Battle for the Sun

Then you are talking about energy, not temperature.

I think calling plasma gaseous is pushing it a bit, as you said, it's not a convential state of matter. The interior is even harder to classify in that regard which is why I would be hesitant to even call it a plasma. I suppose it's really a subjective issue.

Also, I don't think you're wrong in arguing that inhabiting a typical star in close orbit would be incredibly impractical/impossible and I am enjoying reading this discussion, but ultimately I think you're trying to inject hard sci-fi into a softish backstory.

PA's backstory isn't THAT soft yet

BulletMagnet, If you want to debate semantics then fine, I'll say it again so it's less offensive to your obviously scientifically sensitive ears;

There is no practical way, either in our universe, nor within the Planetary Annihilation universe that I am aware of, that allows you to fight on the surface of a Star, let alone get close enough to the surface to set foot on it since you would be to busy being destroyed by the titanic amounts of energy that the Star is emitting, not to mention the crushing weight of gravity, than being able to fight... Without stretching my disbelief in the universe to WELL past breaking point.

I would no longer be able to believe in this fictional universe where Robots fight on planets and throw asteroids at each other.

The sun is a star. A STAR. Here's a bit from the Wikipedia article on the photosphere:

The "surface" that you want to fight on is BOILING PLASMA. It's NOT a surface. And at temperatures like that, pretty much any material will melt anyways.

I think you mean EVERY material. Even Tungsten doesn't come close. Not only does Tungsten melt... it boils and becomes a Gas (Or Plasma... whatever, I don't care at this point)

By definition, a plasma is an ionized gas.

It's worth noting that the conventional states of matter are not completely black and white (if everything is solid, liquid or gas, then what the hell is tooth paste?). Practically all gases are technically plasmas (even the air you breathe is very weakly ionized). In engineering applications, we usually just don't start referring to a gas as plasma until it reaches a certain ionization threshold (what that threshold is depends on the application). So arguing whether or not the sun is gas or plasma or whatever is mostly just arguing semantics.

Toothpaste is an extremely highly viscous liquid. Which by definition makes it a gel; but again, liquid. States are very distinctly black-and-white; occasionally certain materials push the boundaries of a state with observable properties of another state, but a micro-analysis proves otherwise.

You might be able to fight on a brown dwarf, but anything else would be impossible. Even that would be pretty hard considering pressure, lack of an actual surface, gravity, etc.

Hmmm. Ok, what's silly putty?

States of matter are most definitely NOT completely distinct. You can apply all the micro-analysis you want to glass (as an example) - it still won't neatly fit the definition of "solid" (on the microscopic level - look it up if you don't believe me).

For the record, toothpaste is a bingham plastic - it behaves like a solid until it is under a certain amount of strain, at which point it behaves like a liquid. It is not simply a "highly viscous fluid".

Accually its a plasma....

And also adding the convo a bolt of lightning runs hotter than the surface of the sun!

Also, it would be cool if gas giants were ignitable into new stars.

That would really mess somebody's day up if they have a base in orbit

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Also; Though lightning is hotter (50,000K) than the surface of Sol (6,000K), it is not hotter than the Corona. (between 1,000,000K and 2,000,000K)

Aaaand if you "ignite" a Gas Giant it would just explode. It's not dense enough, doesn't have enough mass and would not have the necessary gravitational pull to form a star.

... also why direct that energy at the Gas Giant and not at your foe? It seems a complete waste of energy to try to "ignite" a Gas Giant.

the only way of blowing up a sun i can "imagine" would be to remotely open some kind of wormhole directly inside of the sun (like in portal in some way) thus disturbing the balance between pressure and gravity. but the problem is that it would cause the sun to explode and toast to ashes the entire solar system, so i guess the end point would be a draw.

but the fun part is that if you do the same without blowing up the sun, you get some kind of mega sun-powered flamethrower calcining everything nearby. well, until the portal device melts down.

no, seriously, i have no idea of what you could do to the sun that would be interesting without resulting in stellar apocalypse.

The only really interesting thing I can think of to do to a star would be to dump a massive amount of iron into it to shut down the fusion reaction in the core. In larger stars this would trigger a supernova. However the amount of iron required to do this would be... impractical.

Hold on there... they still haven't ruled out metal makers (mass fabricators).

@antillie I have no words, so I must laugh
:lol:

How do you propose getting enough Iron close enough to the Sun to "dump it in" by the way?

Orbital solar panels orbiting the star itself would be awesome. Indeed orbital battles around the sun would be awesome.

Tier 2 Space solar collector

A friend and I calculated that the Aeon Illuminate could build a dyson sphere that's two czars thick at a distance of one AU from a star in about a week if they had a paragon and the engineers were free to reproduce exponentially. Would that be enough iron?