In 1948, astronomer Fred Zwicky, the esteemed co-discoverer of dark matter, speculated that “fusion jets” could be used by a future civilization to navigate our sun and solar system planets through the galaxy. He suggested that pellets of fuel could be fired into the sun to produce explosions that would push the sun along like firecrackers exploding in a tin can. But where to go?
Zwicky thought that the entire solar system could reach Alpha Centauri in a few thousand years.
Forty years later, physicist Leonid Shkadov proposed that far advanced extraterrestrial civilizations might harness the energy output of their sun for interstellar migration. They would use a “stellar engine” — no need for fusion motors here. Simply construct an immense spherical mirror that reflects some of the star’s radiation back onto its surface.
To work, such a stellar engine would have to be a megastructure, millions of miles across (shown above). The bad news is that a planet might have to be dismantled to make such a monstrosity. The good news is that such megastructures — if they exist — should be detectable with today’s telescope technology.
I suspect that any civilization capable of interstellar travel isn't going to use that method (no offense to Zwicky). The gravity well from our star would create havoc anywhere we went, providing that we could do it in the first place.
ReplyDeleteEarthlings are likely confined to the Third Rock and surrounding rock pellets until we can figure out how to do something as a species that isn't toxic.