What If?

[JoeyC]

Hello fellow SciOlyers!
This thread is here to discuss crazy ideas that not even Google or Quora has the answers to in a open, scholarly environment!
Just pose your crazy "what if" idea, and then have others figure out how much of it is feasible/a good idea!
Because, as well all know, these type of supposedly dumb questions can and have been what gives the best inspirations.

I'll go first - What if we crashed the Earth into Mars in order to terraform it?

[DatSciolyBoi]

Well... We don't have enough manpower or materials to build enough spaceships for everyone's safety. We can assume a select million people (Prolly the rich and famous) will be on the spaceships watching the spectacle, or running in the opposite direction. Now, assuming we have the technology to accomplish such a feat, it would take quite a while for a object as big as Earth to achieve enough velocity to get it moving. During this time, the people left behind on the Earth (Hopefully not suicidal) would be doing everything in their power to stop such a spectacle. If they succeed, they would still be a lot farther from the sun, temperatures drop considerately, most water animals and tropical animals are wiped out, and we wear many layers of clothing just to get to school. Eventually we can fix it and put us back, and if the million who escaped and condemned us return, they would most likely get executed in front of the angry masses.
*Alternate event*
Humans fail to stop the earth hurtling into space towards Mars, meteor impacts become much more common and much deadlier, temperatures get colder, and we probably left the moon behind a few weeks back. When the time comes, we have nothing to do but hold our loved ones closely and say the final prayers, maybe a few million scientists developed spaceships for the evacuation of another million or so. The time comes. Earth smashes into Mars with a reverberation felt everywhere as we watch mars (with a diameter half the size of Earth) appear to sink into the earth. 7 billion people are obliterated in seconds, millions of years of artifacts, technology, and art are destroyed. Earth is now missing more than 3/4 of its original surface area, lava from the earth's core is flowing freely everywhere, destroying everything that survived. And the funny part is, the billions of tons of loose debris and rocks would fly in every which way, eventually catching up to and crippling the spaceships that survived in space, and eventually, they would destroy those first few ships who killed all of us in the first place.

(whoooo that was a long answer lmao)

[JoeyC]

Hmmm, okay then, what if we managed to instead of crashing it, put it into a binary orbit with Mars? Enormous Amounts of Energy could potentially come from Nuclear Fission or space borne solar power (to harness the full power of solar radiation).
We stockpile energy for a couple of years in huge superbatteries and then use it to propel ourselves toward Mars, slowly but surely. Warnings are issued, and during that time people learn to adapt, all the while on our planetary trip to Mars we're stockpiling more energy.
Finally, as we near Mars, we use that energy to initiate a braking maneuver and set ourselves into a binary orbit around Mars that will allow for easy transport of materials.

[DatSciolyBoi]

Hmmm, okay then, what if we managed to instead of crashing it, put it into a binary orbit with Mars? Enormous Amounts of Energy could potentially come from Nuclear Fission or space borne solar power (to harness the full power of solar radiation).
We stockpile energy for a couple of years in huge superbatteries and then use it to propel ourselves toward Mars, slowly but surely. Warnings are issued, and during that time people learn to adapt, all the while on our planetary trip to Mars we're stockpiling more energy.
Finally, as we near Mars, we use that energy to initiate a braking maneuver and set ourselves into a binary orbit around Mars that will allow for easy transport of materials.

The Earth is bigger AND denser than mars, it is almost impossible for the Earth to orbit it, best we can hope for is stopping, and heading the opposite direction. If anything, Mars could be dragged into OUR orbit lol.

[JoeyC]

Find an equilibrium point, such as that by which the moon orbits the Earth yet doesn't crash into it?

[DatSciolyBoi]

Find an equilibrium point, such as that by which the moon orbits the Earth yet doesn't crash into it?

But the moon is smaller and less dense than the Earth, that's why it orbits around Earth. So how does Earth orbit around something half it's size?

[JoeyC]

All depends on center of gravity; orbit systems like Charon and Pluto's rely on them.
Seems like that topics worn out.
Who wants to ask the next What If? (cause if not, I will )

[CookiePie1]

What if we used 100% of the brain?

[DatSciolyBoi]

What if we used 100% of the brain?

oNce, I TurNeD On AlL tHe LigHts In mY hOusE aNd Let ThE MosQuItoS iN. TheN I SLEpT OuTsIde, iT'S cAlleD ConFusINg tHe EneMy.

[gz839918]

What if we used 100% of the brain?

I'm not sure whether this is serious or not, but humans use nearly all of the brain, all of the time. The saying that we only use 10% of our brain is incorrect. An intuitive way to remember this is that if it were really true that we only used 10% of our brains all the time, then any bullet that struck our brain would have a 90% chance of doing no harm, which is clearly untrue.

See page 43, Myers, D. G. (2012). Psychology in everyday life, 2nd ed. Macmillan.

What if there were on-time award ceremonies?