Can We Engineer Our Own Stars to Prevent the Heat Death of the Universe?

[edwardauron]

Assuming the law of thermodynamics holds true throughout the entirety of the universe, is it theoretically possible to engineer our own stars and solar systems, and would doing so prevent the proposed eventual "Dark Age" of the universe? We understand how stars are formed, so what's stopping us from creating our own at some point in the future? (Besides the blatantly obvious)

 

[DaveC426913]

Assuming the law of thermodynamics holds true throughout the entirety of the universe, is it theoretically possible to engineer our own stars and solar systems, and would doing so prevent the proposed eventual "Dark Age" of the universe? We understand how stars are formed, so what's stopping us from creating our own at some point in the future? (Besides the blatantly obvious)

You could gather energy and mass from one place, and put it in another place, but you'd still have the same amount of both. This would not lengthen the lifetime of - or change the fate of - the universe.Actually your efforts would hasten the process of turning useful energy into waste energy.

Second law of thermodynamics: In a natural thermodynamic process, the sum of the entropies of the interacting thermodynamic systems increases. Equivalently,perpetual motion machines of the second kind are impossible.

 

[rootone]

Or another way of putting it, is that you would have to expend more energy scavenging and assembling enough hydrogen to make a star, than your star would be able to usefully emit once you got fusion going.