keepign stars alive by pumping heavy elements out of core

[Warsie]

I was wondering....there's the threat of stars blowing up; especially the larger stars out there.

Assuming a powerful enough civilization, why don't they simply pump the iron, etc out of the core by making a magnetic tube extending to the core using the natural magnetic poles, actually the tubes increase the poles strenth more to actually push the plasma out and leave a central core that is empty; which ships could go down and mine the iron out, or they could use the magnetic fields to manipulate and take the iron out.??

huh?

[Illuminatus Primus]

"Magnetic tube"? What the fuck? And the energy cost of extracting the hyperdense iron core from the star is going to be less than the energy cost of trying to fuse iron? This is going to be cost-effective or plausible? What?

[Mayabird]

The iron-fusion stage, if I remember my astronomy class correctly, lasts maybe one day before the supernova. Or maybe it was the stage before that and the iron fusion stage lasts an even shorter time. So there's problem one.

Problem two is that it's not just a matter of iron accumulating in the core. Increasingly heavy elements get fused because there's not much in the way of hydrogen left in the core or the outer bands where fusion spreads once the core gets depleted. Not only would you have to get the heavier elements out, but you'd have to cycle hydrogen back in. I don't even know how that would work.

At that point, it'd probably just be easier to move somewhere else.

[Beowulf]

It's the prior stage which lasts about a day: Si burning. At the point where Iron starts fusing, the star is going through a supernova.

[Tasoth]

If you really wanted to keep a star from going nova, would need some way to either remove the helium or convert it back to hydrogen as well as replacing any hydrogen lost as the sun fuses said missing hydrogen into heavier elements.

[Warsie]

"Magnetic tube"? What the fuck? And the energy cost of extracting the hyperdense iron core from the star is going to be less than the energy cost of trying to fuse iron? This is going to be cost-effective or plausible? What?

by magnetic tube; I meant increasing the strength of the magnetic fields on the north and south poles of the star to the point that the plasma is parted from those areas; like a tube. Sorry if I can't phrase it right.

I forgot to mention that this is space opera-y; and energy costs of course will be MASSIVE.

I'm just wondering if it is possible.

[Warsie]

And thank you everyone else, I read your answers too

[Gullible Jones]

Hmm. I, uhh, don't see how increasing the strength of the magnetic fields would help draw the heavy elements out.

[Rahvin]

Leaving aside all of the technobabble and whether a "magnetic tube" is possible...

We're talking about a hell of a lot of mass condensed into one fuck of a dense core, and somehow "mining" it while the star continues to undergo fusion.

With the amount of energy required to pull that much mass from the core of a stellar gravitational field, somehow without being damaged by the stellar radiation or gravitational/magnetic forces, and having the infrastructure in the form of superheavy shipping to move the mass away, AND keep the star stable while fundamentally changing its composition and removing a large percentage of its mass (remember that gravity is what provides the force to ignite fusion and keep the whole thing in one piece - take away too much mass, and you'll have other problems anyway)...

You're probably talking about a civilization powerful enough to somehow protect themselves from a supernova anyway with crazy shielding or something, and just ride it out.

And besides all that...why not just use all the freighters you'd need to move that much mass and relocate the endangered populations and equipment? Seriously, it would almost certainly be easier and more feasible.

[The Guid]

Perhaps in that lies the beauty of the project: a civilisation so powerful that it keeps stars alive for their sentimental value.

[Tasoth]

Perhaps in that lies the beauty of the project: a civilisation so powerful that it keeps stars alive for their sentimental value.

That's actually a rather invocative idea. Entire gardens of stars with certain portions of their mass converted to specific elements so they glow different colors, maybe even a few planets arranged around each in a bizarre geometry. Stumbling a crossed something like that would be one hell of a shock to a lower civilization.

[Rahvin]

Stellar sculpture? Celestial art?

Does anyone even know of a scifi civilization with a power level sufficient to trivialize moving stars and altering their chemical makeup?

[Vendetta]

It's the kind of thing that Sublimed species in the cultureverse could do, if they wanted to. (I believe one of the things mentioned as the initial excesses of sublimation is spelling out your name in stars)

[Patrick Degan]

This concept has been discussed in other circles before. It's usually called "starlifting", only the idea is to actually extract hydrogen from the star during its main sequence phase. The idea is that reducing the star's mass will reduce it's luminosity somewhat but would also greatly extend the star's life on the order of billions of extra years.

[avatarxprime]

Stellar sculpture? Celestial art?

Does anyone even know of a scifi civilization with a power level sufficient to trivialize moving stars and altering their chemical makeup?

The Photino Birds from the Xeelee-verse should be able to do it with ease.

[Gullible Jones]

Here's an old one... The pre-collapse human civilization in Against the Fall of Night had its headquarters in a system of seven stars - six of various colors, with a white one at the center surrounded by a cloud of opalescent dust. That's a rather minor feat of stellar engineering compared to Xeeleeverse stuff, but it counts.

[Molyneux]

Perhaps in that lies the beauty of the project: a civilisation so powerful that it keeps stars alive for their sentimental value.

