Researchers are exploring different ways to move the Solar System in space. For this purpose, they have already proposed several megaprojects. All of them have an extremely low probability of being realized within the next millennia.
Is it possible to move the entire Solar System?
We probably need to move our entire Solar System at some time, along with all the planets. The reasons to do so still look fantastic, such as escaping aliens or avoiding a collision with another astronomical object, but we can imagine such a situation.
The Sun has a colossal mass of 1,989 x 1030 kg. This is about 333,000 more than the Earth. Despite this, scientists have been publishing studies for years on practical ways to move it. Some of them are quite simple. For example, a giant parabolic mirror that can be placed in space where the action of solar radiation on it will be balanced by the pressure of interstellar gas.
Such a mirror will collect the sun’s rays and send them back to our luminary. It would essentially be a giant film deployed in space, and the main problem would be maintaining its shape. But this design will just focus the rays on a certain point of the photosphere of our star and additionally heat it.
The authors of the study argue that in this way it will be possible to get a thrust aimed in a certain direction, and further we must take into account the fact that the Sun already rotates around the center of the Milky Way. So it’s worth talking about how much this trajectory can be adjusted by.
Calculations have shown that this value is 130 light-years per orbit. That’s not much at all when you remember that it lasts 250 million years. However, it is also quite a lot, since one light-year is 63 thousand times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
Can it be any quicker?
Of course, it turns out to be extremely slow one way or another. But scientists already have another option ready. It is true that this will require building a Dyson sphere, a giant cosmic structure that will cover our entire luminary. It will collect energy from it and transfer it to a giant fusion engine.
The latter will be a design that will have two nozzles. One is directed toward the Sun and the other away from it. When both work, the engine will move in a certain direction and push the star into it, and the star will pull the planets behind it.
It would be a kind of tug. It will be able to move the Solar System very slowly, but still much more efficient than in the case of the mirror. Of course, in general, the structure will be extremely large and will take thousands and tens of thousands of years to build. However, it is much more important for researchers to prove the fundamental ability to move our home in space.
According to www.iflscience.com
