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NUCLEARSPACE MESSAGE BOARD (ACTIVE) -> SCIENCE FICTION & NUCLEAR POWER -> artificially rejuvenated stars ?
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10kBq jaro

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artificially rejuvenated stars ?
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Astronomer Martin Beech has suggested that some Blue Stragglers [a type of star] may be artificially rejuvenated stars.


M. Beech, "Blue Stragglers as Indicators of Extraterrestrial Civilizations?", EARTH, MOON AND PLANETS 49: 177-186 (1990).


http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/solar_astroengineering_Cathcart.html


"The nuclear reactions responsible for [solar] fusion take place where temperature is highest, at the center of the Sun. About 50 percent of this central hydrogen has already been transformed in this hot region. Yet there will remain vast masses of unburned hydrogen between the core and the solar surface. This is, in a sense, a malfunction in the machinery of the Sun. A ‘pump’ is needed to circulate the fuel and to help rid the central furnace of the ashes of the fusion process. We could in this way prolong the life of the Sun from 10 billion years to about 100 billion years! For this project we must ‘stir’ the material of the Sun periodically, much as one stirs a cup of coffee to mix the sugar and the liquid, or, even better, as one revives a campfire by pushing wood from the periphery into the hot coals at the center."



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GoogleNaut

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Interesting ideas. Makes me think that astroengineering is really nothing too complicated or challenging for a fully Class II Civilization. (A Class I civililzation is one in which the entire power production of the civilization is equal to the insolation of its planet. A Class II represents the power generated by a civilization that is capable of generating as much as its Star does. A Class III could represent an advanced galactic civilization and represents engineering abilities perhaps a million years in advance of our own.) Presently humanity is a Class 0, because we do not yet possess the generating capacity equivalent of the integrated sunlight falling on the face of half the world.

Anyways, some interesting ideas for humanity to work on in the coming millenia I suppose. Maybe some of the Planetary Novas we see are really just Astroengineering Projects that have failed! It might be best to try these things on someone elses suns before your attempt it with your own!

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Positronium


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Perhaps if we fling a relativistic neutron star or black hole into the sun on a tangential path just inside the inner core boundary we could subduct enough hydrogen into the wake to recharge the engine...

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john fraz


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RE: Stellar Husbandry
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting


This idea has been around for a while, in different forms. I've just recently seen references to core stirring, but "star lifting" was suggested by Criswell years ago, as a way to both extend the life of a star and to lift useful material from it.


A coronal mass ejection is Earth-Ocean masses of light elements, and if you could control the magnetosphere to cause the jets to leave in a controllable fashion, where they could be captured and stored, you'd create artificial comets to be used elsewhere.


Criswell suggested a few means, but the one I remember was to put a ring of solar powered stations around the Sun, about 5 radii out. They fire electron or CP beams at each other, using the energy to power their own beams. A conductor around trhe star bottles the magnetic field, and you then control the compression to cause slow mases to leave the photosphere at the polar regions for collection.


 If you reduce the Sun's mass to about .8, the expected lifespan is hundreds of billions of years.


He suggestred that it could start at a small experimental scale as soon as we have the capacity to build large structures from space resources. It could take millennia to show any differences, and hundreds of milions of years to really affect the Sun.


A long time ago Dyson suggested looking for "Dyson clouds" around other stars as a SETI search. The solar energy captured by the shell of collectors would re-radiate the energy as waste heat. Any number of Type-2 tricks which could be seen at interstellar distances.


 Aside from the bad S.F  (solid shell) "Dyson sphere", there has always been a problem with what to do with the polar orbits, while you're filing the ecliptic with habitats and industries. In his book "the Millennial Project", Savage suggested statite solar collectors, hovering a few AU above the ecliptic, beaming energy to users. He next suggested huge asteroidal mass accelerator rings to push ships up to high relativistic speeds. If you pump enough energy into it, you'd have a few months of several Gs, followed by a few weeks coasting between stars, until you start decelerating again. It'll never be cheap or easy, but nothing about any of this violates what we know now to be possible.


I recommend finding Criswell's original paper, for more solid ideas about how he suggested stellar husbandry could work.



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