As hinted at in the title, assuming the technology/means existed that could absorb energy fast enough, would it be possible to stop a star from going supernova, effectively “calming” it?
This is for a novel (not exactly a sci-fi one) but I’d like to keep in the realms of “technically possible”.
Edit. Thank you to everyone for providing answers and specific thanks to @[email protected] @[email protected] and @[email protected] for the for the further reading/watching materials that have inspired a narrative solution that is kinda hand-wave-y but should be good enough to hold up to scrutiny until the moment someone with a PhD (or good enough knowledge) takes a closer look at a fictional word with a soft magic system and smashes the big ol’ BS button which I think is about as much as fantasy novel writer can ask for.
https://youtu.be/cw20VbX1XCc?si=OiZJV8VBsFjWQ4JC
A lot of people here have the right idea, but are just more pessimistic than me about the industrial capabilities of our civilization if we survive long enough to achieve them. Star lifting is an idea with what I understand to be reasonably sound scientific principles. It’s just a matter of scaling our industry over the next millions or billions of years.
I like this channel because he’s a fairly optimistic but very reality based futurist. He’ll tell you straight up if something is unlikely or impossible based on our current understanding of science, but he’s one of the few sources I’ve seen that acknowledges the immense scale that even an Earth or solar system bound civilization is capable of supporting with just modern technology.