Author Topic: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left  (Read 15040 times)

Dragon Cat

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Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« on: 04 December 2013, 00:11:37 »
Here's a question for someone who knows science a lot better than me.

If an Inner Sphere Sun went Supernova would there be any warning?

Would anyone outside the system know about it? (when it happened any long range effects? I know light would still take time to pass the distance between the stars but would it be noticeable on sensors or cause problems for navigation - theory?)

What would be left?

Could a JumpShip still enter the area?

Thanks in advance
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Pat Payne

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #1 on: 04 December 2013, 00:32:01 »
Assuming that this still runs according to real-world physics, IIRC a world in the inhabitable zone would be dead long before the supernova, as an end-stage star has already expanded to considerably over its normal size. For instance, our own sun has roughly 5 billion years of life left. However, scientists think that Earth will be fried somewhere around 1 billion years from now as the sun expands, again IIRC. I'm pretty sure given that sort of lead time, that they'd have ample time to mount an evacuation before the star explodes.

As for how long it would take for other systems to know about it, I'd guess that depends on who was nearby (and still lived to tell the tale). Other than that, nothing that we know about outside of a KF Drive can go faster than light, so observing from another planet would still entail waiting for the effects to reach.

I'll leave it to more advanced scientific minds than mine to say whether the after effects of a supernova (gamma radiation and so on) might pose a threat to navigation or to other systems.
« Last Edit: 04 December 2013, 00:35:47 by Pat Payne »

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #2 on: 04 December 2013, 00:33:44 »
If* an inner sphere star went supernova, we're into the realm of pure speculation here.

KF jumps are dependant on arriving in "flat" space. There's considerable mass ejection in a supernova, and it's plausible to speculate that there could be significant (on a micro scale) gravity waves sloshing around the system. This probably wouldn't prevent jump, but might be like jumping into a pirate point - chance of misplacement on arrival, at worst failure to jump. Obviously jumping into close proximity (eg. a thousand AU ;) ) of a supernova is not going to be good for your warranty.

Can't see HPG transmissions being affected directly, but - again, plausible speculation - the neutrino pulse from core collapse might cause problems for the HPG machinery, a few hours before light from the core explosion reaches the planet. So if you were running a real-time "chat" you might see ten seconds of interference, which then cleared.

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #3 on: 04 December 2013, 01:15:47 »
One, a star that could end up as a supernova would not really have any habitable planets.  They are just too large (usually blue giants/supergiants).    Anything even close enough to orbit would be a charred chunk of rock.

Two, spectral analysis is good enough today to tell close (stellarly speaking) when a star is close to dying.  Just read today that Vy Canis Majoris should go Hyper Nova somewhere in the next 100,000 years.  Near to the star itself, well you should be able to measure the instabilities in the photosphere and see it's coming close.  You wouldn't get a "next three days" but probably somewhere in the "next few years".

Three, in the system itself, forget escaping.  As soon as you knew it blew, you would be dead before the thought processed.  The blast wave travels just under C (the speed of light).  Even the light from the supernova would be enough to kill you.

Four, what is left over depends a lot on the specific star itself and how large it is.  Currently this is a hotly debated subject of what sized star leaves behind exactly what 'remnant'.  And what those 'remnants' might even be.  Known remnants would be either a neutron star or a black hole (aka a singularity).  Some of the speculative remnants could be a quark star, a strange star, or a preon star.  These aren't nearly as bad as you might think.  Since most of the mass of the star's mass is ejected in the explosion the 'left over' isn't nearly as heavy as the original star and the gravity wouldn't be even close to the original.

Five, nearby systems could even be in jeopardy.  Close enough the shock wave from the explosion could cause issues and depending on the polar orientation of the remnant you could have gamma ray bursts as the neutron star or singularity scoops up other leftover material.  Even within a few hundred light years one of those directed NEAR an inhabited system would just immediately sterilize ALL life in that system.

This answer your questions?
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Stormlion1

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #4 on: 04 December 2013, 01:19:24 »
Well not every sun in the Inner Sphere, Periphery, or the Homeworlds is the same age, so it has had to have happened at least once in the hundreds of years of Human expansion.
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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #5 on: 04 December 2013, 01:39:54 »
Well not every sun in the Inner Sphere, Periphery, or the Homeworlds is the same age, so it has had to have happened at least once in the hundreds of years of Human expansion.

