Loren Pechtel wrote:TFLYTSNBN wrote:Now do something, anything, that dumps a lot of energy into a star and creates a shockwave that increases the local density in a relatively large volume. Detonate a million megaton nuke in it. Impact the star with a Bussard ramship doing about .99c. Drop a planet in the star, or awarship the size of a large moon. Fusion reaction rate suddenly soars resulting in more heat, more pressure, and more density which results in even more fusion. You might not get the entire mass of the star to undergo fusion, but just a few percent is suffecient to create a nova level explosion.
Incidentally, this is basically how a fission-fusion bomb functions. A shockwave initiated by a fission reaction propogates through the fusion fuel that has been precompressed by reflected X-rays which results in an amplyfing fusion reaction.
The problem with this approach is that the fusion reaction is far from anything you dump in there. There is one scientist who thinks a sufficient energy dump can create a self-sustaining fusion shockwave but I've heard he's not too credible.
As for the hydrogen bomb--the reason that goes fast is that it's made of lithium (which splits into helium-3 and either helium-3 (if Li6) or helium-4 (if Li7), the He3 then reacting with the deuterium. There's also deuterium-deuterium fusion. These reactions go far faster than plain hydrogen fusion. Put starstuff in the bomb and you're not going to get a meaningful fusion yield.
