Planet Busters

[Bussani]

Feel free to correct me.

Okay. Blowing up planets doesn't work that way. The "size" doesn't mean much--you have to work out the gravitational binding energy. The formula for this is:

3GM² / 5r

Where G is the universal gravitational constant, M is the mass of the planet/moon, and r is its radius. In other words, a planet is more difficult to blow up when it's a) bigger (as in, a larger radius) and b) heavier (as in, it has more mass, and thus more gravity holding it together). Using the formula, we can work out that the Earth is almost 1800 times harder to blow up than the moon. If Piccolo could blow up the moon with a battle power of 400, a battle power of 720,000 would be needed for the Earth, assuming it all scales linearly. Of course, Kame-sennin blew up the moon with a smaller battle power than that; assuming it was 180 (the highest number attributed to him in any guide), 324,000 would be needed for the Earth.

Interestingly, when you consider how large and dense Planet Vegeta must be to have ten times Earth's gravity, the above means that a battle power of over five billion (edit: whoops, it's actually more like eleven billion) would probably be needed to blow it up...!

This is all pretty silly, though. Toriyama obviously never put this much thought into it. But hey, I always find it fun!

PS: The thing about "destroying the planet's core so it blows up" also makes no sense. Realistically speaking, you can't destroy a planet more easily by somehow targeting the core. Not that I'm saying Dragon Ball is supposed to be realistic.

[Kiyza]

Looking at this from the perspective of a general audience member as opposed to a mathematician/physicist like everyone else in the thread seems to be doing, I'm going to say that the thing about blowing up planets never really bugged me. When reading/watching a series like Dragon Ball, I know that I'm going to have to constantly suspend my disbelief because the series is pretty largely an absurd, lighthearted series. If they tell me that Character A can destroy a planet, I say, "Sure, why not?", grab my bucket of popcorn and watch the planet-destroying fireworks. I think it would be more likely to bother me if the series hadn't already delved into science fiction aspects by the time that people had the strength to blow up Earth. In space, especially when it's softer sci-fi, I almost kind of expect a planet to get blown up every now and then.

[Fox666]

But look at his words:

Even if you save yourself, the Earth will be smashed to pieces!!!!!

Are these his exact words? Considering he says "Even if you save yourself" I would be inclined to think that he is talking about destroying the Earth's core rather than busting the planet as Goku wouldn't be able to save himself if he did do a planet buster, lol.

Vegeta is saying that if Goku dodges the Garlic Gun, the Earth will be destroyed.

[Nex Carnifex]

Well I always thought their attacks didn't blow up the earth because they could control the explosion to a degree as long as it wasn't an all out charged to the max attack, which ties into how they can hide their ki from being detected.

[Bussani]

Looking at this from the perspective of a general audience member as opposed to a mathematician/physicist like everyone else in the thread seems to be doing, I'm going to say that the thing about blowing up planets never really bugged me. When reading/watching a series like Dragon Ball, I know that I'm going to have to constantly suspend my disbelief because the series is pretty largely an absurd, lighthearted series. If they tell me that Character A can destroy a planet, I say, "Sure, why not?", grab my bucket of popcorn and watch the planet-destroying fireworks. I think it would be more likely to bother me if the series hadn't already delved into science fiction aspects by the time that people had the strength to blow up Earth. In space, especially when it's softer sci-fi, I almost kind of expect a planet to get blown up every now and then.

Don' get me wrong, I may like applying ridiculously realistic math to this subject for fun, but it doesn't bother me if Dragon Ball wants to blow up planets, or even be inconsistent with who can and can't. The thread's question is more about whether it happened too soon. Once you've reached the point where you're blowing up planets, it's kind of hard to display feats of strength that outdo that, you know? You can't escalate things further unless you blow up...I don't know, a star or something.

Does this matter in the long run? Not really.

[Mystic Gohan]

Power scaling was definitely messed up. If 18k vegeta could blow up the planet, then in the Cell/Buu arcs, even an uncharged ki blast should destroy the planet. Apparently the earth gets stronger with the characters.

[goku the krump dancer]

Looking at this from the perspective of a general audience member as opposed to a mathematician/physicist like everyone else in the thread seems to be doing, I'm going to say that the thing about blowing up planets never really bugged me. When reading/watching a series like Dragon Ball, I know that I'm going to have to constantly suspend my disbelief because the series is pretty largely an absurd, lighthearted series. If they tell me that Character A can destroy a planet, I say, "Sure, why not?", grab my bucket of popcorn and watch the planet-destroying fireworks. I think it would be more likely to bother me if the series hadn't already delved into science fiction aspects by the time that people had the strength to blow up Earth. In space, especially when it's softer sci-fi, I almost kind of expect a planet to get blown up every now and then.

My Thoughts exactly!!!

[Hellspawn28]

It can be a hyperbole too if a character claims to do something without backing it up. Just like when Cell claims that he can use the Genki Dama when there is really nothing states that he can. Given that he has shown to be cocky then I won't be surprise if he lied about that and that he could destroy the Earth's solar system.

