From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1999 - 10:23:54 MDT
On Thu, Jun 24, 1999 at 04:22:20PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> Of course, once you have settled in nicely for a few million years and
> got that home feeling for your planet, then you are not happy about
> having it incinerated. So the next obvious question is how to protect
> your planet against supernovae. Presumably you can detect all stars in
> the vicinity that might blow up, and even predict when they will go
> off (within a few centuries or so). What forms of shielding might be
> workable? Especially the close range neutrinos might be tricky to deal
> with. Maybe the best solution is to be pro-active and try to defuse
> the novas or move them (or the sun) out of the way.
Neutrinos aren't a problem unless you're right on the thing's doorstep --
within a few hundred AU -- in which case you've got bigger problems.
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, or (b) take
a leaf out of a Larry Niven book (A World out of Time) and when your star
gets a bit too close to the galactic core, crank up that old self-propelled
gas giant and go find yourself a new G-type dwarf to orbit.
-- Charlie
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