Astronomy / Space Could you ignite a brown dwarf with a nuclear bomb?

[Dejay]

Having recently read about the water clouds on a brown dwarf near sol, I was wondering if you could "ignite" a failed star with too low mass to self ignite the fusion reaction with a nuclear bomb? Once the reaction starts, the addition heat, energy and pressure might sustain a fusion reaction? Probably only in bigger brown dwarfs though.

Might make for some interesting fireworks!

Would be awesome if you could do this in Elite Dangerous

 

[Patrick_68000]

Like for the space stations and the planets, the destruction will not be possible in ED. Imagine the result if everybody destroys

 

[Calaban]

A Brown Dwarf is a failed star because it simply doesnt have enough total mass to have the pressures and heat to sustain nuclear fusion.

There would be eddies and vortices of pressure within a Brown Dwarf's core that would generate fits and bursts of fusion activity, but all will "fizzle" out relatively quickly in the "not enough" environment.

So detonating a bomb in or on it would amount to one of those eddies: a momentary spurt of fusion, that fizzles and fails.

Because an actual star is constant fusion ongoing- for billions of years. While the heat and energy within tries to blow it up, its gravity tries to crush it down, and the pressure is enough to maintain a "balance" that we call the star's surface.

So a Star works because there is enough oomph to compress it enough. A Brown Dwarf fails at being a star by having not enough oomph. Gravity has already won the "crush the Brown Dwarf down" battle, and the Dwarf is pressed as much as it can be, and it is simply not enough for Fusion.

So, sorry, no Star Genesis for us mere Men.

 

[Asp Explorer]

You could possibly ignite it by throwing a REALLY big mass of nuclear fuel into it though.

Like another dwarf or neutron star

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

i have no idea about a brown dwarf, but i once iginted a copy of white dwarf with nothing more than a can of lighter fluid and a box of matches...

 

[Dejay]

So detonating a bomb in or on it would amount to one of those eddies: a momentary spurt of fusion, that fizzles and fails.

So, sorry, no Star Genesis for us mere Men.

Ah well, I guess you're right. A fusion explosion would probably make the body expand and be less compact after a while, thus reducing the pressure again to below fusion levels.

I wonder how such a "spurt" of fusion would look like though, a shockwave traveling through the body. Could be a cool effect

 

[Calaban]

it would look like internal heat. A hot spot dim in the middle of the Dwarf visible with an IR camera.

Maybe a slight circumference hiccup, too.

And many Great Red Spot like storms stirred up all around its cloud layers for a few dozen millenia afterwards.

 

[Sysmon]

A sense of scale would be nice. It'd have to be one enormous bomb to influence the brown dwarf in any way.

Seems about as sensible as the old idea of nuking hurricanes to make them chance direction or break them up. That also would do nothing but produce an otherwise undisturbed storm that glows in the dark... Or we could discuss the scientific validity of kickstarting the earths core with nukes.

S

PS: I love the movie "The Core"!

 

[Dejay]

Lol well yeah. I was thinking that once fusion occurs, there would be a chain reaction due to the increased pressure from the first explosion. Like an exothermic reaction. As long as this pressure isn't "equalized" by the brown dwarf expanding somehow the reaction might become self sustaining at least in the areas of the pressure shockwaves.

Well just a crazy idea

 

[Zenicetus]

Since the ignition would require more mass, I was thinking an advanced stellar engineering race could just alter the orbit of a gas giant planet or two. Throw it into the brown dwarf to get a gravity collapse and fusion.

Then I saw this on the Wiki article about brown dwarfs:

"Given the small mass of brown dwarf disks, most planets will be terrestrial planets rather than gas giants"

Oh well....