See the Niops Association; a generational long study of a failing star started this realm.  It will still be 1000's of years.  The Inner Sphere - heck, even out all the way to the Clan Homeworlds and the Deep Periphery - is a remarkably small area of space in the span of the entirety of the galaxy, with ... I dunno... probably a few million stars in that space still.  Even then, the odds of a particular star going nova within the short time period of human space colonization (a mere 1000 years by the 3100's!) within reach of human civilization is incredibly small... with star lifespans in the billions of years, the fact that the Niops star is going failing is a "lucky" event. 
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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #6 on: 04 December 2013, 01:43:41 »
True, but out of all the colonized systems in the Inner Sphere, Periphery, and the Clan Homeworlds there just a drop in the bucket to the number of systems that can't support life but have suns of various ages. What are the numbers, for every 'living' system there has to be dozens of 'dead' systems surrounding them.
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St.George

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #7 on: 04 December 2013, 04:09:06 »
Good points,,,but also due to light speed,,,,we wouldn't know about it until the light hit us.Something going supernova 500-Ly's away "happened" 500 years ago if your observing it from this star system.Maybe you have a lil'more warning if your within 50-Ly's but you'd be with in the EA of said Supernova,,,,,,not a good day for anyone on earth.
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Mohammed As`Zaman Bey

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #8 on: 04 December 2013, 04:43:27 »
Good points,,,but also due to light speed,,,,we wouldn't know about it until the light hit us.Something going supernova 500-Ly's away "happened" 500 years ago if your observing it from this star system.Maybe you have a lil'more warning if your within 50-Ly's but you'd be with in the EA of said Supernova,,,,,,not a good day for anyone on earth.
  Replace "Earth" with "an inhabitable system". I could imagine that some "desert" worlds may be undergoing post-supernova recovery, which takes millions of years. A world like Algedi, with no oceans or forests would still have a breathable atmosphere, despite the stripped ozone layer.

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #9 on: 04 December 2013, 04:50:02 »
Soon replace "inhabitable" system with "un-inhabitable" system.
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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #10 on: 04 December 2013, 05:01:58 »
The biggest problem is a Super Nova chain reacts to Really nears systems unlike a standard Nova which generally kill just the system and companion star . It propagates near light speed so a KF jump ship might show up after the blast wave at a standard jump point and be able to predict that the wave will hit a neighboring stars some  years later and be able to sell passage to people in those systems for as much as the market will bear .

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #11 on: 04 December 2013, 05:24:18 »
Given that Betelgeuse is a red super-giant, and it's expected to supernova when it finally dies (which IRL scientists say may happen relatively soon)...

Honestly, I'm surprised there's a viable colony planet there at all. I would've expected everything inside of 10 AU to be utterly cooked; maybe it's a capture planet or a moon that got flung off a gas giant when all the orbits got skewed by the expanding star. It'd still have to have lost a lot of orbital eccentricity at some point to avoid getting either cooked or frozen.

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #12 on: 04 December 2013, 09:38:58 »
If an Inner Sphere Sun went Supernova would there be any warning?
Depends on the progenitor:
1. A massive white dwarf that accretes mass from a companion. Runaway fusion will set in after the dwarf reaches about 1.38 solar masses. If this progenitor would have been visited, its threat would certainly have been noticed. Even a rough prediction of the expected time before detonation could have been made even centuries in advance. On the other hand from afar, there would hardly have been a warning because white dwarfs are faint and numerous. Nobody would have noticed.

2. A binary star merger, likely also involving white dwarfs. As before, if the system had been examined, orbital calculations would have revealed a threat, including rough predictions of remaining lifetime. Likely also centuries in advance. From afar, the rather rapidly increasing radial velocity might have been detected, as long as the binary was bright/close enough. Though it might as well be overlooked, considering the large number of multiple system (+ planets) that would have to be observed.

3. A massive star facing a core collapse event. These things are bright and rare. Shortly before (no idea how long but possibly decades) the core collapse, the star might show some strong pulsations because the initial fusion process does not stop instantly but step by step. This would be noticeable even far a few hundred parsec away (Note that this means, the star might already have detonated while it has not seen it yet).

