Stellar Husbandry?

[Xyph]

To control the evolution and properties of stars, especially to stabilize them, prolong their lifetimes, manipulate the stellar wind, lift off useful material or create new stars. Typical methods would be star lifting or mixing the stellar core with envelope material to make hydrogen burning last longer[/b'].

The Wiki page on "Star Lifting" has some details about removing material from the star, but it's mainly the parts from the popular definition that I've bolded that interest me.

 

 

What would constitute an "unstable" star, and how could it be stabilized?

 

Is there any way to prolong the lifetime of a star beyond star lifting?

 

What sort of "envelope material" could be mixed with the core?

 

Surely any technique to significantly prolong or reduce the lifetime of a star would alter it's brightness - am I correct?

[Martin]

The Wiki page on "Star Lifting" has some details about removing material from the star' date=' but it's mainly the parts from the popular definition that I've bolded that interest me.

 

 

What would constitute an "unstable" star, and how could it be stabilized?

 

Is there any way to prolong the lifetime of a star [i']beyond[/i] star lifting?

 

What sort of "envelope material" could be mixed with the core?

 

Surely any technique to significantly prolong or reduce the lifetime of a star would alter it's brightness - am I correct?

 

unstable: there are variable stars that go thru a cycle of varying brightness over a few weeks------one class is the socalled Cepheid variables

 

 

envelope is just the outer layers of the star, where nuclear fusion does not ordinarily happen because it is not hot or dense enough

 

during the normal lifetime of a star the fusion almost all happens in the CORE, which is like the inner 10 percent diameter core. that is where the hydrogen is gradually getting turned into helium

 

our sun's core is still mostly hydrogen, and it is about 15 million kelvin and very dense, good conditions for slow steady fusion

 

what will happen when our sun's core is no longer mostly hydrogen? what happens when a star's core is mostly helium?

 

some hydrogen burning can occur in onion layers AROUND the core

 

also if the core contracts to higher density and pressure the HELIUM can start to fuse (this is called the "helium flash" it is a sign of star menopause and it tends to be associated with Red Giant behavior.

 

It's been a long time since I reviewed this. There is probably a place on the Web that outlines "Life of a Star" facts. I dont remember the whole story.

 

anyway there are lots of types of instability and troubles which stars have and it would be great for the Aliens if when their Core was running out of H they could stir in a little more H from the outer layers into their Core and prolong the steady-burning nice-behaving lifetime of their star. Probably those clever Aliens are doing that right now.

 

 

late in life stars usually BLOW OFF their envelope of hydrogen, the outer layer which they didnt succeed in burning. so it is wasted

or rather, it goes into the interstellar medium where it can condense into other stars

 

red giants lose a lot of that outer layer stuff, too bad.

so the Aliens may have invented techniques to forestall this loss of envelope H, and communicated their ideas to Wiki

 

can Wiki be serious about "star lifting"

[Xyph]

Thanks for the information. Wiki has pages on plenty of other speculative or completely fictional ideas, though, so this isn't too different.