Neil deGrasse Tyson: How to Blow Up a Planet

When a fan asks Neil deGrasse Tyson what would happen to our Solar System if the Death Star from Star Wars blew up Mars, Neil goes one step further and explains to Eugene Mirman the physics of how you might actually go about blowing up a planet. (If you're planning a career as an evil genius, mad scientist or cosmic conqueror, you may want to take notes.)

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Science meets pop culture on StarTalk! Astrophysicist & Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, his comic co-hosts, guest celebrities & scientists discuss astronomy, physics, and everything else about life in the universe. Keep Looking Up!

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[Gromitdog]

@ 0:15 the host tries to imply that he's not familiar with Alderaaan, meanwhile at home he has every lego star wars ever produced and plays with them daily.

[DERPCALYPSE]

This is why I like this dude, he answers questions I didn't even know I was asking.

[ThatLegends]

*Frieza interrupts chat*

Oh, please. You Earthlings over-complicate everything.

[Ceruleanturkeyz]

Neil looked so offended when Rover was brought up.

[SkillLevel]

All it takes is a power level of 300. I, alone, have a power level of over 5, 000. And Nappa, here, has a power level of about 3, 000. That damn Kakarot has a power level of OVER NINE THOU... nevermind.

[hossesarse]

Three downvotes... survivor guilt, because these Alderaanians weren't home on the big day. 8D

[SatoshiMatrix]

I love the fact that Neil actually took this question seriously and gave it a serious answer. That's why he's my favorite celebrity above any actor or athlete.

[Eric]

Tyson is a preeminent astrophysicist. He knows a lot more about it then anyone who commented here. Yet you are positive he is wrong. You made a guess without any evidence or understanding of physics. I will go with Tyson on this one.

[NickGreyden]

Thanks for the shoutout about EPAP. Some pretty sweet stuff.

[thenorm]

The gravity also doesn't just disappear. We would still experience the gravitation from all of the martian particulate in a relatively smooth function.

[kalafaye]

*steeples fingers together*

Excellent.

[sontus]

Why can't we get the audio feed from the studio mic's? It sounds like we're getting the audio from the mic that's built into the camera and it's picking up ALL THE SOUNDS!

[Eric]

Getting rid of Jupiter would not screw up the system because of gravity. The other planets would continue on in their orbits, just without the perturbations caused by Jupiter.
However, because of its size, the energy required to "get rid of Jupiter" would be so great, that it would vastly out shine the sun, like a small super nova. Although short lived, it likely would be enough to exterminate all life on earth.

[greenzoid]

gravitational fields decrease exponentially the further away you get from its source

[batsali]

Anything with mass can have satellites, the problem is perturbations of those satellites' orbits due to other bodies. If you put a fist sized ball of lead in middle earth orbit, so the atmosphere has less of an effect, you can have peas orbiting that no problem. Their orbital period will be quite long though, since the masses involved are so small.

[negativeindustrial]

The real question I’ve never seen anyone ask is why didn’t the Empire just destroy Yavin instead of Yavin 4 (To those that don’t know, the rebel base was on Yavin 4 which was a moon of a gas giant not unlike Jupiter. The Act III tension of the original SW movie centered around the Death Star being required to enter a powered orbit around Yavin in order to obtain a clear shot at Yavin 4, where the entirety of the Rebel Leadership and a good portion of it’s combat machinery was hiding. This presented the Rebellion with just enough time to mount a counteroffensive and destroy the Death Star.)
Would it not have been equally effective to destroy the gas giant itself? What would be the result of that on the moon, assuming it wasn’t consumed by the resulting explosion? I’ve always assumed it would arc off into the star system to either be recaptured by the host star or, if conditions were such, it would be flung off into deep space, correct? Also, what would be the effects on the local environment on the moon itself if the gravity of the gas giant were suddenly removed?
Anyone out there know these answers?

[Eric]

Even though there is a lot of mass in Mars, space is big. Very big. Yes, we will see big meteor showers. However, the likelihood of a chunk, large enough to do serious damage, hitting earth is still small. How small depends on many factors. Generally, the more energy used to blow up Mars, the smaller the remaining pieces will be, and the faster they will be going. They might even achieve escape velocity from the solar system. We are talking about a *lot* of energy.

[fredguy]

Is there full video uploads of startalk on youtube?

[gforce]

The planets do interact with each other, but Mars is tiny really. It's gravity doesn't have that much effect on Earth or the other planets. Now if you get rid of Jupiter you can really screw up the system :P

Mind you blowing up Mars still means Earth is screwed, not because of a change in our orbit but from the chunks of rock that will eventually crash into us. Mars is not a big planet, but it's still a lot of material there, we're talking about one hell of a meteor shower here :)

[Psychotol]

Interesting someone mentioned Jupiter.

I think you might actually need less energy to blow up jupiter than you would Mars.

Jupiter would then turn about 7% of it's mass into energy and do the rest of the work for you.