How do you stop this alien.

[pernero]

This is more of a discussion than a riddle, but there are multiple answers.

An alien lands in France.

He moves at a pretty slow, walking pace (lets say, 2.5 km/h). He shoots lasers out of his eyes and his hands that instantly kill and disintegrate all people and objects (regardless of their chemical composition). The lasers are dead accurate.

His armor protects him from all damage, including bombs, bullets, any type of wavelength or frequency wave, any type of chemical or chemical reaction, can adjust to ANY temperature, and also makes him immune to all illnesses and (computer) viruses.

He can float and fly freely, but also does so at a slow pace.

He can also swim, jump and climb.

We can track him using a GPS unit.

He has superstrength, and can lift any object.

You can not reason with him and he has no emotion, except for a killer instinct.

I've thought of two ways to stop this thing before he annihilates the entire world, can you think of any more?

[kriel]

any type of wavelength or frequency wave

Does that include magnetics?

Spoiler'd for thinking out loud.

Spoiler:

We can't encase it in concrete/whatever because his super-strength will allow him to break free.
We can't damage him, he's proven invulnerable as far as I can tell.

Make sure we are moving away faster than he is moving towards us?

But seriously, I'm stuck. O.o

[Hörður Mar]

This problem can be solved by means of antimatter and/or Chuck Norris. To stay on the safe side, let's make an antimatter replica of Chuck Norris.

[pernero]

A nomad lifestyle is a possibility, infact it was the weaker of my answers.

[GreedyAlgorithm]

An alien lands in France.

He moves at a pretty slow, walking pace (lets say, 2.5 km/h). He shoots lasers out of his eyes and his hands that instantly kill and disintegrate all people and objects (regardless of their chemical composition). The lasers are dead accurate.

Um. What? Are the lasers shooting everything? If so then they are instantly disintegrating the entire earth. If not then there are things they are not disintegrating. Which is it?

His armor protects him from all damage, including bombs, bullets, any type of wavelength or frequency wave, any type of chemical or chemical reaction, can adjust to ANY temperature, and also makes him immune to all illnesses and (computer) viruses.

What does this even mean? If he is not affected by any electromagnetic force then he cannot detect any electromagnetic force. But presumably he's still walking on the earth without sinking through?

We can track him using a GPS unit.

How? Is there a transmitter stuck on him that he refuses to disintegrate or something?

Basically if he is within the realm of physics as we know it then some of his supposed properties are false, and if he is not then neither am I and I make a voodoo doll of him and poke it in the eyes repeatedly.

[notzeb]

Basically if he is within the realm of physics as we know it then some of his supposed properties are false, and if he is not then neither am I and I make a voodoo doll of him and poke it in the eyes repeatedly.

Nice try, but even the voodoo doll is unstoppable.

[Fafnir43]

An alien lands in France.

He moves at a pretty slow, walking pace (lets say, 2.5 km/h). He shoots lasers out of his eyes and his hands that instantly kill and disintegrate all people and objects (regardless of their chemical composition). The lasers are dead accurate.

Um. What? Are the lasers shooting everything? If so then they are instantly disintegrating the entire earth. If not then there are things they are not disintegrating. Which is it?

The obvious answer is that they disintegrate precisely what he wants them to disintegrate, which be default will presumably be all living creatures in the area. Is that right?

His armor protects him from all damage, including bombs, bullets, any type of wavelength or frequency wave, any type of chemical or chemical reaction, can adjust to ANY temperature, and also makes him immune to all illnesses and (computer) viruses.

What does this even mean? If he is not affected by any electromagnetic force then he cannot detect any electromagnetic force. But presumably he's still walking on the earth without sinking through?

It says he's protected, not that he's not affected at all. I'm guessing pernero's talking about not being harmed by gamma rays or sonic weapons here rather than not being affected by the electroweak force.

We can track him using a GPS unit.

How? Is there a transmitter stuck on him that he refuses to disintegrate or something?

If he doesn't know it's there, sure. So how do we deal with him?

Spoiler:

Three words. Gigantic. Orbital. Catapult. Lure him to the right spot, press the button, and BOING! he can go destroy another planet. It would be pretty hard to implement - I'd say either antimatter or possibly nukes. (Antimatter applied directly to him wouldn't be feasible - since he's immune to the damage from the resulting explosions, using enough antimatter to annihilate a decently large part of him would destroy the planet as a side effect. Unless he's a micrometre tall or so, which changes the mental image substantially.)

