Tiny cars are nothing new. Fifty years ago, Europe hoped to entice Americans with a different mini auto. The Bomb was small enough to fit under some trucks but got an impressive 100 miles per gallon.

In a word: no. It would be impossible to destroy the Red Planet with any device scientists can build, let alone finance. Planets can survive enormous assaults; the Hellas Basin, a Martian crater about 1,300 miles wide, testifies to the planet having once collided with an asteroid so massive that the impact generated well over a hundred million megatons of energy. If a meteoroid that size were to hit Earth, it could wipe out life on an entire continent.