- anton1792
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- Noble Legendary Member
"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum
It depends on so many things. Surface area, percentage of surface area by land and water, Ocean depths etc. On average, using a fleet of 2000 warships (Likely CCS or larger, as they are the ones described to carry the firepower) it would take 30 years to glass Earth.
They cannot boil off entire oceans, atmospheres and reduce an entire planet's crust to molten slag and glass in any period of time within a Human lifespan. To do so in the first place would require more than 256 times more energy than the Sun produces every second. That energy dispensed in a week, a few days or however long a time frame it was originally described to be gives a slightly ridiculous wattage and an even more ridiculous mass of fuel required.
Opog says everything needed really. Total glassing is not really required. Targeting cities, military bases, grain belts and kicking up enough dust to smog up the atmosphere would suffice.
Posted by: opogjijijp
A Covenant ship can glass 1 acre in 15 seconds. Reach is bigger than Earth. I'll give it a diameter of 15,000 km. Estimating the shape as a sphere, that's a surface area of ~700,000,000 km^2, or ~170,000,000,000 acres. Tthe time should be 81,000/[number of ships in the fleet] years.
Of course, this all depends on your definition of 'glass.' You could kill the population, destroy any cities, and seriously mess with the environment with much less time. You don't need to completely burn every square centimeter of the surface with plasma to cause a lot of damage.