Molecular Disrupter Device
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The Molecular Disrupter Device is a fictional weapon of mass destruction featured in the Ender's Game series of science fiction novels by Orson Scott Card. Given the awkwardness of saying "molecular disrupter device" or "molecular detachment device", the name was abbreviated to "M. D. Device", which mutated into "The Little Doctor" and "Dr. Device".
Motivation for creation
After the devastation caused by two invasions by an ant-like extraterrestrial race known formally as the "Formics" and informally as the "Buggers", Earth's military and scientific minds sought a way to permanently neutralize the Formic threat. All attempts at diplomacy and communication had failed. Humanity picked up several important pieces of technology from the Formic equipment, including gravity control and the possibility of faster-than-light communication.
Mechanism
A basic explanation of the function of the Little Doctor appears in Ender's Game. The device produces a beam whose focus point has the ability to disrupt the bonds between atoms in molecules. The device also creates a field in which nearby molecules are also destroyed, and each dissolved widens the reach of the field. In the absence of nearby mass, such as the vaccuum of space, the field dissipates rapidly, but a tightly-clustered formation of ships could be easily destroyed.
In Ender's Game, the only thing said about the weapon's physical characteristics is that it employs a directed energy beam; "it can't shoot around corners," Ender deduces. Three thousand years later, in Children of the Mind, it has become a missile, small enough to fit inside a small room; a removable section of casing allows it to be shut off, and instructions on how to do so are printed all over its surface (turning it on, a military officer explains, is the difficult part).
Deployments of M. D. Devices
The M.D. Device was dispatched with several interstellar fleets heading towards the Formic homeworld. The ships were also equipped with ansibles, allowing Earth to develop the strategies and leaders needed for battle while the fighting force was still in transit. From Command School, Ender Wiggin remotely ordered the use of the Device on the enemy planet, resulting in the planet's complete destruction. It had not been previously tested on an object of such scale. Ironically, Ender used the Device on the planet in order to flunk himself out of Command School: deceived into thinking he was attempting to pass his final exam, he decided to prove himself too dangerous, too uncivilized to actually command against the Formics. Ender carried this guilt with him for many years.
In Xenocide, the Starways Congress deploys a fleet to destroy the planet Lusitania. The planet is host to a sentient species known as the pequeninos, but also an extremely infectious and destructive virus, the "descolada," which, if allowed contact with life on any other planet, would almost certainly cause planet-wide extinctions and ecological disaster. Despite this, the pequeninos have demanded their right, as sentient beings, to spread out amongst the stars, and despite this, the human scientists on Lusitania (and, later, the revived Formics) have agreed to help them do so, in direct violation of a Congressional law forbidding the donation of technology to less-advanced life forms. With the colony now in rebellion and harboring an extremely potent bio-weapon, Congress decides to destroy it. By the end of the book Children of the Mind, however, Peter Wiggin and Si Wang-mu, with the help of their allies, convince Congress to change its mind, and xenocide, via the use of the Little Doctor, is averted.