What if it were real? Death Star Physics

Few methods of mass destruction are as iconic to fantasy and science fiction fans as the Death Star. In the epic Star Wars saga, the Death Star is one of the most iconic and terrifying weapons in George Lucas’ fictional universe.

This technological giant is capable of destroying entire planets with a single shot from its superlaser. Although it may seem unrealistic – and it is! – that a simple laser could cause this level of destruction, If we want to destroy a world the size of Earth with a single explosion in seconds, the laws of physics offer some very interesting options..

On astronomical scales, Earth is a rocky planet with nothing special about its size. But on a human scale, Our planet is an extremely large object with a total size of about 6×10.²⁴ kilogram of matter.

The gravitational force that holds the planet together is enormous, and if we were to destroy a body like ours, we would need to transfer enough energy to overcome the gravitational binding energy.

So what energy could this be? Fortunately, since the reputation that associates scientists with cows comes from reality, this has already been calculated: at least an impressive 2 × 10³² joule, so the number 2 and then 32 joules of zero energy.

This amount of energy is equivalent to about a billion hydrogen bombs, each weighing 1 megaton.

It would be naive to call generating this amount of energy in a laboratory a Herculean task. There is currently no known technology that can produce this amount of energy in a controlled manner.Even with nuclear fusion, the most powerful energy source we know.

The most powerful laser blasts ever created on Earth were only 10⁶ joules of energy, so if we want a “devastating superweapon,” we need to seek energy from the most powerful object in the Solar System: our Sun.

The sun is much more energetic and oscillates at a constant 4×10 oscillation rate.²⁶ watts of power. To destroy a planet like Earth, we would need to use the entire energy production of the Sun for a week. and somehow we convert it into useful energy to split atoms off the planet.

Our star shines thanks to the conversion of matter into energy: by converting hydrogen into helium, about 0.7% of the mass of each hydrogen atom is converted into pure energy, a process that converts the equivalent of 4 million tons of matter into energy every second.

However, it would not be possible to place this energy in any spacecraft, because to contain it within a device (to prevent overheating, expansion, and self-ignition) the spacecraft would need to have a million times more energy than this value.

But there is another option we can use: If we could convert the Earth’s approximately 2.5 trillion tons of mass into pure energyThis amount would be enough to destroy the entire world. A “simple” way to convert matter into pure energy is to collide it with an equal amount of antimatter, converting the mass of both into energy (according to Einstein’s famous statement E = mc²).

So instead of storing energy in a technological super-death sphere, we would create 2.5 trillion tons of antimatter (the equivalent of an asteroid several kilometers across) and place it in the planet’s core. Ready! Physics will do the rest.

Although humanity has created antimatter atoms in the laboratory, with antiprotons in their nuclei and positrons instead of electrons, it is technically impossible to obtain large amounts of antimatter. Fortunately for us (and any other alien civilizations that may exist), Building the Death Star is something even a mad scientist couldn’t do.

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