It’s a pretty straightforward modification of the Caplan thruster. You scoop up bits of sun with very strong magnetic fields, but rather than fusing it and using it to move a star, you cool most of it (firing some back with very high velocity to balance things momentum wise) and keep the matter you extract (or fuse some if you need quick energy). There’s even a video on it! Skip to 4:20 for the relevant bit.
A very heavy and dense body on an elliptical orbit that touches the Sun’s surface at each perihelion would collect sizable chunks of the Sun’s matter. The movement of matter from one star to another nearby star is a well-known phenomenon.
When the body reaches aphelion, the collected solar matter would cool down and could be harvested. The initial body would need to be very massive, perhaps 10-100 Earth masses. A Jupiter-sized core could work as such a body.
Therefore, to extract the Sun’s mass, one would need to make Jupiter’s orbit elliptical. This could be achieved through several heavy impacts or gravitational maneuvers involving other planets.
This approach seems feasible even without ASI, but it might take longer than 10,000 years.
The action space is too large for this to be infeasible, but at a 101 level, if the Sun spun fast enough it would come apart, and angular momentum is conserved so it’s easy to add gradually.
Do we have some basic physical-feasibility insights on this or you just speculate?
It’s a pretty straightforward modification of the Caplan thruster. You scoop up bits of sun with very strong magnetic fields, but rather than fusing it and using it to move a star, you cool most of it (firing some back with very high velocity to balance things momentum wise) and keep the matter you extract (or fuse some if you need quick energy). There’s even a video on it! Skip to 4:20 for the relevant bit.
I was expecting (Methods start 16:00)
A very heavy and dense body on an elliptical orbit that touches the Sun’s surface at each perihelion would collect sizable chunks of the Sun’s matter. The movement of matter from one star to another nearby star is a well-known phenomenon.
When the body reaches aphelion, the collected solar matter would cool down and could be harvested. The initial body would need to be very massive, perhaps 10-100 Earth masses. A Jupiter-sized core could work as such a body.
Therefore, to extract the Sun’s mass, one would need to make Jupiter’s orbit elliptical. This could be achieved through several heavy impacts or gravitational maneuvers involving other planets.
This approach seems feasible even without ASI, but it might take longer than 10,000 years.
The action space is too large for this to be infeasible, but at a 101 level, if the Sun spun fast enough it would come apart, and angular momentum is conserved so it’s easy to add gradually.
Mostly speculation based on tech level. But:
To the extent temperature is an issue, energy can be used to transfer temperature from one place to another.
Maybe matter from the Sun can be physically expelled into more manageable chunks. The Sun already ejects matter naturally (though at a slow rate).
Nanotech in general (cell-like, self-replicating robots).
High energy availability with less-speculative tech like Dyson spheres.