Grok wrote:

Some of us computer scientists were sitting around, bored, and decided
to nudge the Earth towards the Sun. It'd be convenient if it would
hit within our lifetime, so we could finish at least one project on
time and under budget in our lifetimes!

I'm not a physicist, nor did I take enough math or physics to figure
this out, so would like your help.

My guessing says we have to slow the Earth's rotation so that its
gravitational acceleration to the Sun overtakes it's angular momentum,
allowing us to smack into the big one.

How much force is required to slow us down enough so that the big
splashdown is within 50 years?

Boy, are you ever muddled. The Earth masses 5.9742x10^27 grams. Its
average orbital acceleration around the sun (at 1 AU or 499.004782
light-seconds) is 0.593008 cm/sec^2. Stop it cold in its orbit, F=ma,
and it falls into the sun nice as you please. Was that so hard? Go
figure out how long a non-orbiting Earth requires to fall from here to
the sun and get back to us with your calculations,

http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel/m215/.../falling2.html

Before you do the experiment you might want to calculate the
perpedicular area (watch that cos(theta)) to which the force is
applied (thereby getting pressure) vs. the crush strength of granite
and basalt.

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!