Other semi-acceptable responses would include developing stasis technology (i.e. he sleeps until the end of time), or developing invisibility technology to the point at which everyone has their own cloak (he can't shoot what he can't see).

[Yakk]

I've thought of two ways to stop this thing before he annihilates the entire world, can you think of any more?

Time travel.

Otherwise, the being looks down, and destroys the entire planet. Or looks up, and snuffs out the sun, then looks down, and destroys the entire planet.

Heck -- he looks at the sun (cutting a hole through the earth instantly if needed), bores a hole into the center, and causes a massive solar flare that blasts the planet away, if he wants to get fancy.

If you defeated this being without time travel, you probably made the being insufficiently creative in the use of the tools you provided. Ie: your nomadic lifestyle solution fails, because the being simply destroys the Earth between you and the creature, then destroys you.

[Ansain]

if his lasers could destroy anything and his armor is unbreakable, can his armor stop his own lasers? can these lasers be reflected like normal lasers?

how good are his sensory systems? could he see an ambush coming? how about ninjas?

Is he very intelligent? does he want to destroy the entire world or keep it alive and kill its inhabitants?

can he survive in deep space? could he just fly back to the planet from space? would a tractor beam (or other device) be able to move him into space or would he be able to stop himself via flying?

does his flight work in a vacuum? would he be able to survive without air?

[Lord Aurora]

He sure as hell picked the right country to land in.

(I had to do it!)

[Robin S]

if his lasers could destroy anything and his armor is unbreakable, can his armor stop his own lasers? can these lasers be reflected like normal lasers?

If they are that powerful, they will destroy anything reflective before it has a chance to reflect them.[/quote]

[++$_]

Build an identical alien and point them at each other. They'll be at it for a good long while. OR:

Sneak up behind him (presumably, the eyes are on the front) and attach a rocket engine or two to him (say, a couple of Saturn Vs). Presumably, the alien, though super-strong, has a relatively small mass. Rocket goes off, alien ends up somewhere out near Jupiter. Eventually, he'll make it back, but it'll take a while because he floats slowly. Or he might just decide to head off towards another star system. OR:

Wensleydale cheese. NOTHING can stand up against Wensleydale, not even super-armor.

Edit: Fine. Unspoilered.

[quintopia]

not spoilered since this is a discussion, not a riddle.

Construct a small singularity by collapsing Jupiter. Use it to bend his lasers back in his direction. Find out what happens when irresistible force meets immovable object.

[BoomFrog]

A nomad lifestyle is a possibility, in fact it was the weaker of my answers.

Well as was said earlier, your nomadic lifestyle is not a possibility if he is willing to bore holes through the earth. So either there needs to be some more limits or details to his behavior, or you should post your other "solution" so we can tell you why it doesn't work.

[pernero]

It seems the situation is more ambiguous than I thought. I'll have to leave this topic alone then and come back at a later time with a more narrow and detailed situation.

[Moonbeam]

Feed him some of my missus' cooking - trust me, that will stop him in his tracks .

[detinith]

Just to make it easier for me, I'm going to make some assumptions and summations from what's been described:
the alien is humanoid in that it has two legs, two arms (with hands connecting 5 fingers per hand), and a head (with two eyes in the front);
considering its weapons and method, its goal is the elimination of the human race in a terrifying manner (for what purpose, I can't guess);
because it lands on the planet and doesn't merely destroy the planet, Earth has a use that requires it not to be destroyed;
due to lack of emotion combined with superhuman strength, accuracy, floating/flying ability as well as ability to swim, jump and climb, it either has superhuman intelligence and physical ability, or is mechanical (also explains virus statement);
floating and flying ability can be used only within a non-vacuum (if it can maneuver in space, it only follows reason that it will orbit the Earth, incinerating any human it detects with its infinite accuracy);
compressive and piercing forces, temperature, chemical, inorganic and organic materials can't penetrate its "armor", and neither can particles or waves of any length;
it doesn't deem communication technology a threat (inaction on gps tracking unit or satellites).

