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Moving Stars & Star Systems: Stellar Engines

AlienView

"Stargate Explorer"
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"Astrophysicist Dan Hooper thinks we’ll eventually have to wrangle the stars in our night sky, like wayward cattle straying from the herd, in order to keep the lights on. This is because the universe is constantly expanding and pulling stars with it. If he’s right, his logic would apply to all intelligent life in the universe — and could help us find aliens.

Ask anyone who believes in extra-terrestrial intelligent life why, after thousands of years, we haven’t located aliens and they’ll tell you that we’re just not looking in the right places (or that we have, and the government is covering it up, but that’s a different story).

But how do you know where to look for life? Standing on Earth and casting our gaze outward is like climbing a two meter ladder in Florida to get a better look at the pyramids in Egypt. And sure, we’ve got fancy scientific tools and the ability to send signals deep into space, but so far the message-in-a-bottle has proven a more reliable communication method.

There’s always the idea that there aren’t any aliens out there, but it turns out that’s not a popular theory at all. Hooper’s theory, according to his white paper, has to do with a super cool technology that hasn’t been invented yet called Dyson spheres. He reckons that we’ll need to figure out a way to sustain a galactic civilization in the future, and going from planet to planet draining resources like the bad guys from the movie “Independence Day” probably isn’t sustainable.

Dyson spheres are the solution to that problem. Rather than crack open the rest of the planets in our galaxy (and the other 52 nearby) and use them up like we’ve done to Earth, Dyson spheres turn stars into power plants. Basically, the idea is that we’re using only a tiny fraction of any star’s heat to get things done. If we built a giant building around a star we could harness a lot more of its energy — sounds easy enough.

Here’s where things get apocalyptic and strange. In Hooper’s recently published white paper he states:......"

See whole article here:
https://thenextweb.com/science/2018...ns-could-be-hiding-behind-repositioned-stars/


Personally I still like interdimensional and/or parallel universe theories
- But have other dimensions or parallel universes ever been proven?
Theoretically, and without violating any laws of science - they might exist ???
 
Yep ... Dyson Spheres have been proposed for almost 60 years, and the inspiration for them dates back 80 years.

They've been mentioned many times over the years here on FTMB, along with ringworlds, megastructures, and other labels / variants pertaining to star-encircling technologies.

I posted about Hooper's preprint back in late June:

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/how-to-escape-the-end-of-the-universe.20127/
(See post #14)

... but it didn't ignite any discussion.

This relevant June article at LiveScience:

https://www.livescience.com/62917-aliens-rearrange-stars-fight-dark-energy.html

... provides more details on the background to Hooper's paper.
 
Yep ... Dyson Spheres have been proposed for almost 60 years, and the inspiration for them dates back 80 years.

They've been mentioned many times over the years here on FTMB, along with ringworlds, megastructures, and other labels / variants pertaining to star-encircling technologies.

I posted about Hooper's preprint back in late June:

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/how-to-escape-the-end-of-the-universe.20127/
(See post #14)...............

And do you believe it's plausible or likely?

I don't - Remember we're talking about hypothetical advanced species - And yes they need energy
- But this type scenario postulates an almost cancerous need for energy - Why?

Why species that have advanced really need to utilize that much energy - Yes I've read of some of the hypothetical reasons
- But the Universe {or multiverse} is composed of an almost infinite amount of easily available energy
- And using up the energy of an entire star or bunch of stars, unless a specific need for transmutation
arises, does not make sense.

Advanced species will be much, much more efficient than Humans - If anything they will need less
energy and be able to do more with less.

Sometimes Humans you have to get out of your biological limitations to see the real
universes that exists - And the hypothetical ones that can exist.
 
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One interesting article about the far future was written by Freeman Dyson himself. He thinks far beyond human timescales into the era when all the stars have burned out, but interstellar civilisation is only just starting.
TIME WITHOUT END: PHYSICS AND BIOLOGY IN AN OPEN UNIVERSE
The main conclusion I wish to draw from my analysis is the following: So far as we can imagine into the future, things continue to happen. In the open cosmology, history has no end.

Encouraging stuff, even if some of the 'things' that continue to happen are just long, slow repeats of everything that came before.
 
One interesting article about the far future was written by Freeman Dyson himself...........

The main conclusion I wish to draw from my analysis is the following: So far as we can imagine into the future, things continue to happen. In the open cosmology, history has no end.

Encouraging stuff,............

Yes and no - there is no fixed equilibrium in the universe - The balance of today may not be there
tomorrow.

Man or his evolved successors must take control of the universe and cause it to continue to unfold
by conscious will - Or sooner or later chaos will rule. - And a recurrence of the universe may not
be the same.


