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It is 40k, canon is a lie.

As for regarding Exterminatus, IMHO it is a question of time.

A warship can eventually kill a planet, in fact it has become common for fleets to destroy worlds through "conventional" orbital bombardment. But it does take some time.

An exterminatus weapon meanwhile is as simple as point and click. Very useful when the planet in question has defenses or other phenomena that makes sitting in orbit complicated.

BTW, Earth's gravitational binding energy (that is the energy needed to mass scatter Earth) is 2x10^32 Joules. That is 4.78x10^16 megatons of TNT, or around 3.19 quadrillion (a million times a billion) castle bravo detonations (15 megatons)

The fact that the IoM has weapons that can mass scatter a planet is ridiculous.