Anders Sandberg wrote:
> Charlie Stross <charlie@antipope.org> writes:
>
> > Maybe the best bet is to either (a) try and pre-detonate the risky
> > cases before your own star gets closer than, say, 30 parsecs,
>
> Hmm, how to do that? Dump some kind of moderator material into the
> core? Amplify some of the acoustic modes so that a pressure wave
> destabilizes the core?
>
You can age a star prematurely by adding more heavy element mass to it. Add anything above helium, as much as possible, and this will age a star. Dropping a black hole quickly through the center of a star will make it YOUNGER, because more of the heavy elements will be at the core, so when the black hole passes through the star it will eat a tunnel through the star, sucking up a greater proportion of the heavy element mass. However putting a black hole on a trajectory that allows it to touch down at the surface at a low enough speed for the drag induced by the corona to decay its orbit will likely trigger a supernovae, but probably a more powerful one that will have a significant GRB component.
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