New efforts!

[Arcana]

Put another way: Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting a tomato in your fruit salad.

That's more the difference between being a botanist and a chef.

"Intelligence" is a skill, or a set of them.  "Smart" is a lifestyle choice.  We usually judge how smart someone is by evidence that they possess intelligence.  But that's like judging whether someone is a plumber by whether they own a monkey wrench.  You can be a scientist or a methematician or an engineer or in some way do something that clearly proves you possess some intelligence.  You can still be an idiot if you're someone for whom those skills are used selectively and relatively infrequently.  Knowing the moon doesn't cause seasons is something that takes far less intelligence than becoming a mathematics professor.  And that means being the one and misunderstanding the other represents either an unwillingness to or inability to use that intelligence on a consistent basis.  That's what a dumb person is.

[GenericHero05]

M - O - O - N. That's how Tom Cullen spells moon.

[Joshex]

That's more the difference between being a botanist and a chef.

"Intelligence" is a skill, or a set of them.  "Smart" is a lifestyle choice.  We usually judge how smart someone is by evidence that they possess intelligence.  But that's like judging whether someone is a plumber by whether they own a monkey wrench.  You can be a scientist or a methematician or an engineer or in some way do something that clearly proves you possess some intelligence.  You can still be an idiot if you're someone for whom those skills are used selectively and relatively infrequently.  Knowing the moon doesn't cause seasons is something that takes far less intelligence than becoming a mathematics professor.  And that means being the one and misunderstanding the other represents either an unwillingness to or inability to use that intelligence on a consistent basis.  That's what a dumb person is.

I always thought a dumb person was merely mute, oh right the word has evolved (been misused) as a derogatory phrase against cripples and then later against anyone.

stupid is a more clear term to describe a person who cannot grasp/understand anything about the situation, or is incapable of realizing causes have effects, or merely wasn't paying attention. but the last time I was dumbstruck was.. actually recent.. of course being dumbstruck isn't a sign of stupidity, it just means you find yourself having no words to say in a situation where you would wish to say something.

there is also the word ignorant, which purely means that someone lacks key information about a topic, or has an inability to see the big picture due to false knowledge and biases blocking the truth from the person's realm of experience and recollection.

I believe the word ignorant is more appropriate here.


my calculation earlier was merely about probability in general, yes, it could be wrong. there could very well be negative information that we are not aware of but such cannot be calculated because we are ignorant of it.

the same goes for all scientists who make mathematical equations to "prove" theories without providing real evidence, what the scientific community and governments fail to realize is, the outcome of an equation is in direct relation to the knowledge of the person(s) writing it. to use an equation to "find" (figure out) /anything/ other than basic fundamental physically measurable values is really just guessing for people who can't do logic and like things the hard way.

I always say this; you can write an equation starting with values provided by current theories of space and time that proves without a doubt that a chicken sandwich in a kentuky fried chicken restaurant in kentuky is actually the center of the universe and if consumed would cause the universe to become unstable and collapse. the math will compute to a definite outcome without errors in favor of your hypothesis, but it doesn't make it correct.

very vulgar statement below (reader discretion is advised):

Spoiler for Hidden:

using math to prove hypotheses is just scientific masterbation, it gives you a high and makes you feel accomplished and may look enticing to some others, but in the end all you made is a mess and the high and accomplishment you felt and the attention you gained from others was without warrant.

[Solitaire]

That's more the difference between being a botanist and a chef.

"Intelligence" is a skill, or a set of them.  "Smart" is a lifestyle choice.  We usually judge how smart someone is by evidence that they possess intelligence.  But that's like judging whether someone is a plumber by whether they own a monkey wrench.  You can be a scientist or a methematician or an engineer or in some way do something that clearly proves you possess some intelligence.  You can still be an idiot if you're someone for whom those skills are used selectively and relatively infrequently.  Knowing the moon doesn't cause seasons is something that takes far less intelligence than becoming a mathematics professor.  And that means being the one and misunderstanding the other represents either an unwillingness to or inability to use that intelligence on a consistent basis.  That's what a dumb person is.

