A dark, yet sunny, techno-apocalyptic paper by the prolific Alexander Bolonkin and a friend, a self-noted self-described thinker:
“Explosion of Sun,” Alexander Bolonkin, Joseph Friedlander [pictured here], Computational Water, Energy, and Environmental Engineering, vol. 2, 2013, pp. 83-96. The authors, at Strategic Solutions Technology Group, New York, explain:
“If we create higher temperature and density in a limited region of the solar interior, we may be able to produce self-supporting detonation thermonuclear reactions that spread to the full solar volume. This is analogous to the triggering mechanisms in a thermonuclear bomb. Conditions within the bomb can be optimized in a small area to initiate ignition, then spread to a larger area, allowing producing a hydrogen bomb of any power. In the case of the Sun certain targeting practices may greatly increase the chances of an artificial explosion of the Sun. This explosion would annihilate the Earth and the Solar System, as we know them today. The reader naturally asks: Why even contemplate such a horrible scenario?”
(Thanks to investigator Marc Andelman for bringing this to our attention.)
BONUS: George Dvorsky, writing in Io9, gives his two cents’ worth about the value of this paper.