<![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> Oh sure, sounds great! Let's angrily poke Gaia with more sharp sticks, see what happens. We've never really screwed up the environment before, right? Who cares?

There are plenty of other habitable planets nearby..........oh......
.......wait.......


Habu

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> Re 3: Carmen Sandiego tried to do exactly that to the moon in one episode of the DIC TV series, except with actual ink. Strangely, her logo was the exact one the TV show used.

Jonn

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> @monkeymind: ...I was so close, but...
FAIL

doctor_cos

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> @Discrete-Daniel: Would we then not need Slartibartfast to take care of all the fiddly bits?
Then African parrots could be pinin' for the....

doctor_cos

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> In one word: Slartibartfast

monkeymind

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> Firstly, we have already hacked seismic activity by building large dams. It is now a standard part of wall design and impact assessment to factor in the tremors that ensue for the first few years after construction.

Secondly, if we were so bold as to hack proactively (say in response to climate change) the easiest, perhaps the only feasible technique would be to facilitate seawater entry into existing sub-sealevel land areas. As far as I know these are all close to seawater (Death Valley, Afar Depression, Dead Sea, another in Egypt whose name I forget).

Seemingly these depressions exist where plates move apart without enough rain to fill the hole (Africa´s Great Lakes show what happens when there is enough rain).

Besides lowering global sealevel, this action could cause substantial local climate change as evaporation area was increased, offering greater rainfall potential on the new shores. And of course, as someone says above, longer shorelines could make not only Africa but other continents more interesting and productive.

michaelgraaf

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> Pingback from Musings of a Child Genius: [lloydhumphreys.com]

lloyd_H

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> I'm all for Africa being remade to include lovely fjords, even if they're not equatorial enough. Science has achieved some wonderful things of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day.

Discrete-Daniel

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> I think View to a Kill way win for Dumbest Bond Girl EVER. She's abducted via blimp.

laughingacademy

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> @regis: I just recently re-read FORGE OF GOD, and I don't recall any extra destruction along the edges of tectonic plates. The mater/antimatter "bomb" was sufficient. MORE than sufficient, frankly.

riotnrrd

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> The "missiles" were just long and thin(nish) shafts of neutronium and anti-matter, orbiting the core and finally meeting up in the center.

While they were burrowing, self-replicating / self-assembling nukes were placed along fault lines to make handy breakpoints for the expanding plasma. The bombs actually had a clever idea by breaking sea water into oxygen and hydrogen, letting atmosphere get saturated with extra oxygen for some good global barbeque and utilizing the other bit for the bombs. Well thought-out package..

Book had a nice way of describing how a whole continent flipped up in the horizon. Sequel was nice, too, btw. Heavy stuff about revenge.

camaleonte

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> I think Captain Picard was working on doing something tectonically technical in one of the Trek movies. And Regis, in that book neutronium missiles burrowed their way all through the Earth, meeting in the core and causing a huge explosion. But, when the Earth was on its way out the crust did break up. It was sort of a YA novel.

Jeff-Minor

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> You left out the best way... Baking soda and Vinegar, right down a mine shaft. FTW

Garrison Dean, King Awesome

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> View to a Kill features a Duran Duran song over the title sequence - one of the best Bond songs ever, although it doesn't beat Shirley Bassey's Goldfinger.

Which leads me to free associate to mining applications - is there a better way to get gold out of the ground?

And what will Godzilla think if Tokyo is no longer earthquake prone?

Pouncer

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> didn't the greg bear novel "forge of god" have part of the earth destroyed by blowing up the edges of tectonic plates or something? or was that just an accessory to putting antimatter in the earth's core or something?

regis

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> The manipulation of plate tectonics is not a new idea, of course. Unfortunately, you're talking about manipulating something on a geological scale that is so huge, that an action in one area is likely to trigger unforseen consequences in other areas where said consequences might not be such a great idea... for example: mad genius scientist in Jakarta seeks revenge against his university fellows who mocked his ideas, triggers Earthquake in Los Angeles...but unwittingly generates Tsunami which travels back down the Pacific to innundate Jakarta just as he's climbing into his yacht to flee to Rangoon. Major bummer.

I'm also reminded of my favorite scene in the original SUPERMAN movie, where Lex Luthor, played by Gene Hackman, throws Superman an 'unsolveable' curve ball by launching two thermonuclear missiles at opposite sides of the U.S.A....one at Hoover dam, the other at Hackensack New Jersey. The unforseen consequence? Luthor's then-'moll', Eve Teschmacher, played by Valerie Perrine, protests "But LEX...my MOTHER lives in Hackensack!" Luthor simply checks his watch, looks back at her and shakes his head slightly ruefully. Comedy played to the nines...it brought the house down.

Recommended related reading: COLLISION COURSE by S. Kye Boult a.k.a. William E. Cochrane, Analog Science Fiction Magazine, July, 1972.

Hekkashesh

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> tectonic warfare - i.e. Wing Commander 3 - which brought the idea of planetary genocide in your livingroom. Ah, virtual violence... got to love it.

froggy

]]> <![CDATA[Top 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth]]> The questions posed are probably best answered with computer models. Applying any force to a system as complex as fault lines in a crust composed of different materials, each of which will react differently, will probably give us a model as accurate as those used for the weather. So, at this point, no, we can not hack the crust of the planet, nor will be doing so in the near future.

Jeff-Minor

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