I can only think of two basic ways that will remove this threat. Be it mechanical or otherwise, it must attain energy regardless of how massive its energy storage is. Because its armor can't be pierced by waves, and automatically adjusts to any temperatures, I guess it can't passively collect any energy and will thus eventually die/shut down after a period of time. Until this time, humans must avoid it at all costs using GPS devices.
If its energy storage allows it enough time to completely destroy humanity's ability to survive (only directly, as communications satellites are left alone, I reason it won't destroy anything but an actual human), my second method is its removal. Like others said before, we can build a catapult that will launch it outside of the Earth's effective gravity and hope it doesn't come back.

[Mimi]

I gave my friend the link to this thread, and this is what he told me to post:

tell them to find packets of salt, onions, silver, iron and fire. make a dome over the house. that will repel all first universal things. if their inter dimensional, throw a rock in the opposite direction, sneak onto their ship, and fly away

Edit: he also told me to add this:

and tell then as a last resort to make a dummy out of C4 explosives. they will suck it up and get blasted!

[Apolsis]

Sneak up behind him (presumably, the eyes are on the front) and attach a rocket engine or two to him (say, a couple of Saturn Vs). Presumably, the alien, though super-strong, has a relatively small mass. Rocket goes off, alien ends up somewhere out near Jupiter. Eventually, he'll make it back, but it'll take a while because he floats slowly. Or he might just decide to head off towards another star system.

Assuming that its slow walking pace of 2.5 \frac{km}{h} is also its flight speed, then we would only have to make it land on the moon: the escape velocity is (according to Wikipeda) 2.38 \frac{km}{s}. It would as a result be trapped on the moon forever.

Though, thinking about it, that solution is actually pretty stupid, since it assumes a lot of things about the alien's mode of acceleration that are not spelled out in the question. Its ability to fly at some set speed implies that he can arbitrarily overcome gravitational acceleration; this implies it could arbitrarily apply some acceleration to itself, but that would imply either that its flight speed is not fixed (or at least is fixed at a value higher than 2.5 \frac{km}{h}), or implies that its speed is fixed by terminal velocity (i.e. the force it can exert on itself is fairly low, so the amount of air resistance it can overcome is fairly low). If it can only apply a very small amount of acceleration to itself, then if we managed to rocket it to Jupiter (or any body significantly more massive than the Earth) it would never be able to overcome that planet's gravitational acceleration and would (at least in the case of Jupiter) just sink until it hit its solid core.

[Wyvernlink]

simple just fly down it's deathrays clogging them with wreckage!

or if you want a more sane method, setup a tracking system and a mobile lab that is capable of keeping away from the alien for long enough to create a blackhole generator and suck the alien in. A wormhole generator could be used in a similar way to ferry him to a blackhole.

[Patashu]

A thought; where on your body can you not point at with your eyes or palms?

[eddiekizer]

His armor protects him from all damage, including bombs, bullets, any type of wavelength or frequency wave, any type of chemical or chemical reaction, can adjust to ANY temperature, and also makes him immune to all illnesses and (computer) viruses.

Does his armor protect him against internal attacks (i.e, blowing him up with a grenade in his mouth?

Does it protect him against nukes?

Is there any way to remove his armor? If his lasers disintegrate everything, and his armor protects against everything, what happens if he tries to disintegrate the armor?

Also, is the armor full-body armor, a bodysuit, or just chest armor?

What is it made of?

Can we use subliminal messages to disorient him or make him kill himself?

Can we hire Criss Angel to make him fall asleep?

What is his energy requirement?

Can he die/is he mortal?


Socratic Method Beats All!

[Brineshrimp]

Spoiler:

Lure him over a "landmine" of the largest amount of explosives possible to man and see if we can *literally* blast him into orbit!

[MythGuyDK]

create a circular mirror panel of 2.5 km radius and a few feet of carbon nanotubes attached underneath. Create a dome with mirrors on the inside and similar amount of carbon nanotubeson the outside to put over the panel. Lure the alien into the center and drop the dome. The darkness will make the alien use the lasers to create light to see. The beam with bounce infinitely, and any problems with the laser heating the mirrors too much is covered by the nanotubes.

He's either disintergrated or oven-baked by the laser.

