Say humanity one mean solar day necessitate to move our star topology . possibly an alienberserkeris headed our way and would arrive in a few decade of thousand of eld , or we observe we were about to head through a region ofdark matterin our galaxy that would wreak havoc on our Solar System . Perhaps we just get a line that another region of blank is more interesting , and move to join the party . Take your sci - fi pick . The question is , would we be capable to move ourselves out of the room , and take our darling Sun with us ?
It ’s not precisely a push doubt , but it is one that physicists have put a little mentation into . Moving a star is a colossal job . The Sun ’s mass is around1.989 x 1030kilograms , or 333,000 times the deal of the Earth . Considering that it ’s an effort to get enough thrust to take spaceship out of our ambiance , it ’s not a task we are up to yet . It may be well beyond a case I civilisation , but not a Type II culture on theKardashev scale .
And if we do make up one’s mind to move our mavin , we ’re still run to countenance the virtuoso do most of the work . One estimation , named the Shkadov Thruster after Russian physicist Leonid Shkadov who proposed it , is actually a lot simpler than you ’d expect moving our Solar System to be . The basic idea is to take a giant , concave mirror and place it facing the Sun . The mirror would be placed in a breaker point in infinite where solar radiation pressure on the mirror balances out with gravitational force , so that it will remain in position , reflect radiation back at the Sun . This part will not be easy .
" As the mirror are not oriented spherically those whose normal relative incidence make an angle with respect to the Sun will experience a nett torsion from the solar radiation imperativeness gradient , causing them oscillate . Any damping force is likely to revert them to a stable equipoise where they are aligned radially , thus reflecting light back at the Sun , " a 2019paperon the subject explains . " Such a stabilisation system along with any struts supporting the mirror foil will involve thinner enhancer in rescript to budget mass for these systems , thus resulting in great transmittance of sunlight . Nevertheless , stabilizers are necessary if the mirrors are to remain parabolic on galactic time . "
With the mirror in spot and speculate luminousness , this increases the temperature of the photosphere and develop a teeny tiny amount of jab .
Using this method , we are not getting anywhere very fast . The space you could cover depends on where you want to go , and whether you are fighting our orbit around the Milky Way or merely accelerating our passage through it . But roughly speaking , one studyfound that during one orbit of the galaxy you could alter the Sun ’s position by around 40 parsecs ( 130 light - years ) . Say we wanted to swap our star for another one ( like cosmogenic Pogs ) – using this method acting we could reach some of the closer asterisk .
Another approximation is to use " active thrusters " rather than the peaceful thrust generated by Shkadov - inspired megastructures . In one idea , termed the Caplan Thruster , aDyson Spherecollects solar twist and direct it to the engine , which expend nuclear optical fusion to create jets .
" Exhaust from the locomotive be may collimate with magnetic fields into two oppositely direct spurt , one target toward the Sun and one by from the Sun , " the 2019 newspaper explains . " The spirt shoot for away from the Sun lend a last momentum to the Solar System , while the super C aim toward the Sun prevents the engine from collide with the Sun . This engine is effectively a tug which pushes the Sun . "
Though the thruster could run for 100 million year , this team – commissioned by YouTuberKurzgesagt – conceive that 10 million years would be sufficient to press our star out of the way of , say , a supernova . Using more of the hatful of a Sun - corresponding star , they suggest it may be possible to achieve leakage velocity from our galaxy , and travel to another .
Though this all sounds feasible ( to a much more advanced civilisation than our own ) it does sort of solicit the doubt : why have we not visualize any signs of other civilizations ( with access to the same physical science ) doing this?Where is everybody ?