Agree with Arcana but to put it more simply, the definition of Intelligence is "The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills".

[Felderburg]

Topatoco sold this shirt for a while: http://shirtoid.com/19477/blow-up-the-moon/ (http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=533)

Inertia is the resistance of a thing to change or to stop moving once started, and as far as I know, time hasn't stopped moving along, so I would say it definitely has inertia.

Also, uh...I think moving Venus into an orbit closer to earth's is a way more intense idea than blowing up the moon.

[Codewalker]

That be the one.  Also, he used to propose blowing up the moon to change the orbit of the Earth for some climatological reason that currently escapes me.  He was a classic example of the fact that having intelligence and being smart are subtly but significantly different.

Or just a very well played troll who never broke character. It may have been the early days of the Internet, but it's still the Internet we're talking about...

I always say this; you can write an equation starting with values provided by current theories of space and time that proves without a doubt that a chicken sandwich in a kentuky fried chicken restaurant in kentuky is actually the center of the universe and if consumed would cause the universe to become unstable and collapse. the math will compute to a definite outcome without errors in favor of your hypothesis, but it doesn't make it correct.

I would like to see this equation. As far as I know it's not possible to prove that mathematically within the framework of the commonly accepted cosmological theories, but if it is possible, I'd be interested to see how the math for it works out.

Note that simply writing an equation is not a proof. Proof in mathematical terms arises from being able to transform the equation using standard rules to show that it is equivalent to (or a logical consequence of) another equation that is already accepted as true.

[Codewalker]

An aside, "blowing up the moon" is an interesting thought exercise in itself. If you simply apply enough explosive force to shatter it, there are two possibilities. Either you applied enough to overcome the gravitational attraction of all the debris, in which case it would spread out in Earth orbit, or you didn't apply enough and it would clump back together in a moon-sized ball.

Either way, the total mass of the moon is still there in Earth orbit, and at best you've merely managed to set in motion a chain of events that will allow it to spread out into a ring over the next million years or so.

The other possibility is to apply a completely unimaginable amount of force, enough to accelerate a large portion of the moon's mass to escape velocity. Some of it would escape Earth orbit and settle into a solar orbit similar to Earth's, while the rest would fall into the atmosphere and, depending on the size of the chunks, impact the surface. Either way a lot of that energy would end up back here on Earth and cause all sorts of issues.

To put things in perspective, the mass of the moon is estimated to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 73,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg. The biggest nuclear weapon ever detonated was the Tsar Bomba hydrogen bomb, with a yield of 50 megatons. That's around 210,000 terajoules of energy. Now, a large portion of that isn't mechanical energy but rather heat and other radiation, but just to make life simple let's assume that all of that could somehow be captured and made to push against the moon.

Using the formula for kinetic energy (1/2*m*v^2), we can determine that 210,000TJ of kinetic energy, given the moon's mass, represents a velocity of a whopping... 0.00239 m/s. Since the moon isn't at rest but rather orbiting at 1,022 m/s, I calculated the kinetic energy of the moon (3.837 x 10^28 J) and added 210,000TJ to see what effect it would have on its orbit, but the change in velocity was so small that it was below the rounding threshold of my calculator and ended up showing as zero.

You could probably do some scarring of the surface and kick up a dust cloud that would take a while to settle, but not much more.

Anyway, that's all very rough back of napkin math that makes gross assumptions, but it goes to show that if you're thinking about blowing up the moon ... good luck with that.

[JaguarX]

I don't know about the others but I'm interested in all the other successors. The thing for me "right now" is, their not live besides Valiance (in a way). So I'm not going to invest to much time into them. I mean City of Titans just released a gameplay trailer after being silent for how long? Which it turned out good, it shows that they've spent that time focusing on the game.

