Creating A Planet

[All Seeing Eye]

I need this info for a possible book I'm going to write.

Would it be possible for an advanced race to create a planet from a Neutron Star?

A Neutron star is simply composed almost entirely of neutrons but for their size exhibit a large gravitational pull and rotate pretty rapidly and are very hot.

But would it be possible to convert one into a planet?

If you take materials from solar systems like Asteroids, Planets and Moons and drop them towards the Neutron star would they start to build up on the surface of the Neutron star?

As the material builds up on the Neutron star would the Neutron Star begin to spin slower?

The idea is to keep building up material on the surface of the Neutron star until the distance from the star allows for an Earth like gravity on the surface. At this point gases are added to generate an atmosphere and heat is tapped into from the Neutron star core.

 

[O'Dib]

Lol. Just in case you're serious... The added planetary matter would increase its mass and therefore gravitational pull, not lower it.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Lol. Just in case you're serious... The added planetary matter would increase its mass and therefore gravitational pull, not lower it.

Wow, that never even crossed my mind. Hey I got up at 6 this morning! I'm still asleep!

How about if an advanced alien race somehow took a piece of the original Neutron star? took that piece and used it as a foundation for the planet?

Would the piece you took away still remain intact or would the Neutrons break apart?

 

[Jadzia]

Well neutrons are not stable by themselves, and the only reason a neutron star is
made of neutrons, and is stable, is because the neutrons cannot decompose into protons and electrons without working against the immense gravity, which they cannot. The neutron star is a situation in which the gravity is stronger than the electromagnetism which gives normal matter it's bulk.

I imagine that a small piece of neutron star which did not have much gravity
would allow electromagnetism to take over again, so it might expand rapidly from a football sized lump of neutrons into a planet sized lump of normal material. Or more likely, explode into particles, emitting immense amounts of ionising radiation, and forming an expanding cloud of ionised gas consisting of atoms of various sizes.

I don't know if the force of the expansion would be too strong for gravity to hold onto the resulting material. Your matter might all escape you.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

It would be a hell of a lot easier to make a planet by smashing a whole bunch of asteroids together. You can't do a hell of a lot with a neutron star since it is a dense, high-pressure ball of degenerate matter.

But, hey, you could smash some neutron stars together and make a black hole.

 

[Deckerd]

I don't know if the force of the expansion would be too strong for gravity to hold onto the resulting material. Your matter might all escape you.

He could contain it in a bag?

 

[Alpha_Geek]

I don't know if the force of the expansion would be too strong for gravity to hold onto the resulting material. Your matter might all escape you.

He could contain it in a bag?

Perhaps. This could be a second use for the balloon from the "Jet propelled by gas giant" moon moving project.

Cost for this balloon would be less, because the facilities to create the balloon would have already been set up for the other project.

Ya know that little pokey-out part near the balloon nipple? This would create a geographic feature of massive proportions compared to the rest of the planet surface. I hereby christen this landmark as Mt. Tachyon.

As the balloon would render the surface of the new planet as pretty darn smooth, Mt Tachyon may be the only place on the planet where alpine quadrapeds could exist.

 

[Christopher]

A neutron star has the mass of an entire sun. No way could you make a planet out of it.

Indeed, there's no reason why anyone would need to make a whole planet from scratch. There are tons of them just lying around. It's believed that when the Solar System formed, there may have been dozens of protoplanets of all sizes initially, but some of them underwent collisions (like the one believed to have created Earth's Moon) and others were jettisoned from the system by the gravitational effect of the giant planets' migrations. At least, they were jettisoned from the inner system. We're finding many planetoids and dwarf planets in wild orbits out beyond the Kuiper Belt, most of them probably jettisoned there from the protoplanetary disk. It's entirely possible there could be some Earth-sized planets out there, frozen and dead -- or maybe even not entirely frozen, since it's theoretically possible that even out there, a large planet's internal heat could keep underground pockets of liquid water viable for billions of years.

So if super-advanced aliens wanted to terraform a ready-made planet, they wouldn't have to create one; they'd just have to rummage around for an existing, lifeless planet of the right size, move it to the right orbit, et voila.

 

[John Picard]

A neutron star has the mass of an entire sun. No way could you make a planet out of it.

Indeed, there's no reason why anyone would need to make a whole planet from scratch. There are tons of them just lying around. It's believed that when the Solar System formed, there may have been dozens of protoplanets of all sizes initially, but some of them underwent collisions (like the one believed to have created Earth's Moon) and others were jettisoned from the system by the gravitational effect of the giant planets' migrations. At least, they were jettisoned from the inner system. We're finding many planetoids and dwarf planets in wild orbits out beyond the Kuiper Belt, most of them probably jettisoned there from the protoplanetary disk. It's entirely possible there could be some Earth-sized planets out there, frozen and dead -- or maybe even not entirely frozen, since it's theoretically possible that even out there, a large planet's internal heat could keep underground pockets of liquid water viable for billions of years.

So if super-advanced aliens wanted to terraform a ready-made planet, they wouldn't have to create one; they'd just have to rummage around for an existing, lifeless planet of the right size, move it to the right orbit, et voila.

Well, there went my plans for a winter project.

