"The Ghost In The Machine" wrote in
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In sci.physics, Raziel

wrote
on Fri, 15 Aug 2003 10:30:09 -0700
:

"The Ghost In The Machine" wrote in
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In sci.physics, Archimedes Plutonium

wrote
on Thu, 14 Aug 2003 12:09:45 -0500
:

[snip for brevity]

But there is not enough time, and so approx 75% of Mercury
will end up in the center of the Sun and be vaporized in the center.

And....?

Star Trek: Generations had the rather fanciful notion of missiles
instantly shrinking a star into a white dwarf. Your idea
is just about as ridiculous.

what? you don't believe in TriLithium?

Haven't seen it; can't say I believe in it. :-) I can't
say I've seen lithium either but at least I have some
hard evidence of its existence. If nothing else,
"spodumene" is just too weird a word to make up... :-)

http://www.webelements.com/webelemen...xt/Li/key.html

Even were the missiles equipped with a warp drive motor
to somehow get the Sun to shrink instantly once launched,
it would still take about 8 minutes to see the effect. Nor
is it clear that merely shrinking the Sun would reduce
or increase its gravitational pull on that weirdish "thread"
(I can't think of the actual name right now, but it involved
Whoopi Goldberg :-) ), as the mass is the same.

This is a not-so-subtle point that was apparently lost
on the screenwriters. :-)

yes, their "physics" advisers often blow it. I remember a TNG episode where
they reported the average temperature of a planet as -300 Celcius. I
thought that was rather interesting.

Raz