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Theoretical form of acquiring energy from stellar collisions


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This theory pertains to a theoretical future in which humans have designed different Dyson devices and have propagated throughout the Milky Way galaxy. With the power created from naturally occurring stellar collisions now noticeable through the detection of gravitational waves, the ability to harness such energy could power theoretical devices known as Alcubierre Drives. My theory is if a sufficiently powerful enough Dyson device could be designed to move stellar masses, a collision could be created between 2 stellar bodies much in the same way they occur in a particle accelerator. The resulting collision would create particles perhaps never before seen in the cosmos as a collision of this magnitude had not occurred since the origin of the universe, however those ancient collisions would between much less massive particles as opposed to stellar masses. Different densities of stars would produce different types of matter, with neutron stars making the most exotic of all particles. The way neutron stars collide today is a delicate dance into each other's orbit paths until eventually they roll into the bottom of the spiral together and merge. The collision I am proposing is propelling stars as close to the speed of light as possible on a direct line with each other, much in the same way particles collide in accelerators. The only way I can envision humans creating enough power to move a stellar mass is through an array of Dyson devices. The resultant matter of the collision would be harnessed to power intergalactic travel via Alcubierre Drives.

 

 

Any thoughts greatly appreciated. 

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The neutron star collision was not gentle. They were moving at near the speed of light when they hit. 

5 hours ago, Futureka said:

The resultant matter of the collision

You wouldn’t get any more matter and energy out than you put in. So it would be better to use the energy for travel rather than wasting it trying to collide stars. 

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The antimatter that is the resultant of collisions in particle accelerators is theorized to be a fuel source for space travel, if we can harness them for longer than a day or so which is the current duration we can hold on to them. Wouldn't the same be possible from colliding stars? Given we could create enough energy to collide them and have an apparatus in place to capture and harness the resultant energy. 

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Just now, Futureka said:

The antimatter that is the resultant of collisions in particle accelerators is theorized to be a fuel source for space travel, if we can harness them for longer than a day or so which is the current duration we can hold on to them.

The antimatter particles created in particle accelerators cannot be trapped as they are travelling too fast. Also, that requires a vast amount of energy to recreate a handful of particles that would release almost no energy when they annihilate.

I don't believe anyone has (seriously) suggested using antimatter for space travel.

You might want to produce some evidence or references to support these claims.

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Wouldn't the same be possible from colliding stars? Given we could create enough energy to collide them and have an apparatus in place to capture and harness the resultant energy. 

If you can harness that much energy, why not just use it for space travel? You are not going to get any more energy out of your "colliding stars" system than you put into it.

I suggest you look up conservation of energy before going any further.

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https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/antimatter_spaceship.html

It's been popularly theorized that anti matter could be used as propulsion for ships, and yes they have been able to harness antimatter particles briefly at CERN. The conservation of energy pertains to matter, the annihilation of matter when it comes in contact with antimatter is the reaction that is potentially more powerful than fission and even fusion energy. 

But just to clarify, the general consensus is if you could theoretically build a Dyson device (whether it's a ring, swarm or bubble) the energy you get directly from the device would be greater than the output energy of an artificially engineered stellar collision?

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17 minutes ago, Futureka said:

OK. Thank you. I wasn't aware that NASA was looking at such crazy ideas!

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yes they have been able to harness antimatter particles briefly at CERN.

I know they have. In particular the ALPHA experiment is attempting to capture enough anti-hydrogen to check that it has positive mass.

http://alpha.web.cern.ch

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The conservation of energy pertains to matter, the annihilation of matter when it comes in contact with antimatter is the reaction that is potentially more powerful than fission and even fusion energy.

The annihilation of matter and antimatter still obeys the conservation of energy. You can't get out more energy than you put in.

So I still don't see why you would want to collide stars to generate antimatter. Or even why you think that would generate any usable antimatter.

Edited by Strange
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I think that could potentially generate exotic particles theorized to power things like an Alcubierre Drive (warp drive) to circumvent the speed limit of c (speed of light) for extremely long distances (Ie. Even our closest neighbouring galaxy Andromeda is still 2.2 million light years away) 

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15 hours ago, Strange said:

 

1 hour ago, Strange said:

 

The annihilation of matter and antimatter still obeys the conservation of energy. You can't get out more energy than you put in.

So I still don't see why you would want to collide stars to generate antimatter. Or even why you think that would generate any usable antimatter.

 

The conservation is only a local feature, there is no explicit conservation of energy at this time, under the framework of relativity, this is because that time evolution is generated as a symmetry of the theory - so energy is not always conserved globally in our theories. 

Under strong gravitational fields you, can in theory create irreversible particle creation processes as well. I find it significant for early cosmology, 

Think about our inability to think of a global time, inherently tied to our inability to find a global description of time. Noethers theorem applies to every conserved system. 

Edited by Dubbelosix
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1 hour ago, Dubbelosix said:

 

The conservation is only a local feature, there is no explicit conservation of energy at this time, under the framework of relativity, this is because that time evolution is generated as a symmetry of the theory - so energy is not always conserved globally in our theories. 

Under strong gravitational fields you, can in theory create irreversible particle creation processes as well. I find it significant for early cosmology, 

Think about our inability to think of a global time, inherently tied to our inability to find a global description of time. Noethers theorem applies to every conserved system. 

So do you believe that exotic particles could theoretically be created between stellar collisions, with its energy harnessed and used? 

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12 minutes ago, Dubbelosix said:

I believe the early universe has all the conditions necessary for the creation of particles in an irreversible way. Even fluctuations are effected by the curvature of spacetime according to Sakhrarov. 

Do you think that the curvature of spacetime that would occur when 2 stellar masses artificially collide on a direct path as close to the speed of light as possible would be different compared to the curvatures in spacetime that occurred from collisions in the early universe? 

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Sure it does.... Curvature even happens around Pluto. Think about curvature as the response of mass to spacetime as a phenomenon of curvature, always. curvature should even be a response of particles to the background curvature. 

oh sorry different earlier? I didn't read it all properly.

 

There are situations in which no observer can agree when something happens, based on the relativity of simultaneity. 

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I understand how matter curves spacetime. The denser the object the more curvature it imparts upon the space around it. The curvatures in the fabric of spacetime made at CERN are unlike anything that occurs in the universe now and only happened when the universe was so dense that particles would in fact collide at the speed of light directly with each other. The scale of these collisions compared to two neutron stars colliding directly (instead of merging by orbiting each other) would seem to be at many orders of magnitude higher and could create curvatures that would otherwise never be possible in the known universe. 

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Even in GR, you can always pick a frame where the Lagrangian is not time dependent.
You just can't pick a global frame.
And according to Noether, the corresponding total energy is conserved.
( it is only for the global case that we can't say anything )

As such, it definitely applies in the case of colliding stars, and Strange has a valid point.
Why would you expend more energy than you would get back ?
( remember our old friend entropy ? )

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