[antstrangler]

You have to add velocity to the earth along it's orbit to raise it.

Would the moon do it: Size does not matter (despite what my ex may tell you). You can accelerate a bowling ball by throwing a tennis ball at it hard enough. You can do the same with the earth and moon if you throw it hard enough.

Lets give it a whack to increase perihelios by 0.89M km so that we average 150M km and a more circular orbit. We'll need a velocity increase of about 0.33 km/s. If we assume that it's an inelastic collision we'd need to throw the moon at the earth at about 27km/s.

It's popular to measure energy in comparison to nuclear weapons. That is about 10E14 times the energy of the most powerful nuclear bomb ever designed.

You should dobule check my calculations before sending out RFQ for your doomsday device. If you just send this out to a contractor you will run the risk of looking silly to people who know what they're doing.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Isn't there a danger that the Earth will just break up instead of accelerating it if you hit it with a very large mass moving at a very great speed?

[antstrangler]

Yes. The good news is that most of the mass will probably not reach escape velocity and eventually gravity will do the job of pulling it together.