Can we use our own Sun to travel through space?

In summary, this person thinks that by using nuclear explosions we could push our sun in the direction of a nearby star, and use it as a means of travel. The idea is far from viable, and would require a massive amount of energy and an incredibly powerful force.
  • #1
Blueprint
31
0
Hi this is my 2nd post so pls be kind guys. Let me know of any other cool cosmology forums out there as they seem hard to find with google.

So to my idea!

Instead of waiting for some hyper-drive to be invented (I read of pushing spaceships with lasers?) how about we use our own star, the Sun, to travel to the nearest star with exoplanets that look capable of supporting life.

The idea is to "push" our Sun in the direction of this star, which would take us along with it.

I'm thinking massive nuclear explosions to divert our Sun off-course and in the direction we want to go. How viable do u think this is?

I know we're 2/3 out of the Milkyway on a wing, and the centre of our galaxy is a compact source of radiowaves so there's a black hole there that determines the course our Sun takes, but is this viable?

Could we use our own Sun... say once its nearing the end of its life... to travel thru space?
 
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  • #2
Umm, no.

For one, the sun is extraordinarily massive and it would take an unimaginable force to move it any substantial distance. Even the most destructive technology ever built doesn't even come close. Also, the sun was not designed to absorb any type of energy and convert it into motion. Nuclear explosions would simply give off a lot of high energy particles, which the sun probably wouldn't be able to turn into ANY type of motion.
I believe Carl Sagan suggested a nuclear-based propulsion source which involves exploding high-yield nuclear bombs at the back of a spaceship with a specially designed shield. However, this shield would have to be a) extraordinarily large b) extraordinarily durable. The sun has no such mechanism, so I doubt this would be effective.

Also, by the time the sun nears the end of its life, we will either not be here, or exist in a form we cannot even begin to imagine.
 
  • #3
No this is not viable. It seems like wild speculation to me.
 
  • #4
Thx for the response.

I thought it was a good idea, and I know nuclear explosions wouldn't even come close as a destructive force - maybe dragging a black hole in front of it would be a better analogy, something like this... :P

I know most star-systems are binary so maybe we could join forces with another star this way.
 
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  • #5
I think it best to do a little research about the sun first before proposing an idea like moving the sun.

The sun is already a giant thermonuclear furnace. It also has massive explosive events (Coronal Mass Ejections - CMEs) that dwarf anything mankind can produce.

"As much as 1x1013(10,000,000,000,000) kilograms" or 1x1010 metric tons of material can be ejected into the solar wind.
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/sun/cmes.html&edu=high

At solar minimum we observe about one CME a week. Near solar maximum we observe an average of 2 to 3 CMEs per day
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/CMEs.shtml


This site puts CMEs on the order of 100 billion kg -
Each CME releases up to 100 billion kg (220 billion lb) of this material, and the speed of the ejection can reach 1000 km/second (2 million mph) in some flares. Solar flares and CMEs are currently the biggest "explosions" in our solar system, roughly approaching the power in ONE BILLION hydrogen bombs!
http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/cme.html


With regard to black holes, one should try to find the location of where we believe a black hole is located.
 
  • #6
How would you move the black hole or other star in the first place? How would you protect the planets from gravitational perturbations that would alter orbits? Its not viable.
 
  • #7
Well if I recall there was the idea of a gravitational tractor of sorts. You place a massive object with propulsion near the sun and slowly set it off in the direction you wish for it to go. The object moves and due to gravity the sun moves with it.

This of course is incredibly slow and takes a lot of energy anyways. But hey, if you're planning on moving a star then I'm sure you aren't doing so for fun.
 
  • #8
Blueprint said:
The idea is to "push" our Sun in the direction of this star, which would take us along with it.

I'm thinking massive nuclear explosions to divert our Sun off-course and in the direction we want to go. How viable do u think this is?
Larry Niven uses something like this in his Hugo and Nebula award winner Ringworld. But what you might want to read is a short essay he wrote called "Bigger Than Worlds" where he explores Ringworlds, Dyson spheres, Dyson galaxies, and all sorts of interesting stellar engineering techniques.

He imbues his Ringworld with superconducting material which puts the sun in a colossal magnetic bottle, causing it to lase. The resulting jet of plasma turns the sun into a rocket.
 