"“We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.”
Max Planck, The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics
 
One idea I've had is that galactic civilisations could reposition all the stars in their galaxy so that they are as close together as possible, to reduce interstellar signal latency. This turns out to be significantly closer than they are in a normal galaxy. The result would be a small, compact and dense globular galaxy with most of the stars re-engineered by star-lifting in order to become long-lived red dwarfs.
Image here
med_redglobular.jpg

https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/552d31f1832b6
 
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One idea I've had is that galactic civilisations could reposition all the stars in their galaxy so that they are as close together as possible, to reduce interstellar signal latency. This turns out to be significantly closer than they are in a normal galaxy. The result would be a small, compact and dense globular galaxy with most of the stars re-engineered by star-lifting in order to become long-lived red dwarfs.
Image here
med_redglobular.jpg

https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/552d31f1832b6

How would they go about repositioning all the stars in their galaxy?
 
^Good question......how does one reposition a star....seems like a Herculean task even for a very advanced species.
 
^Good question......how does one reposition a star....seems like a Herculean task even for a very advanced species.

I was wondering the same thing ... The notion is fair game since we're talking 'advanced' and 'aliens', and there's no telling what may be possible beyond the bounds of our knowledge.

One thing occurred to me, though ... If it were possible to get a given star (call it X) moving in a controlled or semi-controlled manner, the gravitational pull of X might be exploited to help move and / or maneuver other stars along its path to the intended location / region.

Think of it as being akin to performing a tricky shot on a pool table involving multiple balls, but without running one directly into another to get the desired effect on eventual trajectory / trajectories.
 
One method is the Shkadov Thruster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine#Class_A_(Shkadov_thruster)
After one billion years, the speed would be 20 km/s and the displacement 34,000 light-years, a little over a third of the estimated width of the Milky Way galaxy.

...my image of this concept below. The blue 'umbrella' feature is a mirror.
54cb40b4c6fd0_-_shkadov-thruster-0714-de.jpg

This one relies on the mass of the mirror to create thrust - there are more efficient versions, where the star is encouraged to eject its own mass, if you are in a hurry.
 
^Good question......how does one reposition a star....seems like a Herculean task even for a very advanced species.
Repositioning one star is one thing, doing it for thousands of stars is quite another.
 
A really determined civilisation could use self-replicating technology to create Shkadov thrusters around every star that needed to be repositioned. The basic Shkadov system is quite simple, and requites only as much mass as a large asteroid; but there are hundreds of billions of stars in an average galaxy, and you'd probably have to move most of the stars in the spiral arms - this would take several billion years of determined behaviour.

If there are any dissenters who object to this monomaniacal repositioning of the galactic furniture, I would expect there to be some sort of conflict.
 
Large, but very thin. To support itself on light-pressure alone this mirror needs to be as lightweight as a solar sail. This is the reason why the effective acceleration is so small.

To expand on my earlier quote from the Wikipedia article,
For a star such as the Sun, with luminosity 3.85 × 1026 W and mass 1.99 × 1030 kg, the total thrust produced by reflecting half of the solar output would be 1.28 × 1018 N. After a period of one million years this would yield an imparted speed of 20 m/s, with a displacement from the original position of 0.03 light-years. After one billion years, the speed would be 20 km/s and the displacement 34,000 light-years, a little over a third of the estimated width of the Milky Way galaxy.
To re-arrange the entire galaxy would take about ten billion years. I have suggested in the past that we might see examples of such re-arranged galaxies dotted throughout the cosmos, and I wonder if the author of this paper might have read my speculations. But if we do see a galaxy which has been drastically re-engineered using the Shkadov Thruster strategy, that implies that the aliens started doing this a very long time ago, before the Sun was born.
 
I wonder if the author of this paper might have read my speculations
Checking the list of references on that paper, he credits Dyson, Sagan, Shkadov and Kardashev, but not me. Curses. Ah well, maybe I'll get a citation one day.
 
But if we do see a galaxy which has been drastically re-engineered using the Shkadov Thruster strategy, that implies that the aliens started doing this a very long time ago, before the Sun was born.
I predict we'll never find even one.
 
Another stellar engine called the Caplan thruster has been added to the stellar engine possibilities in 2019.

Physicist Proposes Radical New 'Stellar Engine' That Could Move Our Entire Solar System

As far as hypothetical space megastructures go, the stellar engine is one of our favourites – a gigantic contraption built with the purpose of transporting our Solar System somewhere else, if we ever need to move to a different cosmic neighbourhood.

Now, new research has put forward another idea for what such a radical stellar engine might look like. ...

Caplan Thruster would sit close to the Sun, using electromagnetic fields to gather hydrogen and helium from the solar wind to use as fuel.

That would power two jets of energy – one using helium, pushed through a fusion reactor to create a jet of radioactive oxygen that would move the Caplan Thruster forward, and one using hydrogen, to maintain distance from the Sun and to push it forward. The Caplan Thruster would essentially act as a kind of tugboat.

As solar wind alone wouldn't provide enough fuel, we would also need some kind of Dyson sphere structure too, which would concentrate sunlight into a specific spot on the Sun to increase temperatures (and power output) even further.

The good news is, as the Sun shifts, everything else will follow – kept in the same gravitational dance as before. It's not necessary to shift Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and the rest of the planets individually, because the pull of the Sun will take care of it for us. ...

FULL STORY (With Link To Introductory Video):
https://www.sciencealert.com/what-is-a-stellar-engine-and-could-it-help-us-escape-a-supernova
 
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