Starlifting

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Recommends Thucydides · 2017-06 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Can we manipulate the Sun, gas and ice giants to create more habitable planets and extend the life of our sun?”

You are asking two separate questions actually. Changing the Sun to create a cooler, longer lasting star can be done through a technology called "Star Lifting", which utilizes controlled electromagnetic fields to manipulate the solar plasma. Creating a "belt" around the Sun and "squeezing" pumps the plasma out of the polar regions, and the plasma could theoretically be gathered, cooled and then "stored" by creating artificial Neptune sized gas giants orbiting the Sun. [LINK] Star Lifting Issac Arthur [LINK] has a great video on the subject here [this video] Deconstruct gas and ice giant planets is actually a bit more difficult, since the material isn't an ionized plasma which we can conveniently

Recommends 0something0 · 2019-01 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Could the Sun be born again?”

(please note that while this answer explicitly violates the terms laid out by the OP, I am not deleting it for future reference purposes to avoid a DenverCoder9 [LINK] situation.) Human Intervention There is a technique called Starlifting which lifts mass from stars using magnetic fields, allowing civilizations to gather immense amounts of matter. [this video] [LINK] The matter would be used for megastructures such as Dyson Swarms and would also allow extension of the sun's lifespan by reduction in mass, so your time traveler would see a smaller G-type yellow dwarf (or said star gone red-giant), or potentially a red dwarf with a lifespan of trillions of years. But what if you want humans gone? us

Recommends TheDyingOfLight · 2019-07 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Killing a star safely”

Basic Requirements We are talking about disassembling a star here. While this is certainly possible within known physics, it is something that requires the infrastructure, resources, and energy of a K 2.something civilization. Therein lies the issue. Even with all the knowledge and technology, is disassembling the sun really the smartest option? You gonna have to explain why other options weren't chosen. Running away seems quite easy in comparison. Shkadov Thruster This is basically using half a Dyson sphere to accelerate the sun. The issue is that the acceleration is abysmal. This video [LINK] and the Wikipedia article on the subject [LINK] might be interesting. For a star such as the Sun,

Recommends Christmas Snow · 2019-11 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “How to mine a star?”

It is called star lifting, and is a known concept. Basically, you generate a magnetic field which channels solar radiation through the poles. The magnetic field is created using orbiting electromagnets powered by the sun itself. There are three variations of this technique in Isaac Arthur's Youtube series. [this video]

Recommends DKNguyen · 2019-11 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Is there any conceivable way to "turn off" a star?”

In hard sci fi, what you would actually do is siphon off mass from the star and store it elsewhere (or just use it for other purposes) since smaller stars burn more slowly due to the reduced gravity (which is what drives the fusion in the first place). This is called star lifting. The extreme end of things is to remove so much mass that the force of gravity is no longer able to support fusion and just turns into a gas giant like Jupiter, and store that excess mass somewhere else. Then you just dump all that mass back in when you want to re-ignite the star. You should check out Isaac Arthur's YouTube video on star lifting. He discusses it for exactly the uses you mentioned, as well as other p

Recommends Darth Biomech · 2021-05 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Are there alternatives to mining asteroids/planets for obtaining matter?”

There's starlifting. Wikipedia [LINK] , [this video] . Basically, the idea is that you get a large (humongous) magnet orbiting the star (or hovering over it artificially via solar wind sailing), with which you attract magnetically charged plasma of the star's surface (but a couple of other means are described at the respective links). You then collect the uplifted matter and can convert it to the materials you need by nuclear fusion and fission. Stars are easily the most prominent source of matter for a reasonably advanced civilization since even our own relatively small sun contains 99.8% of the mass of our entire solar system. The best part is that you can power your starlifting operation direc

Cites Durakken · 2016-10 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Plausible way for the Sun to lose huge amounts of mass?”

Look up Star Lifting... Star lifting is specifically removing matter from stars. They don't do it on the scale you want, but they still do it... Video that was just made on the subject by I think a physicist, not sure [this video] So there is the first option... The second option which is a combination of the technique briefly mentioned but not discussed in there; ram-scooping, but not conventionally. Add the idea of a wormhole portal, especially if you can change exit points like the star gate network. You can literally just find a place to put it in the universe and just ram scoop the Hydrogen with the wormhole active, transporting it to that storage location. You could "probably" remove that m

Cites Thucydides · 2016-11 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “How do you beat a star like a drum?”

The only way I can think of to modulate the star would be to modify the mechanism used for " star lifting [LINK] " Since you want to induce vibrations in the star, the so called " huff and puff [this video] " method of star lifting which periodically "squeezes" and "releases" the star using an orbiting magnetic field generator. Rather than using the device in a regular pulsating cycle to pump plasma out of the stellar poles, the pulsations are done in a sequence which imparts information on the regular vibration patterns already existing in the star. [LINK] Star Lifting mechanism Given the vast size of a star, the pattern of vibrations will be incredibly slow, and modulating the "squeeze and rele

Cites Thucydides · 2016-12 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Mining Suns For Terraforming?”

The technology to take matter from a star is called Star Lifting [this video] , and it is a feat of mega engineering which allows the engineers to take plasma from a star and store it or move it for use elsewhere. As has been noted in other answers, the primary results of Star Lifting is the accumulation of large quantities of hydrogen and helium, which isn't directly useful in terraforming. You could use nuclear fusion to transmute the elements into heavier elements, and generate lots of energy at the same time, but perhaps a better potential use is to move planets around the solar system. The plasma, as it radiates away its energy and cools, should be collected and stored. The best way to do so

Cites Thucydides · 2016-12 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “How to desiccate your world?”

What you are describing will actually happen to Earth, but your characters will need to be incredibly patient, since this is projected to happen about one billion [LINK] years in the future. As the Sun burns through it's hydrogen fuel, more and more "helium ash" accumulates in the core. The helium will not fuse under present conditions, so the radiative pressure from the core gradually decreases while the gravitational pressure remains constant. The sun's core is squeezed with increasing pressure and the rate of fusion also increases at a slow but steady amount, increasing the radiative output of the Sun (to maintain equilibrium). The Sun is thought to have increased in brightness by up to 3