Someone has made a bold assumption about how to destroy the sun. Is this possibility possible?

This article is based on answering a similar question from netizens. The original title is: How can humans destroy the sun? (See the screenshot below)

To put it succinctly: with humankind's current capabilities, we can never destroy the sun. Not to mention the sun, even the moon cannot be destroyed.

First, let’s understand how powerful the sun is. The sun is the only star in the solar system. All other celestial bodies in the solar system are under the absolute control of the sun and revolve around it.

The mass of the sun is about 2*10^30kg (kilograms or kilograms), which is 99.86% of the total mass of all celestial bodies in the solar system. The earth is only 0.0003% of the sun's mass, or one in 330,000. If the earth is put into the sun, it is just like throwing a coal ball into a steel furnace. There may be a wisp of green smoke, but it will disappear in an instant.

The sun as a whole is a huge plasma ball with a diameter of 1.392 million kilometers and a surface temperature of about 6000K. Below the photosphere, the violently active plasma is a bit like a pot of rolling millet porridge. The energy in the radiation layer can be seen churning up and down, and occasionally stirring up some huge whirlpools, which people call sunspots.

Sunspots are like small spots on the sun's face, moving slowly across the sun's surface. They look extremely small, but are actually about the same size as the Earth. Several Earths can fit into a large "spot". In fact, these spots are just some low-temperature vortices on the sun's surface, which are hundreds of degrees cooler than other areas, so they appear dark.

If the earth is thrown into the sun, perhaps after a momentary spark, a sunspot will appear.

How much energy do humans have now? The netizen who raised this question also said that it was just a random guess. It is a good thing to inspire people's thinking, but this guess is a bit too big.

I don't think we have the ability to do that. The most powerful weapon humans have now is the nuclear bomb. According to statistics from world authoritative organizations, there are about 13,400 nuclear warheads in the world, with an average equivalent of 1 million tons per warhead, and a total equivalent of 13.4 billion tons. The equivalent here refers to TNT explosives, which is equivalent to the energy of 13.4 billion tons of TNT explosives exploding.

It is difficult to say how powerful and destructive these nuclear bombs would be if they were dropped simultaneously, but we can compare it to the power of an asteroid hitting the earth.

65 million years ago, an asteroid with a diameter of about 10 kilometers hit the earth, causing huge tsunamis and global fires. The earth was flooded, forests were burned, and smoke and dust covered the sky all year round. Plants died because they could not carry out photosynthesis. The food chain was broken, and the surviving animals that were not killed by the explosion or burnt died out in large numbers because they had no food source. The dinosaurs that ruled the earth for 160 million years said goodbye to this world.

The aftereffects of the asteroid impact have lasted for millions of years. After the smoke and dust cleared, the Earth experienced a long ice age, which completely changed the Earth's climate and environment. Isn't the huge energy of the asteroid amazing? But the Earth still rotates day and night, and still revolves around the sun. Millions of years later, it has regained its vitality. It's just that the plant and animal species have changed, and the ancestors of mankind finally had the opportunity to drill out of the cracks in the ground and stretch themselves. Tens of millions of years later, humans stood out and became the masters of the world.

On Earth, there is still a trace of this asteroid, a huge crater on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, with a diameter of about 180 kilometers and a depth of about 900 meters. That's all.

Scientists estimate that the impact energy of this asteroid is about 100 trillion tons of TNT, which is 7463 times the energy of all nuclear bombs in the world. From this we can draw a conclusion: compared with the impact power of asteroids, the most powerful nuclear bombs of mankind are completely insignificant, and an asteroid with 7463 times the total energy of all nuclear bombs of mankind cannot shake the earth at all. The idea of ​​human beings destroying the sun is really absurd.

So do humans have the power to shake or destroy the moon? The asteroid that hit the earth 65 million years ago did not shake the earth at all, so can it shake the moon?

Still no. Except for 12 astronauts who have set foot on the lunar soil, almost all human beings have only looked up at the bright moon. Why would they destroy the moon? Even if the 10-kilometer asteroid hit the moon, it might not leave a crater as big as the Earth, because lunar craters are relatively shallow. Today we will not discuss why lunar craters are shallow, but just to illustrate that the damage caused by an asteroid hitting the moon may be smaller than that of the Earth.

The moon has a diameter of 3,476 kilometers and a circumference of about 11,000 kilometers. Even if an impact crater of 180 kilometers is left on it, it is nothing. The largest crater on the moon, the South Pole-Aitken Basin, is 2,500 kilometers wide and 8.2 kilometers deep. It is the largest impact crater in the solar system. This impact is much larger than that of the asteroid 65 million years ago, and the moon was not destroyed.