That's actually a rather invocative idea. Entire gardens of stars with certain portions of their mass converted to specific elements so they glow different colors, maybe even a few planets arranged around each in a bizarre geometry. Stumbling a crossed something like that would be one hell of a shock to a lower civilization.

That sounds like an amazing idea for a short sci-fi film...say, a cold-sleep or genetic colony ship lands on an "observation" planet near a garden of that type.

[Zixinus]

Assuming a powerful enough civilization, why don't they simply pump the iron, etc out of the core by making a magnetic tube extending to the core using the natural magnetic poles, actually the tubes increase the poles strenth more to actually push the plasma out and leave a central core that is empty; which ships could go down and mine the iron out, or they could use the magnetic fields to manipulate and take the iron out.??

How do you take the iron out without actually taking the sun away? It's the core of the sun we are talking about, the gravitational centre. Where it is, the sun is. Remove it, and we only have allot of hot plasma that may or may not collapse upon itself and start fusing again.

The idea to somehow magically take away the core would make the sun go all crazy and most likely make allot of unindented consequences. If nothing else, but shift if not totally fuck the Goldilocks zone of whatever planet you want to preserve? After all, what's the point of preserving the sun if you don't preserve the planets that orbit it?

[Patrick Degan]

Assuming a powerful enough civilization, why don't they simply pump the iron, etc out of the core by making a magnetic tube extending to the core using the natural magnetic poles, actually the tubes increase the poles strenth more to actually push the plasma out and leave a central core that is empty; which ships could go down and mine the iron out, or they could use the magnetic fields to manipulate and take the iron out.??

How do you take the iron out without actually taking the sun away? It's the core of the sun we are talking about, the gravitational centre. Where it is, the sun is. Remove it, and we only have allot of hot plasma that may or may not collapse upon itself and start fusing again.

The idea to somehow magically take away the core would make the sun go all crazy and most likely make allot of unindented consequences. If nothing else, but shift if not totally fuck the Goldilocks zone of whatever planet you want to preserve? After all, what's the point of preserving the sun if you don't preserve the planets that orbit it?

I would presume that a civilisation which had the capability to perform starlifting could also shift the orbits of its primary planets in closer to the altered star as the habitable zone shifts inward. Or they would already have shifted most of their population to orbital habitats which could be moved far more easily. Alternatively, the civilisation could use very large focussing lenses and mirrors to direct sunlight to the planet to maintain pre-starlift environmental conditions.

As I remember it, the actual ideas involving starlifting centre around the concept of using powerful magnetic fields to "pinch" hydrogen out of the core to reduce the star's overall mass and thus extend its life cycle in the main sequence. The extracted hydrogen would of course be harvested for other industrial purposes.

Besides which, this is not a project which would be waiting for the stellar core to turn to iron —which is when all fusion processes cease and the star completes its collapse into a white dwarf. At that point, it would be far too late to do anything.

[Junghalli]

Stellar sculpture? Celestial art?

Does anyone even know of a scifi civilization with a power level sufficient to trivialize moving stars and altering their chemical makeup?

In The Howling Stones the Xunca from Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth universe are described as doing stuff like hollowing out moons to turn them into solar wind wind-chimes, so a project like this should be right up their alley.

[Molyneux]

Stellar sculpture? Celestial art?

Does anyone even know of a scifi civilization with a power level sufficient to trivialize moving stars and altering their chemical makeup?

In The Howling Stones the Xunca from Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth universe are described as doing stuff like hollowing out moons to turn them into solar wind wind-chimes, so a project like this should be right up their alley.

...solar wind wind-chimes? What do they do?

[Junghalli]

...solar wind wind-chimes? What do they do?

They turn the solar wind into patterns that sound like music when you translate them into sound, presumably. It was just a one-line sort of description.

[Molyneux]

...solar wind wind-chimes? What do they do?

They turn the solar wind into patterns that sound like music when you translate them into sound, presumably. It was just a one-line sort of description.

See, that's the kind of description that could benefit greatly from being fleshed out. From that four-word phrase I could see a moon carved into chunks so that the solar wind would push them around in aesthetically pleasing orbits, or guiding the flow of solar wind to create precisely channeled sprays of 'color' in a high-energy spectrum, or even simply tuned to resonate from the solar wind's flow, such that audio sensors attached to the pieces of moon would transmit the vibrations as music.

[Junghalli]

See, that's the kind of description that could benefit greatly from being fleshed out. From that four-word phrase I could see a moon carved into chunks so that the solar wind would push them around in aesthetically pleasing orbits, or guiding the flow of solar wind to create precisely channeled sprays of 'color' in a high-energy spectrum, or even simply tuned to resonate from the solar wind's flow, such that audio sensors attached to the pieces of moon would transmit the vibrations as music.

I believe the exact description was something like "solar wind channeled through hollow moons to create a true music of the spheres". That's as close as I can get from memory anyway, the book is at the library.

[Natorgator]

They moved around stars in the Futurama episode Time keeps on Slipping. Fry arranged some stars for Leela to show that he loved her, but the formation was destroyed before she saw it.