[Fin Archangel]

His eyes should be his weak point, because of the fact that his armor and lazors are distinct objects (as best as I can tell) and therefore comes the old Chinese "invincible spear and shield" parable. Therefore, his armor should be beneath his eyes at least, and therefore, if they are distinct objects, they must be made of different materials and even if they weren't, the lasers have to come up from somewhere, and then we either blow his eyes out or clog his laser tubing somehow. Either way, he becomes a very strong walking behemoth. We'll probably kidnap him, throw him onto a rocket, and blast him to teh moon or something.

[Notch]

Lure him over a "landmine" of the largest amount of explosives possible to man and see if we can *literally* blast him into orbit!

Except he'd just fall down again sometime later, regardless of what angle you launch him in. It'd be better to launch him hard enough towards something big enough to trap him.

[Fin Archangel]

Lure him over a "landmine" of the largest amount of explosives possible to man and see if we can *literally* blast him into orbit!

Except he'd just fall down again sometime later, regardless of what angle you launch him in. It'd be better to launch him hard enough towards something big enough to trap him.

But...wouldn't he be in orbit? How would he fall down?

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Except he'd just fall down again sometime later, regardless of what angle you launch him in. It'd be better to launch him hard enough towards something big enough to trap him.

You're lying! What makes you lie?!

[0.0]

Lure him to antarctica by placing a 2.5 km/hr robot just out of his blaster reach (assuming it has a finite range). Once their, have the robot drive in a large circle around antarctica at around 2.5 km/hr while continually staying out of blaster range.

Better yet, take photos of a targetless landscape (i.e Antarctica) and tape the photos over the aliens eyes. Of course he will still walk around crushing things with his feet, but then since he can't see whats really going on, simply lift him with a crane or put him on a giant treadmill and set it to 2.5 km/hr.

Or.. Lure him into the ocean so he is floating real slow. Sneak down under the water and tie a rope to his foot and slowly pull him out to sea every time he starts getting to close. He probably won't even notice you're pulling him if you're subtle enough.

Or.... Build a giant laser pointer and launch it into space attached to a mobile sattelite. Once up, use the little red dot to lure him to antarctica where he can live out eternity blasting at his new invincible foe of red aggravation.

[Antimony-120]

So far the options seem to be:

Avoid him
Remove him
Force him to destroy himself
Distract him (similar to remove him)
and Destroy the eyes

Alternate possibility:

Realize the struggle is useless. Get high/drunk and screw around. If still alive when sobriety/conciousness returns, Rinse and repeat. (really do rinse before repeating, you don't know where you've been)

On a more actually-solving-the-problem-note, give him some form of Chinese finger-trap device. The hard he struggles the worse it gets (Okay, I know he's strong enough to rip it in two but it would be absolutely hilarious if this worked.

[Ashbash]

Does it count if we destroy the entire world before he does?


Hey... it solves the puzzle

[0.0]

Ashbash, I was thinking the same thing. But the logistics would be ridiculous. Remember if you leave any bit of it undestroyed, he'll eventually get to it and destroy, so you have to be able to destroy it all without destroying yourself and your earth destroying tools. Once you accomplish that, you then have to destroy your earth destroying tool (since its part of earth) and once that feet is accomplished using no tools, you then would have to destroy your self somehow before the alien can.

[Nebuduck]

Can we harness him in some way to solve the world's energy problem? Somehow trick him into using his lasers to heat hydrogen up and produce nuclear fusion?

[Dalebert]

Spoiler:

It sounds like he cannot be destroyed so there's no point. You said his armor protects him from damage, but not that it can't be affected in other ways. In fact, you make it clear that the alien can be affected by radiation because we can monitor it with GPS. I think you meant to imply that we're tracking it with radar or something similar since GPS is based on an active transmitter on the thing that you're tracking. So that combined with the fact that the alien is slow means we ought to be able to make a huge electro-magnet or something with a range greater than it's own destructive beams and either pull it into space or just use electro-magnets to counter it's own very slow movement, effectively immobilizing it. If we pull it into space, we need to make sure that the device stays out of range of it's beams.

