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In my story, an advanced alien civilization that can travel to other universes has created an infinite energy source, named "an amvelian core". This core resembles a small sphere in appearance (about the size of a baseball) and the aliens can use it to draw unlimited amounts of energy. Apart from that they can convert its energy into any form of matter (regular matter, antimatter, dark matter, even exotic and strange matter!) These aliens have also discovered a way to open up wormholes. According to their discoveries, there are wormholes all around the universe, connecting distant locations and even other universes. The problem is that they are extremely small, too small for even an electron to pass through. That's because gravity is trying to close up the wormholes. However thanks to the help of cosmic strings (string theory) threaded through them, these wormholes can remain open at their miniscule size. These wormholes are practically everywhere, for example, a single mote of dust can contain thousands of wormholes connecting with the far edges of the universe. Through some method, the aliens of my story have found a way to identify the location in witch the wormhole lead to and by adding exotic matter to it they can enlarge the wormhole for enough time, for a person, or a spaceship to pass through.

Now, in their solar system their parent star is slowly dying off (they have a few centuries before it dies). They have managed to keep their planet safe for some time now by "moving" their planet further away from their parent star. Here's a link to a video explaining how this would work: https://youtu.be/YHin6lk4KqU

However, since this can't last forever, the aliens had to came up with a solution. They built large stations orbiting the sun creating a dyson swarm. In some of these stations there are large machines that convert the energy from the amvelian cores into plasma while at the same time firing it out with high speed inside of a wormhole that is connected to the center of the star and is constantly opened thanks to exotic matter being continuously pumped into the wormhole. Through this method the star will never run out of fuel. However, there is a problem. By adding new fuel into the star's core, they ultimately increase its mass thus making it bigger and hotter. So, some of the other stations around the sun are instead used for a form of star lifting, in which they extract matter from the star's surface, convert it into energy and absorbing it into one of the amvelian cores (I probably should have mentioned this earlier, the amvelian core can also be used to absorb unlimited amounts of energy)

Anyways, my question is: is this a viable method to prevent a star from dying? Are there any mistakes i should look out for? Please let me know.

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    $\begingroup$ Hi Johnara, what you propose seems to be perfectly logically consistent, is that what you are asking? If so, you might need the reality-check tag rather than the science-based one, unless I'm missing something. So, you know stars don't just work by plasma losing heat to their solar systems, there's fusion, which converts hydrogen to helium, helium to lithium>carbon>oxygen>iron. It's worth looking up the science, even if you only obliquely refer to it in the story, just to get yourself oriented. $\endgroup$
    – Escaped dental patient.
    Jul 18, 2019 at 18:14
  • $\begingroup$ @Confoundedbybeigefish. Answers don't belong in the comments. $\endgroup$
    – Ash
    Jul 18, 2019 at 18:17
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    $\begingroup$ Why do they care about the sun? If these amvelian cores can be used to a) create infinte energy, b) destroy infinite energy, and c) create matter, and they have the wherewithal to create a Dyson sphere, then they can just cover their planet, use the amvelian cores to generate heat, and use them to absorb the dying sun's blast. $\endgroup$
    – Halfthawed
    Jul 18, 2019 at 18:21
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    $\begingroup$ @Ash My comment was intended to direct to refine the question's parameters, I may have missed the mark there. $\endgroup$
    – Escaped dental patient.
    Jul 18, 2019 at 18:28
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    $\begingroup$ Why would a civilization which can easily manipulate unboundedly large amounts of energy and matter care about one lousy star? It's like asking whether a very rich person can use their wealth to extend the lifespan of the pair of cheap socks they were wearing when they left high school. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Jul 18, 2019 at 21:15

3 Answers 3

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This is a frame challenge.

Sure, you can extend the life of a star if you have unlimited supplies of matter and energy... but why would you want to? What's the point?

If you already have unlimited energy, you don't need a sun. If yours is wearing out, just discard it. You could build an artificial replacement... but even that is more effort than it's worth. Given the baseball-sized scale of your free energy devices, you can just set one up in orbit of the homeworld, producing enough energy in the form of light to replace just as much of the original sun's energy as would have actually hit the planet. If the devices are power-limited, just use a bunch of them.

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It looks internally consistent but you may simply get a large bang, stars are, complicated. In theory if you have energy-matter conversion, and infinite energy, you can pump hydrogen into a star to sustain fusion beyond the normal life of the star. But stars are always a balance between the outward force created by photon pressure and the gravity from the mass of the star, adding mass or reaction fuel in the wrong place or in the wrong way that could cause that balance to come apart, and everything in the system with it. You will probably also want to use star lifting to balance the mass gain you're creating or the star is going to get really weird really fast.

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    $\begingroup$ I should think they would've practiced on some distant star before trying this at home! $\endgroup$
    – elemtilas
    Jul 18, 2019 at 20:11
  • $\begingroup$ @elemtilas You'd hope so but people are often more reckless than you'd imagine. $\endgroup$
    – Ash
    Jul 19, 2019 at 11:54
  • $\begingroup$ Also watch for simply adding and adding mass. Nobody wants an artificial neutron star. $\endgroup$
    – Joe Bloggs
    Jul 19, 2019 at 14:41
  • $\begingroup$ @JoeBloggs Thus suggesting that some star-lifting might be in order. $\endgroup$
    – Ash
    Jul 19, 2019 at 14:42
  • $\begingroup$ @Ash: Can star lifting be used to pull the heavy elements out of a stellar core, or simply removing the outer layers of hydrogen? I guess either if you have the energy for it! $\endgroup$
    – Joe Bloggs
    Jul 19, 2019 at 15:03
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Over a period of many tens of thousands of years, possibly. It takes something in the range of 100,000 years for heat from the core of a star to get to the surface. So if a star has used up its fuel, or "the pilot light has gone out" or something, then it takes that long for the surface to start to cool. And similarly that long for it to start to heat up again if you provided it with more fuel. So if it's already started to cool then it will take 100,000 years to warm up again at least, even if you do supply fuel. Maybe your culture gets impatient waiting.

If you've got wormhole physics laced up there are lots and lots of things you can do to get energy, possibly much more conveniently than playing games with a star. Depending on how much energy it requires to open the portal and keep it open, of course.

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  • $\begingroup$ Most stars do technically cool as they age, but not in the way that you seem to think. They actually get much, much brighter (despite their decreasing surface temperature) as they expand into red giants after using up the hydrogen in their cores. This is why the aliens in the question have been moving their planet away from their star- the star is getting brighter (and bigger and redder), and if they didn't do anything, it would boil away their oceans. They want to slow this process by injecting fresh hydrogen into the star's core and by removing material from its surface. $\endgroup$
    – Someone Else 37
    Jul 19, 2019 at 15:31
  • $\begingroup$ Some stars swell. Depends on the size and mass of the star to start with. $\endgroup$
    – puppetsock
    Jul 23, 2019 at 15:30

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