What If We Cut Earth in Half…?

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OK, one Earth is good,

but two Earths is even better.

Today, we're taking our blue marble of a planet and splitting it right down the middle.

There are many ways you could attempt to divide the planet.

You could crack it open with an asteroid, blow it apart with nuclear weapons or start digging.

But no matter what, you'd have your work cut out for you.

Having an asteroid do the job would be a risky move.

The one that made this 160 km (99 mi) wide and 40 km (25 mi) deep

crater in South Africa was bigger than the Chiculub asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.

A planet-splitting space rock would need to be much bigger.

And we wouldn't fare very well.

Now, blowing things up could get messy too.

Just to match the energy of the dinosaur-killing asteroid, you'd need to set up at least one billion nuclear bombs. To split the Earth in half, you'd need to make a ring of bombs running around the globe. And yeah, that idea probably wouldn't work very well, either.

Digging and cutting your way through the planet seems like the least damaging option.

And how hard could it be?

Humans dig things all the time, right?

Well, I hope you don't mind sweating up a storm because things are about to get hot.

Really hot.

To start cutting through the planet, first you'd need to get through the crust.

And the best place to start digging would be where this first layer is the thinnest.

That would mean venturing beneath the ocean where the crust can be as little as 5 km (3 mi) in thickness.

After that,

you'd be staring face to face with the mantle.

At about 2,900 km (1,800 mi) thick, this would be the layer you'd spend the most time working through.

But luckily, the drilling would get a little easier, thanks to the fact that the mantle is made up of partially melted rock.

But this layer is melted for a reason.

It's incredibly hot.

And the deeper you get, the higher the temperature and the pressure around you would climb.

You'd need some serious heat-resistant gear for this kind of work. Even at the top of the mantle, temperatures can be as high as 1,000 °C (1,832 °F).

Toward the bottom, you'd be surrounded by an even more scorching heat up to 3,700 °C (6,690 °F).

Then, you'd run into a problem.

The kind of heat-resistant gear you'd need to get through this next layer doesn't exist.

Even Tantalum Hafnium Carbide Alloy, the most heat-resistant material you'd have at your disposal, wouldn't do you any good

once you reached the 4,000 °C (7,200 °F) range.

But for the sake of our scenario, you'd invent something new that would get you the rest of the way through.

Now you'd be working through Earth's 2,200 km (1,370 mi) thick outer core.

OK, finally

reaching the inner core of our planet, you'd be in for a serious amount of heat.

But not only that, the pressure within the core is 3.6 million times higher than it is at sea level.

Yeah, imagine all that pressure unleashing as you tapped into the core.

This would lead to an extremely violent ejection of molten iron,nickel and silicates from the Earth's mantle.

So it's a good thing

You decided to start drilling at the bottom of the ocean.

Otherwise, this molten rock would come all the way up on land to drown landscapes and create massive firestorms.

Now, on the other hand,

drilling under water, you'd make a huge mess for a lot of marine life.

You'd keep drilling until you came out on the other side.

At long last, this continuous ejection of all this material from the core would propel the two halves away from each other.

The planet would begin to separate.

Now, one major consequence you probably missed while planning this stunt is that each half would start to collapse in on itself almost immediately.

You'd be literally blown away by powerful gusts of wind as the atmosphere rushed to cover the planet's broken sides.

All of that thanks to gravity that would try to turn these two semi spheres into two spheres.

Luckily, that process would take millions of years.

For now, you should check out what crazy events would unfold on a split planet, while you can.

Some of the things that are coming might make you want to stitch these half-Earths back together again.

For one, this would really mess up our magnetosphere.

Usually, electric currents in the outer core drive the Earth's magnetic field.

But thanks to cracking that wide open, liquid metal from the Earth's outer core would begin to escape into space.

The core could cool down or stop churning altogether.

And that means Earth would lose the magnetic field that protects us from dangerous solar radiation.

Without our magnetic field, solar winds would strip the atmosphere from the half-Earth

Before you even had a chance to adapt to living there.

And from there, things would get even worse.

These two halves would be slowly drifting further apart from each other.

And the Moon wouldn't like that.

There's a chance that neither of the halves would have strong enough gravity to keep a firm hold on our lunar companion.

Yeah, the Moon might be set free to roam as a rogue space rock.

And without the Moon, you can add smaller tides, confused nocturnal animals and a wobbly tilt on both halves of Earth to the list of upcoming disasters.

But if these two Earths stayed close enough to each other, we might just keep the Moon.

It would keep orbiting us in a new orbit, like a planet in a binary star system.

This split would also wreak havoc on all the satellites that provide vital communication systems to both halves of the globe.

Like the internet.

Yeah, if you wanted to use the internet to communicate with friends and family across space, you'd have to hope that the satellites

take on a new orbit around the half-Earths.

It's likely that most, if not all of these satellites would have their orbits destabilized.

And as a result,

they could be thrown out into space or come crashing down onto either face of Earth, causing even more destruction.

After all the initial chaos, we'd have to settle into the reality of life on a split Earth.

The two semi-spheres would keep slowly moving away from each other.

And instead of sending shuttles to the Moon or Mars, we'd be sending spaceships to the other half of Earth to transport people and fetch food and materials.

One side of Earth might supply the other with certain types of produce, while the other could be the supplier of certain electronics or important minerals and metals.

Only buying anything that needs to travel across space would become enormously expensive.

Imagine a glass of milk costing upwards of $20,000 in this topsy-turvy, divided reality.

We probably should've experimented on something less consequential to every living thing on the planet.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for another story...

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