She Can Move Mountains (Literally)
Imagine we're in a world where massive, outrageous amounts of energy are available at our fingertips. Perhaps one of those crazy cold fusion ideas panned out, or we eventually built ourselves a --partial-- Dyson sphere of glittering solar panels around the Sun. It matters not how.
Now, one of the characters living in this setting (let's call her Young Alice) has a summer cottage. And she thinks the view from her porch would be a lot better with some minor landscaping, such as moving (or perhaps just wiping out) a series of mountain peaks in the distance.
What sort of technology would be required to be able to literally dismantle mountains with a labor force of 0$^*$?
* well, technically $\lim_{x \to 0}x$, since she has to think it at least.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/17639. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
With unlimited energy, and an afternoon to get the job done, I think anti-matter is going to be the best way.
A large-scale power plant generating 2000 MWe would take 25 hours to produce just one gram of antimatter.
One gram of antimatter annihilating with one gram of matter produces 180 terajoules, the equivalent of 42.96 kilotons of TNT (approximately 3 times the bomb dropped on Hiroshima)
So with unlimited energy the only real question is how much you will need, and for that placement is going to be key. Put a couple supercomputers on the job of calculating the structure of the mountain to determine the optimal placement and force needed.
The hardest part is going to be getting the anti-matter deep enough into the mountain that it will shatter it, instead of just using it as a backstop and sending the energy out into the atmosphere.
Some automated digging robots could do that, but would probably take longer than an afternoon. Maybe a 4 day holiday weekend project?
Lets say you can dig a shaft down to the heart of the mountain, using some natural fissures and stuff... I'd try 4 grams to start with. Should at least knock the top off, which could get Alice her ocean view, assuming she avoids the nuclear winter.
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