  • #9
How about http://blag.xkcd.com/2008/02/15/the-laser-elevator/" [Broken]
 
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  • #10
I don't know about the rest of the article, but I'm making http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/laser_elevator/photon_squirrel.png" [Broken] my new desktop wallpaper.
 
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  • #11
DaveC426913 said:
I don't know about the rest of the article, but I'm making http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/laser_elevator/photon_squirrel.png" [Broken] my new desktop wallpaper.

There's something familiar about 1.21 Gigawatts. hmm :confused:
 
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  • #12
"1.21 Gigawatts? 1.21 Gigawatts? Great Scott!" [picks up and talks to framed picture of Faraday is it?]

"I'm sorry, but the only power source capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning."
[startled] "What did you say?"
"A bolt of lightning!"

"No, no, no. This sucker's electrical, but I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need."
"Doc, you don't just walk into a store and buy plutonium. Did you rip that off?"

I always thought they said Jigawatt and not Gigawatt :D
 
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  • #13
If you want to move the sun and the solar system along with it, the only way is to send something out of it. Efforts with rockets or atomic bombs are futile as long as the exhaust or vaporized rock doesn't leave the solar system.
The best we could do at the moment would be to send some asteroid out of the solar system using atomic bomb explosions and a gravity assist from a planet.
Unfortunately the escape velocity from the solar system is too high to do it from the earth, so apophis is 2029 won't do. We may be able to find an asteroid that is going to be close to Jupiter, and arrange a near miss and get it out of the solar system.
of course the sun would still be at least a factor 10^15 heavier.
We really have to push a planet out somehow to get anywhere.
 
  • #14
kamerling said:
If you want to move the sun and the solar system along with it, the only way is to send something out of it. Efforts with rockets or atomic bombs are futile as long as the exhaust or vaporized rock doesn't leave the solar system.
The best we could do at the moment would be to send some asteroid out of the solar system using atomic bomb explosions and a gravity assist from a planet.
Gravity assist won't accomplish anything. It steals energy from the solar system (by way of a planet's orbital speed) to launch the projectile. Net result on the solar system: a slight loss in energy, and no net movement.
 
  • #15
DaveC426913 said:
Gravity assist won't accomplish anything. It steals energy from the solar system (by way of a planet's orbital speed) to launch the projectile. Net result on the solar system: a slight loss in energy, and no net movement.

what about conservation of momentum? if an asteroid escapes with momentum p, the rest of the solar system will get a momentum -p.
 
  • #16
kamerling said:
what about conservation of momentum? if an asteroid escapes with momentum p, the rest of the solar system will get a momentum -p.

Remember, the goal here is to get the SS moving.

That energy you're imparting to the asteroid does npt cause an equal and opposite movement in the SS , it causes a change in the SS's internal moving parts.

Firing an asteroid by gravity-assist will simply result in a SS with planet(s) that orbit slightly closer to the sun.
 
  • #17
DaveC426913 said:
Remember, the goal here is to get the SS moving.

That energy you're imparting to the asteroid does npt cause an equal and opposite movement in the SS , it causes a change in the SS's internal moving parts.

Firing an asteroid by gravity-assist will simply result in a SS with planet(s) that orbit slightly closer to the sun.

Conservation of momentum is ALWAYS valid, so if you send something out of the solar system, the solar system itself will move in the opposite direction.

I have to agree that almost all of the energy taken from the potential and kinetic energy of the planets will be spent on increasing the potential and kinetic energy of the asteroid, but this is inevitable, as accelerating a large mass M by throwing away a small mass m with speed v will give E_small = (1/2)mv^2 of kinetic energy to the small mass, and only (1/2)M(v*m/M)^2 = E_small*m/M kinetic energy to the large mass. (M>>m)
 
  • #18
is harnessing the power of a lightning bolt possible?
 
  • #19
kamerling said:
Conservation of momentum is ALWAYS valid, .
Nobody said it wasn't. But the SS isn't a single, solid object. There are ... options ... for conservation.
kamerling said:
so if you send something out of the solar system, the solar system itself will move in the opposite direction.
Let's take it to the extreme to make it easier for me to grasp.
You use all the energy in a planet's orbit to eject your asteroid. The planet falls into the sun. I don't see that the SS would move anywhere.
 
