Dead Planets Society: Can We Move the Sun?

Earth and all the other planets in our solar system are being dragged on a joyride through the universe, as the Dead Planeteers attempt to move the sun.

How slowly would you have to move the sun for its gravity to hold onto the planets? Would any planets end up flinging out of orbit? And which planets can we afford to lose along the way?

To answer their many questions, Leah and Chelsea are joined by Jay Farihi, an astrophysicist at University College London.

A big hurdle they first have to overcome is how exactly to move the sun in the first place. Luckily, the team has a variety of whacky ideas, including black holes. From sun sails to graviton generators to popping the sun like a balloon, hear the team’s unconventional methods for getting the job done and discover where in the universe their final destination is. Pillars of creation anyone?

Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes outlandish ideas about how to tinker with the cosmos – from punching a hole in a planet to unifying the asteroid belt – and subjects them to the laws of physics to see how they fare.

Your hosts are Leah Crane and Chelsea Whyte.

If you have a cosmic object you’d like to figure out how to destroy, email the team at deadplanets@newscientist.com. It may just feature in a later episode. 

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