The Spider Stellar Engine: a Fully Steerable Extraterrestrial Design?
Cl\'ement Vidal
TL;DR
This paper explores the concept of a fully steerable binary stellar engine, specifically applied to spider pulsars, proposing mechanisms for control and discussing potential observable technosignatures of extraterrestrial engineering.
Contribution
It introduces a novel model of binary stellar engines, particularly for spider pulsars, detailing mechanisms for maneuvering and potential observable signatures, advancing the theoretical framework for extraterrestrial stellar engineering.
Findings
Proposed mechanisms for acceleration, deceleration, and steering in binary stellar engines.
Application of the model to spider pulsars as candidate systems.
Discussion of potential observable technosignatures and maneuvers.
Abstract
A long-lived civilization will inevitably have to migrate towards a nearby star as its home star runs out of nuclear fuel. One way to achieve such a migration is by transforming its star into a stellar engine, and to control its motion in the galaxy. We first provide a brief overview of stellar engines and conclude that looking for technosignatures of stellar engines has taken two roads: on the observational side, hypervelocity stars have been the target of such searches, but without good candidates. On the theoretical side, stellar engine concepts have been proposed but are poorly linked to observable technosignatures. Since about half the stars in our galaxy are in binary systems where life might develop too, we introduce a model of a binary stellar engine. We propose mechanisms for acceleration, deceleration, steering in the orbital plane and outside of the orbital plane. We apply…
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