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  • #20
DaveC426913 said:
Nobody said it wasn't. But the SS isn't a single, solid object. There are ... options ... for conservation.

Let's take it to the extreme to make it easier for me to grasp.
You use all the energy in a planet's orbit to eject your asteroid. The planet falls into the sun. I don't see that the SS would move anywhere.

Consider it in terms of the barycenter of the Planet-asteroid-Sun.

When you start, this barycenter is motionless. When you finish, this barycenter can not have moved to conserve momentum. But the position of the barycenter does change with relative to the Sun-planet barycenter and the center of mass of the asteroid.

Imagine the asteroid moving to the left. Distance between the asteroid and the barycenter increases to the left, and the distance between the sun-planet and the barycenter increases to the right.

Since the barycenter itself must remain stationary, This means that the Sun-planet pair must move to the right to compensate for the movement of the asteroid to the left.

The Solar system will recoil from ejecting a body.
 
  • #21
Jupiter and the sun are both moving around their center of mass, At a certain moment Jupiter moves at about 13 km/s one direction and the sun moves about 12.4 m/s in the opposite direction. Normally the the movement of the sun in this direction would be stopped by the gravity of Jupiter after 1/4 jupiter-year, but if Jupiter lost it's orbital speed the motion of the sun in this direction would continue.

Conservation of momentum tell you that if you have a system of two masses m1 and m2 which starts out with momentum 0, and it splits up for whatever reason, that the momentum of the two parts after this is still zero, so if the momentum of m1 is m1v that the momentum of m2 must be -m1v and so it's speed must be -(m1/m2)v.
 
  • #22
It's purely a matter of direction. Eject a body away from the sun, the planet will move closer to the sun. Eject a body towards the sun, the planet recedes. Eject it sideways, the orbit accelerates or deacclerates, which slightly affects the orbital distance from the sun.
 
  • #23
if you could move something of sufficient mass to attract the sun toward it, i would say you are of sufficient technological advancement that this would seem inordinately inefficient, and slow. (edit: the same would probably apply if you could generate a field big enough to do this.)
the sun would die before you got anywhere.
If you can move fast enough to get anywhere meaningful, then you have lost all the planets along the way due to their orbits all getting destroyed.
 
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  • #24
Nabeshin said:
I believe Carl Sagan suggested a nuclear-based propulsion source which involves exploding high-yield nuclear bombs at the back of a spaceship with a specially designed shield. However, this shield would have to be a) extraordinarily large b) extraordinarily durable.

I did not know that Carl Sagan thought of that propulsion system. I thought of that myself a year ago.
 
  • #25
exploding high-yield nuclear bombs at the back of a spaceship with a specially designed shield
I did not know that Carl Sagan thought of that propulsion system. I thought of that myself a year ago.
Read Larry Niven's Footfall.

3...2...1...ignition

WHAM!

WHAM!

WHAM!

GOD was knocking, and he wanted in bad.
 

1. How can we use the Sun to travel through space?

We cannot physically use the Sun as a means of travel through space. However, we can use the Sun's energy to propel spacecraft through the use of solar sails or solar panels.

2. Is it possible to travel to other planets using the Sun's energy?

Yes, it is possible to travel to other planets using the Sun's energy. Solar sails can be used to harness the Sun's photons and propel a spacecraft towards its destination. Solar panels can also be used to power spacecraft during the journey.

3. How fast can we travel using the Sun's energy?

The speed at which a spacecraft can travel using the Sun's energy depends on various factors such as the size and design of the solar sail or solar panels, the distance to the destination, and the amount of sunlight available. However, some estimates suggest that solar sails can reach speeds of up to 62,000 miles per hour.

4. Are there any drawbacks to using the Sun's energy for space travel?

One potential drawback is that the amount of sunlight available decreases as we move further away from the Sun. This could limit the distance that can be traveled using solar energy. Additionally, solar sails and panels may be affected by solar flares and other intense solar activity, which could potentially damage or disrupt their functioning.

5. Can we use the Sun's energy to travel beyond our solar system?

Technically, yes. Solar sails could potentially be used to travel beyond our solar system, but it would require extremely large sails and a significant amount of time. It is currently more feasible to use other forms of propulsion, such as nuclear or ion engines, for interstellar travel.

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