Would anyone outside the system know about it? (when it happened any long range effects? I know light would still take time to pass the distance between the stars but would it be noticeable on sensors or cause problems for navigation - theory?)

Per current knowledge of physics, no. Neutrinos take years to reach the next systems where they could be detected. Light arrives a couple of hours later.* But there is no instant way of getting the info to other star system.

What Kearny-Fuchida physics say about this is up to you. One might construct a in-game theory that a nearly instantly noticeable KF-space shock is detectable by all near jumpships.


*No not because  light is slower than neutrino but because the neutrinos leave the detonation mostly unhindered at almost lightspeed while the light takes several hours to reach the surface of the former star because of the strong scattering in the dense matter.

What would be left?

The original star is gone, not even a thin cloud remaining. An envelope is expanding at high speed. At first it is of course extremely hot dense. Therefore, any potential nearby planets are evaporated. Further out, the cores of former gas planets may survive in some twisted form. Within a couple of AU, the neutrino flux will instantly saturate matter with radioactive species. Well, the range of this depends on the exact scenario of the SN. Type Ia supernovae, the 1st scenario above, are presumed to produce enough hard radiation to mess with the ionospheres and destroy ozone layers of planets within a radius of 1000pc. So basically, the whole Inner Sphere could be wiped out unless people notice the supernova and begin evacuation. Not impossible, considering that there are decades or even centuries for the evacuation before the radiation front arrives. Some Type 2 supernovae might be much less deadly and only affect a sphere of 10pc.

Could a JumpShip still enter the area?

Jumpships can jump everywhere, as long as the gravity field is not too complicated to be considered in the jump sequence. Therefore, as long as one does not jump into or close to the expanding gas shell you are okay. Well, unless you wish to define a Kearny-Fuchida-physics effect that prevents a jump into the system.
« Last Edit: 04 December 2013, 09:40:44 by specter »

Natasha Kerensky

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #13 on: 04 December 2013, 10:59:12 »
If an Inner Sphere Sun went Supernova would there be any warning?

If astronomers/solar physicists were observing the star in-system, there would be telltale changes in the size, radiation output, and spectrum of the star in the months and years leading up to the supernova collapse.

Otherwise, no one is probably going to be watching in-system.  An end-stage, red- or blue-giant/pre-nova star will probably have extinguished all life in its system, and the fluctuations leading up to the nova will make life for the average Joe on any Earth-like planet or space station/vehicle in the star's proximity very difficult.

Unless supernovas in the BT universe generate or affect K-F fields in ways that travel faster than the speed of light (there's no indication that they do), most of the rest of the Inner Sphere will get no warning.  Even astronomers stationed in nearby systems will observe the changes in a pre-nova star years after they've happened just due to their distance and the speed of light, and by then the nova may/will have already happened. 

Quote
Would anyone outside the system know about it? (when it happened any long range effects? I know light would still take time to pass the distance between the stars but would it be noticeable on sensors or cause problems for navigation - theory?)

Unless there's some K-F field connection in the BT universe (again, no indication) or unless the supernova is a type that creates an extremely rare gamma-ray burst (GRB), there's no impact to nearby star systems.  (If aimed right, a GRB could irradiate planetary atmospheres and extinguish life in nearby star systems, but again, that's extremely rare.)

Quote
What would be left?

Depending on the size of the original star, a white dwarf star, a neutron star, or a black hole would remain, surrounded by an expanding sphere (shockwave) of hot but thin plasma from the nova.  Any planets or other objects orbiting the star in the system would probably be flung out of the system due to the star's sudden loss of mass to the nova, in addition to any irradiation from the nova and the interaction between the planets' upper atmospheres and the nova's plasma shockwave. 

Quote
Could a JumpShip still enter the area?

You'd want to wait until the stellar remnant's (white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole's) mass could be accurately ascertained so you don't open a K-F field well inside the remnant's gravity well.  There might also be ongoing radiation issues from the stellar remnant.  But otherwise, all of the nova's potentially dangerous effects -- the radiation from the nova event and the plasma shockwave -- will have moved far away.

Hope this helps.
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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #14 on: 04 December 2013, 11:35:51 »
Given that Betelgeuse is a red super-giant, and it's expected to supernova when it finally dies (which IRL scientists say may happen relatively soon)...