Anyways, what I'm trying to say is "for me personally" the way I "like" to interact. With a games community is "in game". The community here is different for me because we did interact in game before I became active on the forums. Now that there's no game, it's the only way I can interact with the CoH community I know and love. Where as with the successors, there is no game yet. So in "my mind" there is no community yet.

It may seem strange but that's just me. I do keep up with the games, I just don't post on their forums or anything.

yeah. indeed. looking forward to see what the successor projects offer.

although I like CO pretty well. It has it's ups and it has it's down.  community wise- ehhh both have their butthats. Yes, COX had their butt hats too. And I like the one server thing. Nothing worse than going to certain servers and lo and behold not many people is on. And also, feel like an actual hero in CO instead of Statesman and his ilk's lackey. And the less requirement for teaming there. And the more freedom for power combinations some that were not possible with COX. Caught altitis in CO. COX did have the story stuff going for it. hell of a lot better. And people interaction on team seemed more in COX, good or bad depending on play style. And each come with ups and downs. Usually in Co not much chatting going on overall on teams. Just in there get job done and be out. In COx, more chatful people although that also seemed to bring out the butthats out the woodworks thinking "my way is better than everyone else. Everyone else way is noobs". And COX did seem to dependent on that archaic role playing game chance system. But then again it did come out in 2002 or so time period so not knocking it for that since that was all the nrom ow. But times have changed and hopefully the successor improve upon where COX left off.

And although frowned upon in the old forum, this time I hope people get the word out especially if the company aint doing it, and not resort to insults and badgering people that merely suggest "hey man, we should probably get word out more." "or "hey man the game isnt as lively as it used to be. Lets try and get more players." TBH, there seemed to have been a Titanic complex that grew over the years in COX community. Even after revealing NCSOFT practice of closing past games out of the blue. It was laughed at and people mocked for pointing that out and saying be careful, called trolling in those days. AKA hopefully the mistakes are learned, and while friendly overall, there was a little work to be done in the friendly department. Oh yeah people was real friendly when ya part of the clique. While if someone dared to even question the word of a clique member, dog pile galore. Which put a lot of people off that loved the game, but didnt like that, off of the game sadly. kind of like that feeling lot of COX players experienced in CO relatively recent. The feeling of outsider, first impression of coming across that butt hat and making it seem like the ocmmunity was off putting? yes, some people experience such things unfortunately in COX. But mostly, with new, got to get the word out. Cant say that part enough. Get the word out. Do not get comfortable again with amount of players. Have 10,000, go for 40,000. Have 40,000 go for 150,000. Have 150,000 go for 1.5 million and so on. And hopefully never know one or all these successors may hit the nail on the head and it will be the next big game on the market. Worldwide. Started from mere fans and it grew to be bigger than the game it was meant to replace. But that takes time, effort, patience, and most of all open mind, with a tad of down to earth realism and able to accept the truth whether good or bad and resist urge to jump on people just because it's not something that want to be heard at that exact moment. Especially in the forum. Overall even the Cox forum crowd was decent, but again, dont aim for the same level. Aim to exceed the level in game play, story, creation, community, and style. Knock it out of the park, get the word out, and the people will come.

[Biz]

An aside, "blowing up the moon" is an interesting thought exercise in itself. If you simply apply enough explosive force to shatter it, there are two possibilities. Either you applied enough to overcome the gravitational attraction of all the debris, in which case it would spread out in Earth orbit, or you didn't apply enough and it would clump back together in a moon-sized ball.

Either way, the total mass of the moon is still there in Earth orbit, and at best you've merely managed to set in motion a chain of events that will allow it to spread out into a ring over the next million years or so.

The other possibility is to apply a completely unimaginable amount of force, enough to accelerate a large portion of the moon's mass to escape velocity. Some of it would escape Earth orbit and settle into a solar orbit similar to Earth's, while the rest would fall into the atmosphere and, depending on the size of the chunks, impact the surface. Either way a lot of that energy would end up back here on Earth and cause all sorts of issues.