[Flaerzaen]

Instead of trying to defeat the alien, why don't we just run away.
Judging from the answers this thread has received (antimatter replicas and spatial waveform generators (wormholes whatevs )), it seems to me like this alien lands at a point in humanity's future where the only thing holding us back from developing any kind of technology we need is time.
So, and this is assuming the alien only targets lifeforms, I recommend we
1.) Find SOMETHING to keep it occupied...
2.) Invest in a MASSIVE interplanetary migration project and evacuate the planet. Terraform another planet and let Earth's girth defeat the alien
Humanity: 1
Alien: 0

[Fin Archangel]

Instead of trying to defeat the alien, why don't we just run away.
Judging from the answers this thread has received (antimatter replicas and spatial waveform generators (wormholes whatevs )), it seems to me like this alien lands at a point in humanity's future where the only thing holding us back from developing any kind of technology we need is time.
So, and this is assuming the alien only targets lifeforms, I recommend we
1.) Find SOMETHING to keep it occupied...
2.) Invest in a MASSIVE interplanetary migration project and evacuate the planet. Terraform another planet and let Earth's girth defeat the alien
Humanity: 1
Alien: 0

But his LAZORZ!!! ZOMG!!! have infinite range, right? Or if they don't they still have a pretty long range. He's just snipe us as long as we're in that range. I'm guessing it's over 8k miles, seeing as how him blasting the Earth of bits is a danger. (8k miles is about the diameter of the earth...I think.)

[OverBored]

This sounds dangerously like Power Rangers, presuming it is a big alien. Nonetheless I would argue that befriending him might be quite effective, or make him divide by zero.

[Ansain]

I am going to assume in my solution that the alien has perfect vision at any finite range, and that he is accurate with his lasers at any finite range.

This leaves the alien with one limitation, the horizon. He cannot see around the earth because light doesn't bend enough. if it did we could use his own lasers to shoot him in the back. Anyways, this means that if the alien is really tall he still has a limited range of around 5Km.

If the alien decides to use his power of flight to increase that range, he is still limited to no more than half the earth. I do not think he will use orbital attacks or any attacks from above. Here is my reasoning.
- The alien's laser can melt through anything
- The alien is trying to wipe out humanity
- The alien is landing on earth rather than just blowing it up
-- Therefore the alien must have a good reason not to destroy earth ( I assume the alien was created to eliminate life on a planet so that his creators can move in. Destroying said planet defeats the purpose)

- The alien does not want to destroy earth
- The aliens laser can melt through anything and destroy the earth.
-- Therefore the alien will not shoot at any target if the earth will also be hit.
-- Therefore staying out of a 5km range will save us.

If this is not a valid solution then there is no solution. The alien can destroy the earth the moment he lands if he wants to. He does want to wipe out humanity, that is the fastest way, and you have not given us a yes or a no on whether he even cares about the planet.

[Fin Archangel]

etc.

I think you got it there. However, nomadic hoomahns doesn't bode well with people. We're going to have to be continually walking or moving at (or at the average of) his pace in order to stay suitably away from him. Supposing he's not intelligent.

Btw, does he track us or does he arbitrarily walk around?

if he tracks us...
We find out which one of us he's tracking, or whether he tracks the entire group. If he tracks an individual, send that guy into space out of the alien's range. Slowly increase the distance from earth, and as the alien follows that person by flying, he eventually falls into space.

if he arbitrarily walks around...
We dig pits everywhere and wait until he falls in one and can't get out (and we make sure he can't fly out) and then we live in peace as long as we're 5 km away or so. He won't blast his way out because of what Ansain said.

All in all, this is going to be a pretty butthurt situation if it happens.

[FIREPROOFsoul25]

Assuming that the alien is using a laser that is based upon what we know of laser's properties and is therefore based on light, use the newly developed super black material developed at MIT that absorbs all light and turns it into heat. Create a shield between him and the earth as you use any means of large explosion or force to launch him into space. As he is hurtling out of the solar system, aimlessly trying to use his lasers to attack earth, create a super dense star then collapse it once again to contrive a blackhole far enough away not to affect the earth but close enough that it wont take millions of years for him to reach then he will not be able to escape the gravity due to his lack of acceleration, will not be able to die (invulnerable somehow), and his laser's will not escape the hole's gravity. The perfect prison. Unless blackholes lead to other parts of the universe... then we are doomed.