Overview

Imagine the most luminous red giant stars. Such stars have luminosities on the order of a million times that of the Sun. This is the equivalent of converting 4 trillion tons of matter into energy per second. This is enough power if converted efficiently into ship based kinetic energy to accelerate a Nimitz Class nuclear powered aircraft carrier to a gamma factor of 40 million every second. Perhaps any existent ETI or future Humans on planets in a habitable zone around such red giants could develop some sort of: electro-magneto-hydrodynamic-plasma drive, an electro-hydrodynamic-plasma drive, a magneto-hydrodynamic-plasma drive, an ion rocket, electron rocket, and/or a photon rocket based propulsion system. The craft could travel around the coronosphere of the red giant, while using the stellar atmospheric and magnetospheric plasma as a reaction mass where thrust vectoring would keep the space craft glued to the star. The relative energy of the plasma, starlight, and stellar magnetic fields would increase with respect to the craft as it closed in on C. This would permit a more vigorous interaction between the craft and the stellar plasma thus allowing the craft to draw more energy from the plasma while providing the craft with more thrust in order to keep the craft glued to its orbital motion around the star. The process would continue until the craft approached C very closely. Eventually, the craft would exit the star by shutting down its thrust vectoring system allowing the craft to leave the stellar system. The craft might continually orbit the star with increasing gamma factors thereby acting as a special relativistic gamma factor time machine for forward time travel. Another interesting method of extracting energy from the Sun would involve augmenting the orbiting space craft such as the one described above with a so-called negative index of refraction material such as the ones being developed at various locations within the United States and around the Globe. These electromagnetic negative refraction index materials have the theoretically peculiar property of being pulled forward by light incident on it in an opposite direction to that of the impinging photons instead of being pushed in the direction of the incident photon's velocity vector. Consider the scenario where such a material would be placed on the front of the space craft and/or on its stellar surface facing side. The craft could be accelerated to continually higher relativistic gamma factors as well as be pulled in an orbit around the star it orbits by the attractive action of the incident stellar photons on the star facing side. A material with an adjustable negative refractive index would make an ideal covering for the space craft if placed at judicious locations such that the craft would make optimum usage of the attractive effect of the incoming light. As the craft reach higher gamma factors, the momentum of the incident photons would increase thus increasing the pulling force of the incident light flux. Consider a scenario where the effective operative range of the negative index of refraction material could be increased to frequencies without upper limits. The pulling force acting on the craft approaches infinity in the limit that the Doppler blue-shifting of the incident stellar photons approaches infinity. Note that the negative refractive index of any such optical materials is limited by the cell-like structure's dimensions by which the material partakes of its negative refractive index electromagnetic properties. For such metamaterials, the wavelengths of light over which the materials operate are limited to a minimum of that on the order of magnitude of the size of the negative refractive index material cells. Read this volume to find out more how all of this can take place.

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