Honestly, I'm surprised there's a viable colony planet there at all. I would've expected everything inside of 10 AU to be utterly cooked; maybe it's a capture planet or a moon that got flung off a gas giant when all the orbits got skewed by the expanding star. It'd still have to have lost a lot of orbital eccentricity at some point to avoid getting either cooked or frozen.

i'd vote for a super-earth that prior to the expansion was a frozen wasteland.. but afterwards it landed in the new habitable zone.

and it is possible the world in Btech was one of the Star League terraforming efforts that managed to stick..

pfarland

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #15 on: 04 December 2013, 13:50:26 »
Quote
Could a Jumpship still enter the area?

Disregarding any effect on K-F physics and the actual function of the drive, yes, but it would be incredibly dangerous.  As long as you jumped in after the initial explosion (just a few days to a week, see below), you wouldn't have anything to worry about except for the severely changed gravity and orbital mechanics.

Chances are that (except for the binaries that produce Type 1a Supernovae) that the star in question won't have any planets.  These stars are so massive the tend to 'vacuum' up the materiel needed for planet formation and are also to short lived that planets barely have time to form.  It could have picked up a rogue planet though.  Irregardless, with any supernova, the planets that were there are almost certain to no longer be there any longer.  The initial radiation wave will have blown off any atmosphere and likely boiled off a good bit (or all) of the crust.  The materiel shock wave (propagating at approximately 10% C) would have knocked anything that was left out of orbit.

Now the remnant of the supernova really depends a lot on the particular star and it's type and just plain old luck of the draw.  Usually it's about 10% of the star's original mass whether it is a singularity or a degenerate star (aka neutron star, quark star, or other weirder ones).  It can be up to about 75% all the way down to none, but around 10% is about normal.

This means that trying to jump into the system with a K-F drive is just begging for trouble.  The orbital mechanics are nil.  Any planets it had are either gone or the (much smaller cores) are slowly making their way out of the system.  The original star has lost 25% (at the LOWEST) of it's mass, more likely about 90%. 

I, purposely don't read too much on the K-F drive, just because knowing more than I do would ruin the whole game for me, but for all intents and purposes you would be jumping out into empty space.  Most likely there would be no gravity well to even speak of (and doesn't the K-F drive need that?) and certainly no way to recharge the drive unless it was a type 1a Supernova or you got lucky and it left a white dwarf remnant.
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jimdigris

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #16 on: 04 December 2013, 17:35:57 »
I'd be more concerned with how big the dead zone surrounding the star would be.  Potentially, an entire realm could be wiped out.

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #17 on: 04 December 2013, 18:19:24 »
You're unlikely to see much impact past 100 parsecs, actually. Past really exotic light shows.

The inverse-square law bites, basically, and between the heliopause of the local sun, the magnetosphere of the planet, and the atmpspheric blanket, it's hard to get that extinction-level event going.
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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #18 on: 04 December 2013, 18:26:29 »
One, a star that could end up as a supernova would not really have any habitable planets.  They are just too large (usually blue giants/supergiants).    Anything even close enough to orbit would be a charred chunk of rock...


Good show.  That's exactly what I was going to say.  O0

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #19 on: 04 December 2013, 18:34:05 »
Of course, that's based on our current understanding of physics.

Given it's space operatic sci-fi, one could hand-wavingly postulate a catastrophic misjump emerging in the core of a white star like Sirius, causing energy loss from the core leading to collapse and explosion. Or more agressive forms of Baxter's dark matter "birds", same thing.  After all, I'm not saying it's aliens, but ... ;D

Alternatively, given wandering planets of Jovian size have been identified by IR telescopes, posit one such wanderer impacting on the surface of a dwarf star (eg. Sirius B) - nova in a packet!

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #20 on: 04 December 2013, 23:09:44 »
The real "potential" problem would be the potential for a remnant with a companion to become a gamma ray burster.  Anything aligned along it's poles (I think a 10 to 15 degree cone) would be sterilized for quite a distance a way.

As for a rogue planet causing a nova, doubtful.  More like a MASSIVE flare/Coronal Mass Ejection.  Even the largest gas giant wouldn't be large enough or contain enough hydrogen to cause a nova.  Now step that rogue up to a brown dwarf, you might have quite a different story.  And miss-jumps or what ever the dark matter "birds" are, well that is purely speculation, I couldn't begin to figure that one out.