To put things in perspective, the mass of the moon is estimated to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 73,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg. The biggest nuclear weapon ever detonated was the Tsar Bomba hydrogen bomb, with a yield of 50 megatons. That's around 210,000 terajoules of energy. Now, a large portion of that isn't mechanical energy but rather heat and other radiation, but just to make life simple let's assume that all of that could somehow be captured and made to push against the moon.

Using the formula for kinetic energy (1/2*m*v^2), we can determine that 210,000TJ of kinetic energy, given the moon's mass, represents a velocity of a whopping... 0.00239 m/s. Since the moon isn't at rest but rather orbiting at 1,022 m/s, I calculated the kinetic energy of the moon (3.837 x 10^28 J) and added 210,000TJ to see what effect it would have on its orbit, but the change in velocity was so small that it was below the rounding threshold of my calculator and ended up showing as zero.

You could probably do some scarring of the surface and kick up a dust cloud that would take a while to settle, but not much more.

Anyway, that's all very rough back of napkin math that makes gross assumptions, but it goes to show that if you're thinking about blowing up the moon ... good luck with that.

But what if you drilled down inside the Moon and detonated the bomb?

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i.telegraph.co.uk%2Fmultimedia%2Farchive%2F02428%2Fbruce_2428520b.jpg

[Todogut]

The other possibility is to apply a completely unimaginable amount of force, enough to accelerate a large portion of the moon's mass to escape velocity.

Sounds like the premise for the 1975 British science fiction television series Space: 1999. Produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson (who previously created the Thunderbirds TV series), the show's premise--the moon was blasted out of Earth orbit by a nuclear explosion, sending the surviving moon base hurtling uncontrollably through space where they encountered other solar systems and aliens during each weekly episode--was criticized by scientists and science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov for its scientific inaccuracies.

But, would science fact have made for an entertaining '70s TV series?

[LaughingAlex]

But what if you drilled down inside the Moon and detonated the bomb?

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i.telegraph.co.uk%2Fmultimedia%2Farchive%2F02428%2Fbruce_2428520b.jpg

You wouldn't get past the mantle :).

Edit: To be fair, if you did dig far enough down you'd likely just create a huge, warmed crack on the moons surface.

[pinballdave]

An aside, "blowing up the moon" is an interesting thought exercise in itself. If you simply apply enough explosive force to shatter it, there are two possibilities. Either you applied enough to overcome the gravitational attraction of all the debris, in which case it would spread out in Earth orbit, or you didn't apply enough and it would clump back together in a moon-sized ball.

Either way, the total mass of the moon is still there in Earth orbit, and at best you've merely managed to set in motion a chain of events that will allow it to spread out into a ring over the next million years or so.

The other possibility is to apply a completely unimaginable amount of force, enough to accelerate a large portion of the moon's mass to escape velocity. Some of it would escape Earth orbit and settle into a solar orbit similar to Earth's, while the rest would fall into the atmosphere and, depending on the size of the chunks, impact the surface. Either way a lot of that energy would end up back here on Earth and cause all sorts of issues.

To put things in perspective, the mass of the moon is estimated to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 73,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg. The biggest nuclear weapon ever detonated was the Tsar Bomba hydrogen bomb, with a yield of 50 megatons. That's around 210,000 terajoules of energy. Now, a large portion of that isn't mechanical energy but rather heat and other radiation, but just to make life simple let's assume that all of that could somehow be captured and made to push against the moon.

Using the formula for kinetic energy (1/2*m*v^2), we can determine that 210,000TJ of kinetic energy, given the moon's mass, represents a velocity of a whopping... 0.00239 m/s. Since the moon isn't at rest but rather orbiting at 1,022 m/s, I calculated the kinetic energy of the moon (3.837 x 10^28 J) and added 210,000TJ to see what effect it would have on its orbit, but the change in velocity was so small that it was below the rounding threshold of my calculator and ended up showing as zero.

