Creating a Mini Self-Sustaining Star: The Superstrong Chamber Experiment

[Mr. Paradox]

If someone had a superstrong chamber that could withstand anything (hypothetically) if they constantlty fed the correct materials at the correct state into the chamber could they create a mini self sustaining star?

 

[Nabeshin]

All a star, or a main sequence star, at least, is is a ball of hydrogen which fuses it into helium in its core. So if you manage to generate hydrogen fusion in some sort of chamber, yes, that's pretty much what a star is.

The problem is, of course, that the temperature for fusion is ~10 million kelvin, and containing something that hot is a bit of an issue. As soon as fusion ignites, there will also be a ridiculous amount of pressure, coupled with the temperature, which make it difficult to create any kind of self-sustaining laboratory star. But, assuming you have some super strong material, then yes.

 

[mgb_phys]

You can do it fairly briefly https://lasers.llnl.gov/

 

[SpiffyKavu]

In the strictest sense of the word "star," I think that it must be held together by its own gravity. In a laboratory setting, this would be rather unrealistic; we would need to provide some pressure or some other kind of containment system (like magnetic fields, etc.). Ignoring that, though, we can generate a small amount of fusion, as was already mentioned.

 

[DaveC426913]

If someone had a superstrong chamber that could withstand anything (hypothetically) if they constantlty fed the correct materials at the correct state into the chamber could they create a mini self sustaining star?

If you have to artificially compress it, and feed it the correct materials, it's not exactly self-sustaining then, is it?


But that aside, isn't this pretty much what a fusion reactor does?

 

[Mr. Paradox]

Thank you all for your help! I feel educated, thank you for the answer to my question.

 

[Division]

A star has a delicate balance between, the explosive force going on in its core that tends to want to blow it up, and the high gravity which wants to push it into a little ball.

The difficulty in creating a star, no matter how brief, is to find the correct balance.

 

[Mr. Paradox]

So creating a star would take extremely large amounts of calculations

 

[DaveC426913]

So creating a star would take extremely large amounts of calculations

Well... yes but what it would take mostly is incredibly-advanced engineering.

 

[Mr. Paradox]

If only if only. I yearn for the future haha