Judging from the densely packed craters on the back of the moon, the moon has experienced many vicissitudes and suffered countless impacts in its 4.5 billion years of history.

An asteroid of about 10 kilometers in diameter destroyed the Earth's ecology. That's because ecology is a vulnerable group parasitic on a planet, just like a basket of eggs. A small impact will break the eggs, but the basket will not be seriously damaged. The moon has no life, it is bare, and there is no air. Even the largest asteroids can just tickle it after hitting it a few times.

Since asteroid impacts are no problem, what use are human nuclear bombs that are much weaker than asteroid impacts? Even if humans have the ability to send all nuclear bombs to the moon and explode them at the same time, they can't blow up a crater tens of kilometers wide, not even enough to tickle the moon. The mass of the moon is only 1/2673 of the sun. If humans can't tickle the moon, how can they shake the sun?

Humans cannot shake the sun now, but will they never be able to do so? It is hard to say. The key is how long the human life span is. If humans can survive for 100 million years, I think they will be able to shake the sun. In theory, when humans reach the second level of civilization in the universe, they will be able to compete with the sun.

What is the meaning of the second-level civilization in the universe? This is a prediction based on the theory of cosmic civilization classification by former Soviet scientist Kardashev. He divided cosmic civilization into three levels. The first-level civilization is the mother star civilization. When you reach the first-level civilization, you can completely control the mother star of this civilization, which is the earth for humans; the second-level civilization is the star-level civilization. When you reach the second-level civilization, you can completely control the main star of this civilization, which is the sun for humans; the third-level civilization is the galaxy-level civilization. When you reach the third-level civilization, you can completely control the entire galaxy, which is the Milky Way for humans.

The sign of reaching each level of civilization is the total amount of energy used by the civilization for interstellar communication and activities. For humans, the energy used by a level one civilization must reach the total energy radiated by the sun to the earth, which is about 1.8*10^17J/s (joules/second); the level two civilization must reach the total radiation of the sun itself, which is about 4*10^26J/s; the level three civilization must reach the total radiation of the Milky Way, which is about 4*10^37J/s.

The total energy utilization of human beings is currently about 1.6*10^13 J/s. According to scientific calculations, it has only reached the 0.73 level of cosmic civilization. To reach the first level of civilization, the energy utilization needs to increase by more than 10,000 times. However, the development of human science and technology has entered the fast lane. One year is equal to the development speed of the past 100 or even 1,000 years. This speed will increase exponentially in the future. Some scientists predict that human society will need to strive for 200 years to reach the first level of civilization.

To reach Level II civilization, the energy used for interstellar communication and activities needs to increase by more than 2.2 billion times compared to Level I civilization. Some scientific predictions suggest that humans will need to struggle for another 5,000 years. But this is premised on the fact that humans must be able to cope with and survive various major disasters that affect human survival, survive and continue to develop science and technology.

To reach the second level of civilization, the energy used by humans is equivalent to the total amount of solar radiation energy, reaching 4*10^26 J/s. What is the concept of the total energy radiated by the sun now? It means that the energy used per second is equivalent to more than 1000 trillion kWh, which is 7.134 million times the power of the total amount of nuclear warheads owned by humans per second.

Can we destroy the sun if we reach level 2 civilization? It's hard to say. It is generally believed that if we reach level 2 civilization, humans can control and use all the energy of the sun, that is, we can build a Dyson sphere to wrap the sun so that no energy leaks out. Humans can obtain this huge energy and convert it into spacecraft power to fly out of the solar system and migrate to deep space.

But reaching this capability only means being able to utilize the sun's energy, not necessarily being able to destroy the sun. To be able to destroy a star, human civilization probably needs to upgrade to a higher level, that is, level 3 civilization. Now all scientists cannot predict what level 3 civilization will look like and when it can be achieved.

Because the power of a Level 3 civilization is so terrifying, humans at that time would be able to control the entire Milky Way and freely travel between galaxies within a radius of 100 million light years. But now humans can only dream of going beyond the 1-light-year radius of the solar system, so how can we imagine what a god-level civilization would look like? The biggest suspense is, how far can human civilization go?

If humans can really develop to the level of Level 2 civilization or even Level 3 civilization, then destroying a sun would be a piece of cake. This is even more outlandish. What do you think? Welcome to discuss. Thanks for reading.

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