Timeline for Killing a star safely
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
17 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 24, 2019 at 10:29 | comment | added | Luaan | @MikeScott It takes that long because all of the Sun (and most importantly, the extremely hot and dense core) is in the way. If you split the mass of the Sun into 20 separate chunks, this isn't a problem. And that's before you even take into account that the chunks are going to have a much larger combined volume than the Sun. | |
| Jul 22, 2019 at 21:04 | comment | added | SRM | MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH! A friend pointed out that as the chunks acrete matter, the hydrogen may form a natural lattice structure of some regularity depending upon the nature of this New Force that we are proposing for our seeds. That latice may have reflective properties that keeps the photons contained. Because fusion has stopped in the chunks, they won't overheat... so we DON'T HAVE TO WAIT FOR COOLDOWN! That peels hundreds of thousands of years off of this solution! | |
| Jul 22, 2019 at 17:51 | comment | added | Peter Cordes | @SRM: Oh right, an icosahedron has 12 vertices. I'm used to thinking of the 20 faces, not the vertex count. Anyway like I said, pure repulsion means you don't need a regular polygon and can have arbitrarily many chunks. Short-range repulsion keeps chunks from merging. I think disintegration into a gas could that drags down Mercury + Venus is maybe the most interesting thing. | |
| Jul 22, 2019 at 17:23 | comment | added | SRM | Good solution on dissolving seed, but fact remains that 8 chunks isn’t enough to get below reaction mass. 14 is minimum (might be 12, but I left some error bars). @PeterCordes | |
| Jul 22, 2019 at 15:22 | comment | added | Peter Cordes | If the seed repulsion force is short-range (e.g. scales with 1/r^3 like a pair of bar magnets), it could separate the chunks out to a point where the force is balanced by gravity. Whether or not you get even-sized chunks or they form an icosahedron, short-range repulsion will keep them from merging. If one chunk ends up too big, you could maybe stimulate one to split? I'm not sure how we justify repulsion splitting big chunks but not just poofing the sun into a gas cloud, though. Maybe that actually happens, but gravity limits it to only enveloping Mercury + Venus, not quite dragging Earth. | |
| Jul 22, 2019 at 15:18 | comment | added | Peter Cordes | To let the sun come back together, inject something into the chunks that counters whatever repulsion the seeds are providing, or weakens them. Having the seeds unaltered destroyed by solar temperatures raises the question of why that didn't happen when they entered a hot sun in the first place. (Maybe they suffer some damage during that initial phase, and will eventually be destroyed by heat / plasma.) | |
| Jul 22, 2019 at 12:55 | comment | added | SRM | (The alternating octagon is the same result as all-positive chunks.) | |
| Jul 22, 2019 at 12:54 | comment | added | SRM | @adam I already mentioned the octagon and my theory of its drawbacks in my answer. | |
| Jul 22, 2019 at 7:46 | comment | added | Adam Chalcraft | You could split the sun into 8 as you suggest, then each of these pieces into 8 pieces. That can be done with +/- charges. | |
| Jul 21, 2019 at 18:07 | comment | added | SRM | @MikeScott Thanks. Edit made. | |
| Jul 21, 2019 at 18:07 | history | edited | SRM | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
add link to problem #3
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| Jul 21, 2019 at 17:30 | comment | added | Henry Taylor | I really like this, but I think with the issues of scale and time, it will fit into my stories as part of the back story. Perhaps the messenger's civilization used this approach for their suns, (which will let me keep the cover graphics and cool "Divided Star" series name) while leaving the humans to find a more mundane solution such as what AlexP offered in a comment on one of the other answers. Thanks! This is really great work! +1 | |
| Jul 21, 2019 at 17:29 | comment | added | Mike Scott | sunearthday.nasa.gov/2007/locations/ttt_sunlight.php | |
| Jul 21, 2019 at 17:27 | comment | added | SRM | @MikeScott Got a citation I can add to Problem #3 discussion? I knew it would be a long time. | |
| Jul 21, 2019 at 17:25 | comment | added | Mike Scott | It takes tens or hundreds of thousands of years for energy created in the sun’s core to emerge as visible light. Even if you break it up into chunks and turn off the fusion reactions, the fragments will be emitting light for a very long time. | |
| Jul 21, 2019 at 17:25 | history | edited | SRM | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
add PS
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| Jul 21, 2019 at 17:16 | history | answered | SRM | CC BY-SA 4.0 |