The Sun is going to get too hot for life on Earth in about a billion years. The energy output, or luminosity of the Sun continuously increases because of the fusion engine at its core, where hydrogen is being fused into helium. The heavier helium accumulates in the core, making it denser, driving up the temperature and pressure, accelerating the rate of hydrogen fusion. The increase in energy output is only 0.0001 per cent per century, or about 120 gigawatts per second. While there are a number of proposed methods for mitigating the impact of the increased energy output of the Sun on the biosphere of the Earth, there is only one suggested approach for controlling its energy output: Star Lifting.
The basic idea is to reduce the mass from the Sun, slowing down the rate at which hydrogen is fused into helium. Now there are a number of proposed solar engineering solutions to this challenge, but all of them are variations of the same basic mechanism. The Sun is a ball of plasma or hot gas. Polar jets can be used to vent the excess material from the Sun, using an artificially generated toroidal magnetic field. Yet again, there is only one known basic method for generating such a magnetic field, using a Dyson ring of particle accelerators. The beneficial side effect of this project is that it would tame our host star, pick up all the stray plasma clouds from filament eruptions, coronal mass ejections and high speed streams. We might have to dismantle several moons or a small planet to build such a Dyson ring though.
Lucifer Rising
Once the hardware is in place, the Dyson ring could use the energy of the Sun itself to generate the magnetic field. There are variations that provide more granular control. Directed energy beams powered by energy harvested from the Sun can be fired at the surface to increase the rate at which material is lifted. The rings of particle accelerators can themselves be used to squeeze more material out of the Sun. It makes sense to harvest the material dumped by the polar jets. These polar jets can provide an endless supply of fuel and energy, with enough material leftover to build planets… and even a second star in the Solar System.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the book version has pure energy beings using a multipurpose tool with stellar engineering capabilities, The Monolith, to replicate across Jupiter and squeeze it to ignite nuclear fusion. The transformation of the Solar System into a binary System, with Lucifer joining Sol has the beneficial effect of making Europa habitable. Ganymede and Callisto might become habitable too. Star Lifting provides another approach for attaining the same result, by injecting more mass into Jupiter from the Solar Polar Jets. This is a superior solution as it expands the habitability across the Solar System.
Image Credit: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI)
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