- #1
Ken G
Gold Member
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I have a question to ponder. Let's say you had unlimited access to resources, and wanted to reduce the luminosity of a main-sequence star by a factor of 2. To make it cleaner, let's take a somewhat more massive star than the Sun, so it has a shallower convection zone and the luminosity is mostly in the form of diffusing radiation in its interior. The core is fusing hydrogen via the CNO cycle, which is spectacularly temperature sensitive-- all else equal the fusion rate scales like temperature to a power like 20.
OK, so given all this, which of the following strategies would be more successful at reducing the star's luminosity by a factor of 2:
1) Insert some kind of control rods in the core that reduce the fusion rate by a factor of 2 at any given temperature and pressure
2) Insert some kind of opacity rods throughout the star that double the opacity of the gas (i.e., double the cross section per gram for scattering light).
Would either or both of these strategies work?
OK, so given all this, which of the following strategies would be more successful at reducing the star's luminosity by a factor of 2:
1) Insert some kind of control rods in the core that reduce the fusion rate by a factor of 2 at any given temperature and pressure
2) Insert some kind of opacity rods throughout the star that double the opacity of the gas (i.e., double the cross section per gram for scattering light).
Would either or both of these strategies work?