsoever of coalescing into a still living planet. The immense energies would sterilise the planet, along with G forces, and the great bulk of the planet is red to white hot magna. The thin shell and atmosphere have no chance.

I would think as much myself. Yet I withhold my final vote since many forms of life have been found on Earth existing in and under some rather extreme conditions. Some even speculate that life was introduced on Earth from asteroid/meteor collisions that survived the same kind of cataclysmic events in which we speak and then went on to survive the long voyage to Earth and then survived that impact as well.

Life doesn't have to fit into our mold to be true but the mold of "life." Besides, I wouldn't dare count out the blattodea to resist even that level of sterilization -- to at least evolve and thrive -- or at the very least give rise to a new empire and reign of termites.

The one life form indigenous to all planets is the cockroach. They came. They saw. They fought. They adapted. They conquered.

Cockroaches thrive because they've corned the market on the new math -- multiplication.

Not even Dahakian technology can overcome the blattodea. Especially of the Asian persuasion.

Cockroaches are the smoking gun that we have been visited, at least once, by an alien species. At least two of their phucking bugs got off of their ship.

And they were the sole cause of the Roswell crash in New Mexico. — Credits go to my then 12-yr-old niece Tierney.

cthia wrote:

Annachie wrote:Lensmen was 1950's space opera. Pure and simple. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Sent from my SM-G920I using Tapatalk

Thank you Annachie!

Why didn't my good buddy, who has been trying to sell me on the series since before the Big Bang, just tell me that? I like good Sci_Fi written in that era. The recipe was "meat and potatoes" at the expense of properly constituted gravy. Some people rather prefer a good steak without the ruination of a sauce.

Just as you aptly stated Annachie, it is meant for you to enjoy the ride with a seatbelt deployed. There's going to be turbulence, but oh what a ride!

Lensmen -- in the spirit of an ancient Terran song...

I've put them on my list
Yes, I've put them on my list
These men I can't resist
So, I've put them on my list
Adventures I've surely missed
So, I put them on my list

the lensman books are odd it is true but the sheer scale of it more then makes up for many of its flaws.

I remember my first reading of them fondly. I was just starting out in science fiction (I was about 15 and while i read a lot, most of it was still fairly light stuff like Asterix and Tintin, 633 squadron, dick francis), my brother had given my a couple of novels from the then fairly new star wars expanded universe (there was about 10 books total in it), upon finishing them I was looking for something else similar (i.e. huge scale drama, dashing heros etc) and my farther leant me First Lensman (he decided, rightly i believe, that starting at triplanetary would just confuse me) from then I was hooked on science fiction.

What about the "Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator"?