Jobar
Zen Hedonist
We build a giant cylinder, at least ten miles in diameter and a hundred miles long, out of a material strong enough to withstand repeated nuclear explosions. The cylinder has a flared mouth on one end, and extremely powerful pumps on the outside lip of the flare.
We tow this cylinder to either the planet Neptune or Uranus. (Jupiter or Saturn would do, but since what we plan will disrupt the planet's moons or rings, and the greater mass of those two will make things take considerably longer, we probably will want to use one of the smaller gas giants.) We send the cylinder, flared end first, down into the atmosphere of the planet we choose- I'll say Uranus, since it's closer.
A gas giant has an atmosphere that's largely hydrogen. When the flare of the cylinder dives into that atmosphere, it compresses that hydrogen enormously; the pumps on the outer lip add to that effect. By the time the cylinder is deeply immersed, the pressure inside it becomes so great that the hydrogen fuses- and we get a mother-huge hydrogen bomb.
The energy from this fusion explosion is channeled out of both ends of the cylinder; and the force acting on the flare drives the cylinder back up, nearly out of the atmosphere. And a certain amount of the gas at the top of the cylinder is shot outwards- like a rocket engine. In fact, exactly like a rocket engine. This rocket is powerful enough to move the whole planet Uranus, very slightly.
Our cylinder is now back at the top of the atmosphere- and gravity pulls it back down, the flare channels fresh hydrogen into the interior, and the process repeats. We get an incredibly powerful, slowly pulsing, rocket engine, with which we can move the planet Uranus until all its atmosphere is expended- and there's enough hydrogen there to move it a VERY long way.
We've carefully calculated the position of our rocket, and the timing of the pulse, so that the planet is moved slowly sunwards, on a trajectory designed to minimize the effects on the other planets- with the exception of the Earth. We send Uranus swooping close enough to Earth so that its gravity slightly slows Earth's orbital velocity- perhaps increasing the length of the year by a few minutes, or even a few hours. This decrease in orbital velocity has the effect of moving the Earth slightly outwards from the sun. Voila!
We make repeated passes with our rocket-powered planet, and thus, over the course of many thousands of years, we gradually move the Earth further from the Sun. When we're done, we move Uranus back to its original orbit- perhaps first using it to correct any perturbations we've induced on other planets- and withdraw the cylinder, leaving it in a stable orbit around Uranus in case we need it again for planetary engineering.
We tow this cylinder to either the planet Neptune or Uranus. (Jupiter or Saturn would do, but since what we plan will disrupt the planet's moons or rings, and the greater mass of those two will make things take considerably longer, we probably will want to use one of the smaller gas giants.) We send the cylinder, flared end first, down into the atmosphere of the planet we choose- I'll say Uranus, since it's closer.
A gas giant has an atmosphere that's largely hydrogen. When the flare of the cylinder dives into that atmosphere, it compresses that hydrogen enormously; the pumps on the outer lip add to that effect. By the time the cylinder is deeply immersed, the pressure inside it becomes so great that the hydrogen fuses- and we get a mother-huge hydrogen bomb.
The energy from this fusion explosion is channeled out of both ends of the cylinder; and the force acting on the flare drives the cylinder back up, nearly out of the atmosphere. And a certain amount of the gas at the top of the cylinder is shot outwards- like a rocket engine. In fact, exactly like a rocket engine. This rocket is powerful enough to move the whole planet Uranus, very slightly.
Our cylinder is now back at the top of the atmosphere- and gravity pulls it back down, the flare channels fresh hydrogen into the interior, and the process repeats. We get an incredibly powerful, slowly pulsing, rocket engine, with which we can move the planet Uranus until all its atmosphere is expended- and there's enough hydrogen there to move it a VERY long way.
We've carefully calculated the position of our rocket, and the timing of the pulse, so that the planet is moved slowly sunwards, on a trajectory designed to minimize the effects on the other planets- with the exception of the Earth. We send Uranus swooping close enough to Earth so that its gravity slightly slows Earth's orbital velocity- perhaps increasing the length of the year by a few minutes, or even a few hours. This decrease in orbital velocity has the effect of moving the Earth slightly outwards from the sun. Voila!
We make repeated passes with our rocket-powered planet, and thus, over the course of many thousands of years, we gradually move the Earth further from the Sun. When we're done, we move Uranus back to its original orbit- perhaps first using it to correct any perturbations we've induced on other planets- and withdraw the cylinder, leaving it in a stable orbit around Uranus in case we need it again for planetary engineering.