You could probably do some scarring of the surface and kick up a dust cloud that would take a while to settle, but not much more.

Anyway, that's all very rough back of napkin math that makes gross assumptions, but it goes to show that if you're thinking about blowing up the moon ... good luck with that.

I am fixated on this so I guess I will babble a bit at your indulgence. There are 3 gravity wells to consider blasting a part of the moon from: the moon, the earth and the sun! I also took some time to figure out how mechanical energy would be produced in a near absolute zero, no atmosphere environment. Then I remembered if you drop water on a foundry's open molten steel, you get an explosion. Vaporizing rock would work better if the bomb were buried.

I think, can't support practically, if you dropped enough orbital energy from an object of the moon, you have a darn good chance of slipping it into orbit around the sun in an orbit parallel to the earth/moon binary. If you accelerate the material to faster than the moon's orbit, the material would assume an orbit parallel to the earth/moon binary at a greater distance from the sun.

The explosion of part of the moon itself, if it would fall into a decaying orbit and crash to the earth, would most likely involve pieces which would skip off the earth's atmosphere or burn up in entry. I cannot imagine cracking a piece of the moon off without reducing it to rubble.

It implausible to me to chuck a piece of the moon from the moon directly to the earth because of the various gravity wells and orbits.

[Arcana]

Or just a very well played troll who never broke character. It may have been the early days of the Internet, but it's still the Internet we're talking about...

Well, if he was a troll, he was trolling humanity off the internet as well as on it.

[Codewalker]

I think, can't support practically, if you dropped enough orbital energy from an object of the moon, you have a darn good chance of slipping it into orbit around the sun in an orbit parallel to the earth/moon binary. If you accelerate the material to faster than the moon's orbit, the material would assume an orbit parallel to the earth/moon binary at a greater distance from the sun.

You don't need just a whole lot to get into an escape trajectory from the altitude of the moon (because orbital velocities are lower). Not running the numbers myself, but some searching and wikipediaing seems to indicate about 400m/s, which is considerably less than the amount needed to escape from low earth orbit, but still a huge amount of energy needed for the amount of mass we're talking about.

It implausible to me to chuck a piece of the moon from the moon directly to the earth because of the various gravity wells and orbits.

Yes, that's what I meant -- assuming an explosive device somehow located in the solid iron core -- for however much matter escapes, an equal amount would be slowed enough that its orbit would either intersect the planet on the far side, or dip into the atmosphere and be slowed the rest of the way. Playing too much kerbal results in always thinking about prograde/retrograde vectors as up and down rather than trying to accelerate directly toward a target body (*cough*Sandra Bullock*cough*).

Don't forget that even if the fragments are small enough they "burn up", that energy is still transferred to the Earth, just as heat dissipated in the atmosphere rather than a mechanical impact. A half-moon worth of dust burning up would still wreck our ecosystem pretty badly.

[Codewalker]

Well, if he was a troll, he was trolling humanity off the internet as well as on it.

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=ecx.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F51lCV93d%252BSL._SX425_.jpg

[Arcana]

I am fixated on this so I guess I will babble a bit at your indulgence. There are 3 gravity wells to consider blasting a part of the moon from: the moon, the earth and the sun! I also took some time to figure out how mechanical energy would be produced in a near absolute zero, no atmosphere environment. Then I remembered if you drop water on a foundry's open molten steel, you get an explosion. Vaporizing rock would work better if the bomb were buried.

Basic conservation of energy would require the mechanical energy of any explosion to be equal to the detonation energy of the explosion, but part of the problem here is that separate from the energy transfer involved is the momentum delta produced which is a different thing.  And its non-trivial to translate nuclear blast effects into a vacuum because so much of them involve actual atmospheric effects.  In fact, detonating a nuclear bomb in a near vacuum above the surface of the moon would likely generate far more momentum from the reaction of vaporizing rock ejecting from the surface than the actual initial detonation wave of the explosion.  Would that work better if the bomb was buried?  Well, on the one hand more of the radiation energy would be intercepted by the moon but on the other hand with nowhere to go that energy would go into heating the moon and not moving it or any of its parts.  Optimal placement might actually be inside a small crater.