 

[Trekker4747]

Lol. Just in case you're serious... The added planetary matter would increase its mass and therefore gravitational pull, not lower it.

Wow, that never even crossed my mind.

Shocker.

Hey I got up at 6 this morning! I'm still asleep!

Yeah. That's it.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Lol. Just in case you're serious... The added planetary matter would increase its mass and therefore gravitational pull, not lower it.

Wow, that never even crossed my mind.

Shocker.

Hey I got up at 6 this morning! I'm still asleep!

Yeah. That's it.

I could link to at least 5 posts you've made in the Sci Tech forum this week that were nothing more than snide comments.

A neutron star has the mass of an entire sun. No way could you make a planet out of it.

Indeed, there's no reason why anyone would need to make a whole planet from scratch. There are tons of them just lying around. It's believed that when the Solar System formed, there may have been dozens of protoplanets of all sizes initially, but some of them underwent collisions (like the one believed to have created Earth's Moon) and others were jettisoned from the system by the gravitational effect of the giant planets' migrations. At least, they were jettisoned from the inner system. We're finding many planetoids and dwarf planets in wild orbits out beyond the Kuiper Belt, most of them probably jettisoned there from the protoplanetary disk. It's entirely possible there could be some Earth-sized planets out there, frozen and dead -- or maybe even not entirely frozen, since it's theoretically possible that even out there, a large planet's internal heat could keep underground pockets of liquid water viable for billions of years.

So if super-advanced aliens wanted to terraform a ready-made planet, they wouldn't have to create one; they'd just have to rummage around for an existing, lifeless planet of the right size, move it to the right orbit, et voila.

Seriously? there could be an Earth sized planet in our solar system beyond the Kuiper belt? Would we not have detected something that large?

 

[Christopher]

Seriously? there could be an Earth sized planet in our solar system beyond the Kuiper belt? Would we not have detected something that large?

Hey, it's dark out there. And really far away. And really, really spacious. The bodies in question aren't radiating their own light; the only way to detect them is by reflected sunlight. So they're not easy to find.

In another thread, I mentioned that if the cis-Neptunian Solar System were the size of a pool table, the planets would be the size of bacteria. Now imagine that pool table is in an empty hangar a mile across, and the whole thing is illuminated only by a single light bulb hanging over the pool table, and you're standing next to the table using binoculars to look for individual, isolated bacteria on the very clean hangar floor. Even with incredibly sensitive binoculars, how long do you think it's gonna take you to search that entire square mile of floor? And that's just in two dimensions.

Until 17 years ago, we hadn't discovered any trans-Neptunian objects besides Pluto, but since 1992 we've found over a thousand, and that's just scratching the surface. We've charted maybe between 1 and 2 percent of the significant bodies in the Kuiper Belt (of which Pluto is the largest known member), and that's the nearest part of the Outer System. Probably the majority of bodies in the Solar System are still unknown to us.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

I think that would make a good part of a book. Humans find a planet beyond the Kuiper belt the exact same size as Earth.

 

[judge alba]

possibly but I doubt humans could live there too cold and dark I would think.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

possibly but I doubt humans could live there too cold and dark I would think.

Certainly but the gravity is a positive.

 

[Trekker4747]

possibly but I doubt humans could live there too cold and dark I would think.

Certainly but the gravity is a positive.

No sunlight, neat absolute-zero temperatures, no plant life or ay resources of anykind are all negatives.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

possibly but I doubt humans could live there too cold and dark I would think.

Certainly but the gravity is a positive.

No sunlight, neat absolute-zero temperatures, no plant life or ay resources of anykind are all negatives.

What makes you believe there'd be no resources?

You're simply describing a planet similar to Mars, low temperatures and no plant life. But it would probably be better to permanently colonise a planet with gravity equal to that of Earth rather than gravity that is lower.

 

[Trekker4747]

Certainly but the gravity is a positive.

No sunlight, neat absolute-zero temperatures, no plant life or ay resources of anykind are all negatives.

What makes you believe there'd be no resources?

You're simply describing a planet similar to Mars, low temperatures and no plant life. But it would probably be better to permanently colonise a planet with gravity equal to that of Earth rather than gravity that is lower.

A planet-sized object in the Kuiper Belt is going to be little more than a large chunk of ice. There may be some minerals or other useful resources and elements there but from the planet the Sun is barely going to be distinguishable from any other star in the sky. In short, the object's surface temperature is going to be somewhere between "really damn cold" and "so damn cold all atmoic motion in your body comes screeching to a halt."

Surviving on such a body would be nearly impossible.

If there's any Earth-sized objects in the Kuiper Belt they're useless to us in terms of a place for a colony.

Oh, and just being the same size as the Earth doesn't guarantee Earth-like gravity.

 

[O'Dib]

If you want another Earth-sized planet in the Sol system, look no further than Venus. Even with its super-heat, it's probably more suitable for colonization than anything in the Kuiper belt.

 

[Trekker4747]

If you want another Earth-sized planet in the Sol system, look no further than Venus. Even with its super-heat, it's probably more suitable for colonization than anything in the Kuiper belt.

Hmmm, if we move the Kuiper Belt "planet" to Venus would could us the ice from it to cool down Venus!