"Half a life"

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

What about this agument:-

How stars work has nothing to do with how this method works, which is the issue. You do realise you're speaking in absolute terms about what is by definition unknown pseudoscientific nonsense, right? The stages in the life of a (regular) star are predictable, in accordance with its mass, composition and nuclear fusion. That progression cannot be somehow changed, and certainly not by the simplistic "make star's core temperature hotter", which is the exact opposite of what any sane person wants to do to a star to make it more suitable to sustaining life.

Personally id say that to claim "How stars work has nothing to do with how this method works, which is the issue." is retarded considering that is exactly what they point out in the episode.

The other comments are in regard to the star being a MASSIVE red giant but in fact it could very well be a red dwarf, as the proportion of hydrogen in a red dwarf is consumed, the rate of fusion declines and the core starts to contract, the gravitational energy generated by this size reduction is converted into heat, which is carried throughout the star mostly by convection rather than mostly by radiation like other stars do.

In fact in a later part just before the scientist slips Troi's mum a length he directly mentions deep convection patterns and that he thought he had accounted for them and other things while musing over the faliure.

[Praeothmin]

That progression cannot be somehow changed, and certainly not by the simplistic "make star's core temperature hotter

Wrong, that's the whole point, in ST, it can, no matter how much he wants to ignore this...

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

That progression cannot be somehow changed, and certainly not by the simplistic "make star's core temperature hotter

Wrong, that's the whole point, in ST, it can, no matter how much he wants to ignore this...

That hardly matters on SB.com when he will just spam the report button dude, we KNOW that doing so will either save this guys civilisation or doing so is part of a process that will save this guys civilisation as they say so and it is canon.

What he is doing is muddyng the water and claiming thatin his scenario with a red giant it makes no sense and him focusing that ambiguity on the process rather than the result. As such he can claim a technobabble specific to that star and demand proof that said technobabble will work on other stars in the form of examples of them popping other stars.

As we know that such material does not exist he ignores the logic and his error spams the report button making claims that you are refusing to back up claims, and the mods ignore that he is demanding that you back up his claims/perspective rather than your own...and ban you.

My point is that perhaps if it was a red dwarf and not a red giant heating it would/could have the desired effect, but i am still looking for material regarding red dwarfs life cycles and if they shrink over all as they age/cool or if it is just the core that does so.

[Praeothmin]

Lightsabres make no sense...
Hyperdrive makes no sense...
City planets make no sense...
TLs make no sense...
The Force makes no sense...

Yet he accepts them completely, just like any FanBoi will...

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Lightsabres make no sense...
Hyperdrive makes no sense...
City planets make no sense...
TLs make no sense...
The Force makes no sense...

Yet he accepts them completely, just like any FanBoi will...

I do not really mind that but when we have clear canon material saying doing X will mean Y (in this case heating the star will save the civilisation) then i think we need to find a situation where doing so will actually work rather than dismissing it or handwaving it away.

As far as my research goes so far the star being a red dwarf would fit with what is said in the episode and the claimed results.

[Admiral Breetai]

Lightsabres make no sense...
Hyperdrive makes no sense...
City planets make no sense...
TLs make no sense...
The Force makes no sense...

Yet he accepts them completely, just like any FanBoi will...

him and rama once tried to justify those things scientifically for me once iirc well between heaping amounts of calling me a bunch of profane things with zero retribution from the staff and what have you...

kinda funny the double standard in that

[Mike DiCenso]

Just as an aside, I did some real quickie back-of-the-envelope calculations for the range of the torpedoes from "Half a Life". Depending on whether you assume 35 mm or 50mm, you get between 2.9 and 4.1 million kilometers. Of course this all assumes the star is a standard red dwarf star of 403,300 km in diameter, and not a red giant star, which would up the distance and the speed by at least an order of magnitude.
-Mike

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Just as an aside, I did some real quickie back-of-the-envelope calculations for the range of the torpedoes from "Half a Life". Depending on whether you assume 35 mm or 50mm, you get between 2.9 and 4.1 million kilometers. Of course this all assumes the star is a standard red dwarf star of 403,300 km in diameter, and not a red giant star, which would up the distance and the speed by at least an order of magnitude.
-Mike

I still have not found any good detailed info on the life cycle of red dwarfs its very frustrating.

[Mike DiCenso]

There's plenty of basic and detailed information available online. A red dwarf star, because of it's small size, does not use up hydrogen at the rate that larger stars do. In fact, if the current theories are correct, red dwarf stars will exist for hundreds of billions of years. So because of that, we have not observed an aged red dwarf star's full life cycle given the relatively young age of the universe. Whatever is wrong with the Kaelon sun, it is not age related.
-Mike

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

There's plenty of basic and detailed information available online. A red dwarf star, because of it's small size, does not use up hydrogen at the rate that larger stars do. In fact, if the current theories are correct, red dwarf stars will exist for hundreds of billions of years. So because of that, we have not observed an aged red dwarf star's full life cycle given the relatively young age of the universe. Whatever is wrong with the Kaelon sun, it is not age related.
-Mike

Just because they age slowly does not mean they do not age at all and if they do shrink when they age then i see no reason why a planet or moon already near the outer edge of the habitable zone exist would not be in danger.

I have found plenty of info on them online but the one piece i cannot find is if it is just the core that contracts or the entire star, or if the whole thing cools as it does so.

[Mith]

That progression cannot be somehow changed, and certainly not by the simplistic "make star's core temperature hotter

Wrong, that's the whole point, in ST, it can, no matter how much he wants to ignore this...

The point he likes to ignore was that the star expands because fusion is failing in the core, which causes the core to contract. This contraction heats up the core to a high enough temperature that the helium within the core is able to undergo fusion.

What they were trying to do in this episode is convert a young red giant back by essentially making it easier for the helium to undergo fusion. What does that mean? It means that the core doesn't have to contract, which means the shell around the core isn't heated up, and the star's shell won't continue to expand.

He keeps on screaming that 'they're just making it worse! they're just making it worse!' when that's not at all true. A star's status as the yellow giant we know is because of proper balance of gravity and heat, not just gravity. You need the proper balance to keep the star from utterly collapsing or tearing itself apart. In this case, Starfleet was trying to make it easier for the helium to fuse without actually needing the added pressure.

What makes me wonder though, if they could so easily enhance helium to the point that a Sol-like sun would be sufficient to run off that instead of hydrogen, then it makes me wonder if they could apply a similar method to their fusion reactors. Essentially getting more bang for their buck.

Not that they probably need it given technologies like red matter and gravimetric torpedoes.

EDIT: As an aside, people have been mentioning that the UFP needed to test that star, as if it were special. It probably, as someone else (whom I forget) mentioned, having to do with the need to test a star that's in the exact same phase as their own star, suggesting that the star's hydrogen was just starting to run out or just had. It was also suggested by someone that the actual star wasn't destroyed when the experiment failed--the Enterprise D was willing to try again, even after we'd already established that they needed that star. It's possible that the star didn't go supernova, but just nova, which is basically just shedding a layer when there's too much energy for the star to contain--but not enough to completely and utterly destroy it.