This item somewhat discusses the daunting engineering challenge
involved in destroying a sun. It takes the idea of impossible to a
new dimension.
However, if one could create a black hole, almost by definition it
would need to be locked out of our space time in order to contain its
effects. In that mode it may become plausible to insert such a
device into a star to initiate a rapid conversion of matter to
photonic energy which would swiftly blow the star apart.
I suspect that the lock out device is a possibility and that provides
a possible containment system to form a black hole. Ouch! Of course
it would take stellar energies to pack up a contained black hole I
think.
Science Fiction or Fact:
Star-Destroying Superweapon
Adam Hadhazy,
Date: 01 September 2012 Time: 10:56 AM ET
In this occasional
series, Life's Little Mysteries explores the plausibility of popular
science fiction concepts.
In science fiction,
planet-busting superweapons are all the craze. Yet even more
terrifying than the ability to destroy a planet is the wherewithal to
take out an entire star. The sun Crusher in the "Star Wars"
Jedi Academy novel trilogy serves as an example of such a godlike
device.
Overall, solar
annihilators are rare compared to plain ol' world-enders, indeed
scaling with the inherent difficultly of star-killing, at least from
a modern physics and technology standpoint. [Planet-Destroying
Superweapon]
The dastardly deed is
theoretically possible, however, and even on time scales not
stretching into millions of years. "There's one scheme to me
that seems not quite plausible, but it's close," said Mike
Zarnstorff, an experimental plasma physicist and deputy director for
research at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Read on to find
out how future Dr. Evils might hold a whole solar system for ransom.
Tough star stuff
Destroying a star
poses two major problems. For one, the kinds of stars that would
typically host habitable planets are colossal, both size- and
mass-wise. Our sun, for instance, spans 865,000 miles in diameter,
can store about a million Earths in its interior and sports a mass of
approximately two octillion metric tons. (That's a two followed by 27
zeroes.)
Secondly, stars are
hot. Just look at how hot the sun is, and it’s middle-of-the
road: The sun's corona, essentially a stellar "atmosphere,"
blazes at around 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit; the far-cooler
surface still roasts around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The composition
of a star is a related issue. Stars are simple spheres of
superheated gas, or plasma, roiling about in balance (for most of
their long lives) between gravitational collapse and the buoyancy of
energy-releasing fusion reactions. Stars, in effect, are made to chug
along, and in our sun's case for more than 10 billion years.
"Stars are really
big and have a lot of inertia," or resistance to a change in
their state, "and that inclines them to keep doing what they're
doing," said Zarnstorff.
Given stars' size,
temperature and composition, traditional armaments such as
metal-encased thermonuclear bombs would not phase them in the
slightest. [Top 10 Ways toDestroy Earth]
Fusion gone sour
Could a star's
self-powering fusion reactions somehow be "poisoned?"
Zarnstorff does not see a plausible means of doing so.
Stellar fusion
involves the smashing together of hydrogen atoms into deuterium and
tritium (hydrogen's two isotopes), then on into helium, lithium, and
so on down the periodic table. Only the most massive stars, however,
which have the hottest, densest cores can fuse all the way to iron.
(These relatively short-lived stars provide poor environments for
life to develop on hosted planets.)
The fusing of iron
nuclei, however, requires more energy than the reaction unleashes.
The metal, along with nickel, piles up, progressively robbing a giant
star of the energy needed to prevent it from collapsing in on itself.
The star eventually does just that, exploding into a Type II
supernova.
Scrambling a star like
our sun into blowing up, shutting down or changing its reaction rate
(and thus size and temperature) is conceivable. But good luck finding
enough material to knock the sun off-kilter.
"Even if you
swept up all of the planets in the solar system" and dumped
them into the sun, Zarnstorff said, "the sun wouldn't really
notice at all." Altogether, the eight planets and other solar
system debris including the asteroid belt compose not much more than
a thousandth of the sun's mass. [Greatest Explosions Ever]
Apocalyptic winds
Another conceivable
method to slay a star would be to evaporate it, essentially. Stars
constantly emit heat, light and particles into space, with the latter
known as the solar wind. The mass loss from the solar wind is
negligible. Increase the wind to a gale, though, and the star would
diminish.
Stars vary wildly in
their solar wind outflows, Zarnstorff noted. Further study of the
mechanics behind faster flows could show how calm stars might grow
gusty.
Perhaps bolstering the
production of sunspots, along with their associated bursts of
particles in flares and so-called coronal mass ejections, would move
things along. "You can imagine changing the dynamics of the
solar surface to promote sunspots," Zarnstorff said.
Nevertheless, even if
some sort of gargantuan magnetic field generator could pull it off,
evaporating a whole star would likely take millions of years. Not
exactly an effective doomsday weapon, then. [10 Failed Doomsday
Predictions]
The "black"
death
Instead of trying to
overcome the size and mass of a star, a heinous sci-fi supervillain
would be wise to work with these properties. Therein lies the least
implausible means of destroying a star and within a reasonable length
of time: using a black hole as a sort of implosion bomb.
A black
hole launched into the sun would "feed and grow
exponentially," Zarnstorff told Life's Little Mysteries, and
therefore would "self-propel" a star towards its doom. "A
black hole could suck in all the mass of the sun," Zarnstorff
said.
Not just any black
hole would suffice, however, unless the hole could somehow be created
within the sun itself. The catch is, black holes theoretically
evaporate due to a phenomenon known as Hawking radiation (named for
famed physicist Stephen Hawking).
An incredibly tiny black hole with the mass of a car, say,
would survive for perhaps a billionth of a second; hardly long enough
to traverse the distance from an origin point to the sun. Zarnstorff
thinks a black hole more toward the mass of the Moon – though still
merely a millimeter in "size" – might do the trick.
Even so, the creation
of a diabolically useful-sized black hole is still far beyond our
capabilities; it's possible that micro black holes could be produced
in the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, but these
would vanish within billionths of a billionth of a second.
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