I think, can't support practically, if you dropped enough orbital energy from an object of the moon, you have a darn good chance of slipping it into orbit around the sun in an orbit parallel to the earth/moon binary. If you accelerate the material to faster than the moon's orbit, the material would assume an orbit parallel to the earth/moon binary at a greater distance from the sun.

These are two non-sequitor statements.  Yes, if you accelerate an object from lunar orbit in such a way that its net velocity relative to Earth increases, then you either get an increasingly elliptical orbit around the Earth, or eventually you escape Earth orbit and enter orbit around the Sun.  The Sun's escape velocity at about the distance the Earth-moon system orbits the Sun is a lot higher than Earth's escape velocity at about the Moon's relative orbital distance, so the object then begins to orbit the Sun.  But you said "dropped."  If you accelerate an object from lunar orbit in such a way that its net velocity relative to the Earth drops, then it enters into a different elliptical orbit where the mean distance to the Earth drops, and for high enough delta-v that object's "orbit" intersects the surface of the Earth.  Which is another way of saying it crashes into the Earth.

You can't easily *drop* net velocity of a lunar rock and have it end up orbiting the Sun independently of the Earth-moon system.  Orbital mechanics don't work that way.  Anything near Earth with less than Earth's escape velocity ends up in an elliptical orbit around Earth, to a first degree approximation.  Incidentally, there's another option you haven't mentioned.  You could end up in orbit around the moon.  You could end up in orbit around the Earth.  You could escape the Earth moon system and end up in orbit around the Sun.  You could escape the Solar system entirely.  But you could also find yourself in a resonance orbit locked within the Earth-Moon-Sun system.  Essentially, you could end up in a Lagrange point.  These are "orbits" but not classical Keplerian orbits: they are a consequence of the complex interaction between more than two-body gravity.

The explosion of part of the moon itself, if it would fall into a decaying orbit and crash to the earth, would most likely involve pieces which would skip off the earth's atmosphere or burn up in entry. I cannot imagine cracking a piece of the moon off without reducing it to rubble.

It implausible to me to chuck a piece of the moon from the moon directly to the earth because of the various gravity wells and orbits.

There are meteorites discovered on Earth determined to be of lunar origin.  They land here when they are ejected from the surface of the moon due to asteroid and meteoroid impacts.  When stuff gets blasted off the surface of the moon, the likelihood that some of it will eventually hit the Earth is actually not bad, given that such objects are either gravitationally coupled to the Earth-moon system or end up in Solar orbits that generally intersect Earth's orbit.  In 20 million years, say, they have about 20 million chances to hit us.  Most don't, a few do.

Keep in mind, we have discovered meteorites on Earth of confirmed Martian origin: rocks which were blasted off the surface of Mars through asteroid impact that eventually found their way to Earth.  That's not easy, but there have been millions of chances for it to happen across a billion years (Earth's been around longer than that, but go too far back into the past and it becomes likely that the rock isn't near the surface of the Earth to be discoverable anymore).

Also, we have a few astronauts still alive which owe their current terrestrial residence to the fact you can just throw an object off the moon and directly to Earth.

[Codewalker]

I think, can't support practically, if you dropped enough orbital energy from an object of the moon

Missed this this first time, but it's dead on. An impact from another planetary scale object is probably the only practical way it could happen, albeit being a situation that we can't artificially create.

Especially since many theories of the early history of the solar system include the moon being created as a result of something big and fast impacting primoridial Earth -- ejecting a large amount of rock (molten from the energy of the impact) into orbit.

[Arcana]

I always say this; you can write an equation starting with values provided by current theories of space and time that proves without a doubt that a chicken sandwich in a kentuky fried chicken restaurant in kentuky is actually the center of the universe and if consumed would cause the universe to become unstable and collapse. the math will compute to a definite outcome without errors in favor of your hypothesis, but it doesn't make it correct.