And yes, wandering planets (aka rogue planets) are out there, and they are starting to believe they might outnumber stars themselves.
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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #21 on: 05 December 2013, 00:42:39 »
Given that the Inner Sphere is 1100ly across, and that the closest recorded supernova, Kepler 1604, is about 20,000ly from Earth (which was the brightest star in the night sky, visible even in the day, for at least 3 weeks), there is one thing I can say for certain: It would eventually be the single brightest object in the skies of every (barring strange orbits or other limiting factors) world within the Battletech universe. I can imagine all kinds of upheaval resulting from it.

I wonder if KF-drive technology could actually be used to cause a supernova. A misjump could send a ship into a star's core, introducing all kinds of heavy elements to the fusion cycle, causing it to collapse..... hehehehe
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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #22 on: 05 December 2013, 03:47:06 »
Given that the Inner Sphere is 1100ly across, and that the closest recorded supernova, Kepler 1604, is about 20,000ly from Earth (which was the brightest star in the night sky, visible even in the day, for at least 3 weeks), there is one thing I can say for certain: It would eventually be the single brightest object in the skies of every (barring strange orbits or other limiting factors) world within the Battletech universe. I can imagine all kinds of upheaval resulting from it.

I wonder if KF-drive technology could actually be used to cause a supernova. A misjump could send a ship into a star's core, introducing all kinds of heavy elements to the fusion cycle, causing it to collapse..... hehehehe

Unless you jumped in several billion tons of iron right into the core of a star you'd probably just throw a jumpship away in the attempt.  Maybe we should get the Wobbies to try this...
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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #23 on: 05 December 2013, 04:28:38 »
Well you also have to realize the effects of the supernova itself take time.  The neutrino and light wave from it arrive first (the light just a few hours after the neutrinos).  Even then, with the IS being 1100 ly across, if it happened dead center, it would take 550 years to reach the furthest edges.  The actual shock wave of material travels at just about 10% C.  That would give it about 50 years to reach a star 5 ly away. 

Humans being humans would probably put off evacuating any nearby planets until the last couple of years.  Really I don't see any real upheaval, other than a whole lot of scientists trying to put forth expeditions to study the event from every possible angle.

As for a misjump into the core itself causing a supernova, well maybe.  Not from introducing heavy elements into the star itself (that would be like pouring a soda into an ocean), but more likely from the destabilization it would cause.

I assume (like I said earlier I don't read too much about the K-F drive purposely) that when the ship jumps it 'switches' the ship for what ever is in it's place.  Normally this would just be the thin gasses found in the outer solar system. 

When the ship jumps into the star, whether it is the core or not really doesn't matter (as long as it isn't the photo-sphere which would probably have little effect).  You suddenly have this VERY cold and VERY low pressure spot in the star.  The immediate (probably measured in pico-seconds) effect would be for fusion to cease in an extremely thin envelope around the ship, probably just a nano-meter or so wide.  At the same time the ship itself would literally boil away.  This all would happen in MUCH less than a second.  And the enormous pressure would simultaneously crush the ship into a bit of heavy non-fusible materiel that you could easily fit on a dime.  (More likely a bunch of smaller bits since the ship isn't spherical, but I digress.)  Said bit(s) would leisurely fall down onto the core and settle.  This isn't the potential issue.

The problem we have is the inward rushing hydrogen along with that thin layer of hydrogen that stopped it's fusion reaction.  Now we have an implosion (the opposite of an explosion) inside a star.  THIS IS A BAD THING.  The plasma rushes into the (relative) vacuum that the ship is and reheats at the same time and suddenly come back together.  The fusion reaction starts back up with a bit of renewed vigor from the additional pressure from the implosion (and probably creates some heavier elements in the process).  And we're still talking quite a bit less than a second here.

