shminux comments on Stupid Questions December 2014 - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Gondolinian 08 December 2014 03:39PM

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Comment author: alienist 11 December 2014 06:17:38AM 5 points [-]

Wouldn't it be more efficient to use that energy to destroy Mars and build start building a Dyson swarm from the debris?

Comment author: shminux 11 December 2014 04:13:49PM 3 points [-]

Let's do a quick estimate. Destroying a Mars-like planet requires expending the equivalent of its gravitational self-energy, ~GM^2/R, which is about 10^32J (which we could easily obtain from a comet 10 kn in radius... consisting of antimatter!) For comparison, the Earth's magnetic field has about 10^26J of energy, a million times less. I leave it to you to draw the conclusions.