Can We Move THE SUN?

Good luck getting everyone to agree on a destination.

As a mathematician, "i don't know if we definitely can't" is somehow much more intriguing than "i don't know if we definitely can". Must be something about proof by contradition that tickles the brain just right

PBS and Kurzgesagt. My favorites channels on the YT.

that sucks that doing a livestream to respond to the community kills the channel in the algorithm, that's the opposite of what it should do. even if that may no be as entertaining, discourse with your audience is still incredibly important.

This man casually educating us while he is in space without space suit never ceases to amaze me

As someone who watches Science Fiction with Isaac Arthur (SFIA), a Shkadow thruster is something that I have known about for years 👍😊

In May '83 at Los Lamaos there was a conference titled Conference on Interstellar Migration. Despite the title this was a serious conference looking largely at plausible hyperadvanced mega-engineering projects with the participants well respected members of their scientific fields. In 1986 the book Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience was published which goes into 25 or so of these sorts of projects from the conference in detail and breaks them down to show how each could be actually done. It's a bit dated now, but is extremely interesting and should be in the library of anyone interested in this sort of topic. Starlifting and moving suns around is covered in the book.

Great video! However, it neglected to mention the "Star Tug" (a concept I developed and published in Acta Astronautica; can be found by searching "Svoronos Star Tug"). The Star Tug combines aspects of the Shkadov thruster and Caplan engine to produce an even more powerful and efficient mechanism for controlling a star's movement, and it can, in principle, accelerate the sun to 27% the speed of light. Essentially, it replaces the giant parabolic mirror of the Shkadov thruster with an engine powered by mass lifted from the star, similar to the Caplan engine. However, instead of pushing a star from behind with a beam of thrust, as the Caplan engine does, it pulls the star from the front via its gravitational link to it, same as the Shkadov thruster. As a result, it only needs to produce a single beam of thrust (toward but narrowly missing the star), whereas the Caplan engine must produce two beams of thrust (one to push the star from behind and negate the force of gravity between the engine and the star, and one to propel the system as a whole forward). The result is that the Star Tug is a much more efficient engine capable of significantly higher accelerations and max velocities.

1:34 "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." is Newton's 3rd law, not the 2nd one. Newton's 2nd law is F=ma.

It's fascinating that anyone has even considered moving an entire star.

This has always been my realistic long term goal for Earth. If we can manage to just stay in a habitable zone then we should be alright, and being able to adjust our orbit would be a fantastic start.

If people on one side push at the same time as the other side pulls, I think we might be able to move a few inches. Or maybe the earth tips over and we fall off, I dunno.

With a big enough solar sail, you can use a star to push a spacecraft. With an even bigger sail, you can push a star. That is pretty cool all by itself, but turning the sun into a rocket capable of traversing the cosmos at 10% the speed of light is epic. Replicating this strategy on a Galactic scale to move an entire galaxy across the cosmos? THAT would be a world of levels above legendary.

Lets all lend a helping hand to PBS Spacetime, Matt, and the crew that puts it all together. Turn on those notifications, and open the videos asap.

12:35 I really appreciate that Matt straight asks to watch the video to keep the algorithm happy; instead of resorting to cheap plays like clickbaits.

The way Youtube treats a high-quality education channel with nearly 3mil subs as shabbily as they do everyone else speaks volumes.

Okay Matt, turn on my notifications. And I do have to say I noticed that PBS SpaceTime in any form was not showing up on my feet as it usually did. I actually had to look you guys up, I don't usually do that. Most of my videos are catch-as-catch-can. PBS SpaceTime is that level of real science that I loved it having my head. Thank you all.

One of the things that's been noted with starlifting and building megastructures is that it's not just the planets you have for available mass: The sun itself contains more useful elements than the rest of the solar system combined. So, if you're shrinking the star intentionally, there's a decent chance that will also come with enough free and useful heavy elements to build whole planets, if you want.

It’s funny — I didn’t even think twice before changing my notifications settings to help Matt during his comments at the end of the video. I guess that’s a sign that you truly love a channel. Thank you SpaceTime for all of the happiness you bring to me and others.

I have an idea, maybe we could build lots of the stellar engines around multiple different stars to control a whole fleet of stars!