The renewed fusion pressure (fusing at a much higher rate than the surrounding star (for a very short moment at least) now creates an explosion and a shock wave.  At this point things MIGHT be ok, or very much NOT ok.  The dynamics involved with an explosion inside a star are quite beyond me.  Hell, supercomputers have an extremely hard time simulating just good ole plain supernovae.  At the very least you would know something happened if you were watching the star from in the system just because of a large increase in flares and coronal mass ejections.  At the very least.  At the worst, you might be creating a hypernova.
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marauder648

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #24 on: 05 December 2013, 05:24:38 »
Very very informative Pfarland, insightful stuff!  As you said a sun just not wake up one day go 'You know what...screw you' *MICHALEBAYSPLOSION* in the build up to a nova or supernova a sun will go through a lot of fairly easily detectable turmoil, shedding outer layers, growing and probably flaring violently to boot, this is a process that takes a very long time and if a sun was already at that stage it would pritty much be a no go for anyone trying to colonise it due to radiation and the crap being thrown off the sun as it sheds outer layers. 

The only bit thats blindingly fast is when the core collapses, that takes a milisecond (thereabouts) and then its a few seconds for the sun to realise its core is gone and it blows itself apart as the implosion at the core reaches the surface and blows the star apart.

I doubt the supernova would be that bad yes it would probably be unpleasant for systems within about 10 light years as they are now part of a nebulae but that will still take a massive amount of time for that dust to spread out.  Unless it happened in a densely clustered group of systems a Supernova would be more a troublesome but amazing to watch event rather than some Inner Sphere destroying event.  A Hypernova however...
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Kret69

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #25 on: 05 December 2013, 07:47:33 »
pfarland, I have two questions and please forgive my ignorance:

1. Assuming the "jump" is a kind of exchange of matter, would it matter how large "bubble" the K-F drive creates around it? Would the diameter of this "bubble" be able to determine whether the jump destination ( the star) is about to change to supernova or not?

2. Assuming Your "exchange of matter" logic (and I perfectly understand this is pure fantasy speculation here), what do You think would happen on the other side of the jump (initial jumping point)? Is it possible that the energy, or some chunk of star's core, would materialize there?

marauder648

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #26 on: 05 December 2013, 08:53:06 »
We've no real idea on how big the jump bubble of a jumpship is, the only real hint is when the Ancestral Home destroyed a Leviathan Prime by engaging its jump drive or doing something with it.  The jump bubble from that flattened the Home and crushed and tore the front off the Leviathan as it collapsed and they were not quite in spitting range, so if it was that big a bubble of several thousand kilometers..well Mr Pfarland knows more about this than I ever could..but I'd assume it would be supremely bad.  If it was the size of the ship then less so but still probably along the lines of what our learned colleague said.

And going of Mr Pfarland's idea of a matter swap (which makes sense) then dumping something on the order of a few million tonnes of stellar plasma in cold space would i'd assume have little effect, it might flood local space with a blast of radiation but i'd assume it would cool and dissipate rather than do something nasty.
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Natasha Kerensky

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #27 on: 05 December 2013, 09:06:25 »
I wonder if KF-drive technology could actually be used to cause a supernova. A misjump could send a ship into a star's core, introducing all kinds of heavy elements to the fusion cycle, causing it to collapse..... hehehehe

Anything is possible given that K-F field physics is fictional.  But practically, a jumpship's K-F field is miniscule compared to a stellar core.  We would need to erect millions, maybe billions, of jumpship-sized K-F fields at the same time to induce anything approaching a nova-like effect on a star.

There are easier ways to exterminate a planet.

We've no real idea on how big the jump bubble of a jumpship is

It's some fraction of 27 kilometers, which is the exclusion zone for an entering jumpship, IIRC.

Again, that's puny compared to a stellar core.  The Sun's core has a diameter of ~280,000 kilometers, or 10,000x larger.  A red-/blue-giant star near collapse will have a much larger core than that.
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Kret69

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #28 on: 05 December 2013, 09:13:41 »
Quote
There are easier ways to exterminate a planet.

One planet yes, but I understood the possibilities here are to exterminate several star systems. That kind of outcome would justify the investments... ;)

marauder648

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Re: Sun Goes Supernova What's Left
« Reply #29 on: 05 December 2013, 09:18:34 »
I doubt a star would react kindly to having (at least) a 27 km square bubble of stellar matter torn from it, thats got to be on the order of several billion cubic tonnes of matter replaced with cold vaccume all of a sudden.  We'd get Pfarland's implosion/explosion on a worryingly large scale as he worked it out on just the volume of the ship being displaced so if you ripped a 27km wide sphere of stellar plasma out of a sun its not going to shrug it off.  its likely to do the solar equivalent of throwing a screaming raging fit.
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