[Piccolo Daimao]

It can be a hyperbole too if a character claims to do something without backing it up. Just like when Cell claims that he can use the Genki Dama when there is really nothing states that he can. Given that he has shown to be cocky then I won't be surprise if he lied about that and that he could destroy the Earth's solar system.

But nothing contradicts that Cell can use the Genki-Dama, so why assume that he can't? It was only DBZ Movie #7 that said a pure heart is required for a Genki-Dama, and the only other thing said on the matter in the source material, the manga, was that the Genki-Dama won't hurt you if you've got a pure heart and/because you can bounce it back.

Why would Cell say that he can use it when he can't? What's the point of a pointless bluff like that, and what's the reason to think otherwise? He has Gokuu's cells, therefore he has the ability to use the Genki-Dama. Simple as. Same with the solar system statement. If Freeza could destroy a planet (and detonated another's core so it blew up by itself), then why couldn't a much stronger Cell destroy the solar system?

[Rocketman]

Someone half as strong as Nappa can planet bust.

The Earth is roughly 6x's the size of the moon.
When Piccolo busted the moon, his BP was over 400
400 x 6 = 2400 which equals 2 Raditz 8)
2400 is enough to destroy an Earth-sized planet.

Feel free to correct me.

The Earth is 100 times more massive than the Moon. Mass matters, not "size".
Roshi pops the Moon at ~140.
140 x 100 = 14,000
The first character to threaten the Earth is also the first character above 14,000 - Vegeta.

It's complete bullshit, but the idea that a single organism could summon enough energy to destroy the Moon (and then the Moon's absence doesn't wreck the Earth) is so bullshit there's no saving it.

[Fox666]

It's complete bullshit, but the idea that a single organism could summon enough energy to destroy the Moon (and then the Moon's absence doesn't wreck the Earth) is so bullshit there's no saving it.

Actually all superheroes are bullshit.

[Piccolo Daimao]

Of course it's bullshit; it's fucking Dragon Ball. That's like pointing out that rabbits have puffy tails.

[Hellspawn28]

Simple as. Same with the solar system statement. If Freeza could destroy a planet (and detonated another's core so it blew up by itself), then why couldn't a much stronger Cell destroy the solar system?

It takes a lot of power to destroy the solar system. Being stronger then character A does not mean you can destroy more. If it takes 500 million times more energy to destroy the sun than the earth then I guess Super Perfect Cell would have be 1,000 times stronger then Freeza?

[Mystic Gohan]

Which could quite honestly be true.

[Bussani]

In the real world, the sun would take somewhere over one billion times more energy to blow up than the Earth. Building upon my previous numbers, that would be a battle power of around 324,000,000,000,000.

...Someone might find that interesting...

[Nex Carnifex]

Vegeta probably wasn't going to completely destroy the earth, clearly he was just really angry and spouting bullshit, but he would probably wipe out a good chunk of the surface. Frieza definitely destroyed Planet Vegeta and did almost destroy Namek in one shot, so yeah he can blow one up. But later on, characters hit the earth quite often without destroying much. This is easily dismissed as ki control in my mind, they can hold back their ki so they can't be sensed, why can't they control the physical radius of their attack? Though when they are charging up a whole lot like say a full power kamehameha, that's when they can't just control its radius and need to be careful. You also need to take into consideration that their are different forms of attacks, some are especially for destroying planets, those are usually in the form of a ball or "bomb". I wouldn't say its bullshit, the characters made it pretty clear they can control their own energy.

In the real world, the sun would take somewhere over one billion times more energy to blow up than the Earth. Building upon my previous numbers, that would be a battle power of around 324,000,000,000,000.

...Someone might find that interesting...

battle power doesn't directly translate to destructive ability and the physics in Dragon Ball are a lot different probably because everything contains ki which is also powerful energy. Blowing up a planet's core shouldn't make it blow up, but I guess in Dragon Ball that disturbs it's energy and causes it to overload. In reality that would only make it cave in and turn into a big ball of lava.

[Bussani]

Any math I used above was an elaborate way of saying that applying math to Dragon Ball is silly. Fun, too, if you ask me, but silly nonetheless. In other words...

battle power doesn't directly translate to destructive ability

...you'll get no argument from me.

[goku the krump dancer]

battle power doesn't directly translate to destructive ability

Which is why I believe the androids can't destroy planets, even though they are capable of flattening the average Super Saiyan who could probably destroy multiple planets at a time.

[Nex Carnifex]

battle power doesn't directly translate to destructive ability

Which is why I believe the androids can't destroy planets, even though they are capable of flattening the average Super Saiyan who could probably destroy multiple planets at a time.

Yeah I don't think they have the ability to utilize their ki in that way. Like did Trunks' blast that killed Frieza make an explosion at all? Nope. The explosion was pretty much contained to that tiny radius from his hand, but it still did more damage than the Spirit Bomb.

[Zephyr]

Like did Trunks' blast that killed Freeza make an explosion at all? Nope. The explosion was pretty much contained to that tiny radius from his hand, but it still did more damage than the Spirit Bomb.

Not necessarily. All it did was vaporize Freeza's diced remains. I doubt Freeza was still alive after being chopped into pieces, and if he was, I doubt he'd have been able to use any kind of ki to defend against even the weakest of blasts.