I too would like to see this equation.

Note that simply writing an equation is not a proof. Proof in mathematical terms arises from being able to transform the equation using standard rules to show that it is equivalent to (or a logical consequence of) another equation that is already accepted as true.

Well lets start with the fact that there's no way to express "a chicken sandwich in Kentucky purchased from a KFC and eaten will cause the universe to collapse" with an equation in the first place.  Equations are mathematical constructs that state in mathematical terms that one expression is mathematically equivalent to another expression.  In other words, equations can only state one thing: this equals that.  I don't know how you go about expressing "Chicken equals universal destruction" because for one thing, Chickens come in different units than Cosmic Apocalypses.  There would have to be a universal chicken-apocalypse (technically, apocalypse/chickens) parameter with the right conversion units to probably make Armageddon a dimensionless scalar.  I don't see one in the standard model of physics.

The equivalence principle would also seem to make it difficult to make the Chicken-Collapse equation consistent with general relativity.  Would the Louisville KFC become an inertial reference?  Wouldn't that create observable gravitational anomalies along the I65 corridor?  Suppose I'm not actually in that KFC: suppose I bought the chicken in the drive-thru and then drove away from the KFC.  If I turned around and then sped towards the KFC and ate the chicken,  wouldn't a distant observer with the right Lorentz conditions observe me to be eating the chicken as I passed the KFC location?  How do you resolve this causal asymmetry?  Wouldn't this limit the Chicken-Collapse equation to only being able to state that consuming the chicken at any space-time connected region of that KFC would cause universal destruction?

Just a casual check seems to suggest that the best you could do is somehow write an equation that stated that if a specific chicken was eaten at a specific KFC as observed by a specific class of non-inertial observers, that chicken would then couple to a one apocalypse per chicken field and spontaneously exchange a chicken-charge with that field and lose one negative-apocalypse.

[Arcana]

Missed this this first time, but it's dead on. An impact from another planetary scale object is probably the only practical way it could happen, albeit being a situation that we can't artificially create.

Define "practical."  Another interesting way to disintegrate the moon is to use leverage.  Instead of trying to generate enough energy to destroy it, it would be enough to generate enough momentum change to reduce the moon's orbital distance enough to drop it below the Roche limit.  Then Earth's gravitational tidal forces would overcome its binding energy and convert the Moon into a ring of rubble.

Unfortunately the Roche limit for the Moon is something like 20,000 miles.  An interesting question I don't have time at the moment to calculate is whether its harder to destroy the moon directly, or transfer enough angular momentum from the moon so that it descends below the Roche limit and breaks up all by itself.  This is tricky, because energy equations alone won't get you there: the moon would actually have *more* kinetic energy at the Roche limit because its orbital velocity would be higher.  Orbital mechanics is rather wonky and counter-intuitive when it comes to what small delta-v does while within an orbit.

[Tubbius]

Define "practical."  Another interesting way to disintegrate the moon is to use leverage.  Instead of trying to generate enough energy to destroy it, it would be enough to generate enough momentum change to reduce the moon's orbital distance enough to drop it below the Roche limit.  Then Earth's gravitational tidal forces would overcome its binding energy and convert the Moon into a ring of rubble.

Unfortunately the Roche limit for the Moon is something like 20,000 miles.  An interesting question I don't have time at the moment to calculate is whether its harder to destroy the moon directly, or transfer enough angular momentum from the moon so that it descends below the Roche limit and breaks up all by itself.  This is tricky, because energy equations alone won't get you there: the moon would actually have *more* kinetic energy at the Roche limit because its orbital velocity would be higher.  Orbital mechanics is rather wonky and counter-intuitive when it comes to what small delta-v does while within an orbit.

Again, Arcana blows my mind.  And here I thought choosing the proper order to take powers so that when I played lower level stuff in AE I wouldn't get hosed was hard.