History Main / SolarCPR

* In Slavic mythology a dragon stole (or consumed) the Sun and plunged the world into darkness and cold for thirty three years. It took the alliance of mean and good gods to eventually defeat it and restore the Sun in its rightful place.

* [[http://www.xkcd.com/673/ This]] ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'' is framed as the trailer for a [[StylisticSuck cheesy]] action movie entitled ''The Sun'' with a Solar CPR premise. The [[ArtisticLicensePhysics Artistic License taken with Physics]] is {{Lampshaded}}.

* ''VideoGame/Destiny2'': The Mysterious Logbook included with the ''BeyondLight'' expansion explores the Forge Star, a blue giant from the earliest days of the universe that's had its lifespan indefinitely prolonged by colossal star lifters constructed by the [[MechanicalAbomination Vex]]. The Vex went to this trouble in order to mine the star as a renewable source of metal (a very rare substance in the aforementioned earliest days of the universe).

* In ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'', recruiting Tali has her investigating a sun which is dying too quickly. Unfortunately, this became an AbortedArc due to a change in writers was never brought up in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' at all.

* In ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'' this falls within the category of "stellar engineering" and includes multiple different methods. [[https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/47897e8b1947c Star lifting]] uses the power of the star itself, combined with powerful magnetic fields, to remove mass from the star and thus increase its lifespan (and the removed mass can be used to make new stars). [[https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/47897efc7129a Starboosting]] uses massive mirrors placed above the star's northern and southern hemispheres, which reflect the star's light back onto it, heating it and shifting the spectrum of its light. [[https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/4a48d58c84350 Stellification engines]] are miniature black holes, fusion reactors or matter-to-energy conversion reactors which are injected into a white dwarf, gas giant or brown dwarf, turning it into an artificial star.

* ''Webcoic/QuentynQuinnSpaceRanger'': The Racconians have access to Solar Lance weapons (WaveMotionGun cannons which can pull this off) and demonstrated to a flesh-eating, NighInvulnerable apex predator species in the backstory what they do by vaporizing one of their main solar systems in retaliation to them eating some Racconians. [[BiggerStick Unsurprisingly]], they became TheDreaded to said apex predator species.

* This is the basis of the plot for the ''Animation/SimpleSamosa'' episode "Space Snax". When the sun suddenly stops glowing, it falls into the hands of Samosa's gang to prepare under the wing of space travel lover Melon Musk to make a trip into the cosmos and light the sun back up. Once there, Samosa, with the help of Doctor Goti Sodawala and another person who had been trapped there, set a piece of wood on fire to get the sun burning again... [[spoiler:which ''somehow works'']].

* {{Exaggerated}} in ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'', in which [[spoiler:the Kyubeys are trying to reverse the entropy of ''the entire universe'', by what is essentially [[PoweredByAForsakenChild making a girl go supernova]].]]

* Variation in ''Series/StargateSG1'' "Red Sky" when a sun is tainted by heavy metals accidentally introduced to it by the passage of a Stargate wormhole, and the team have to reverse the process by adding even heavier elements to bind the first lot. Needless to say, the usual scale problems are very obvious here.
** It's strongly implied at the end of the episode that their "adding heavier elements" trick actually DIDN'T work, and the Asgard just used the attempt as a distraction so they could fix the sun themselves without the Goa'uld being able to prove they did it (such an action would've been forbidden by the Protected Planets Treaty).
* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_a_Life_(TNG_episode) Half a Life]] a planet's sun is going to go supernova in a few years. The one scientist they have whose work has come closest to fixing the problem is required by custom and law to commit suicide at age 60, just a few days away. He refuses, and his planet refuses to use his research because he's a traitor to their way of life (their deeply held commitment to this way of life is also why they don't just evacuate their home planet instead of trying to fix the star). Oddly, a test run on a similar star shows it getting ''larger'' as it "heals" and brightens, which is the opposite of what would actually happen.
* In the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' episode "Second Sight", another scientist uses protomatter to reignite Epsilon 119.

Either through natural causes or galactic vandals who go around StarKilling [[ForTheEvulz for fun]] and profit, the local star is set to die; this usually involves ArtisticLicensePhysics even ''with'' liberal uses of {{Phlebotinum}}. [[labelnote:(Science!)]]Most people have no conception of how vast a sun is, nor what happens during a star's life as a main-sequence star. Our sun is 30% brighter now than when the Earth formed, and some time in the next 0.5-1.1 billion years it will grow bright enough that the Earth will become uninhabitable in its current orbit. Said orbit, however, is projected to change, making Earth gradually veer ''further'' from the sun, allowing it to stay in the habitable zone for more time than originally predicted. In either case, our sun has billions of years left before it leaves the main sequence. And when it ''does'' leave the main sequence, it'll take more than two billion years to fully swell up into a red giant, so everyone will have plenty of warning. (A red giant isn't the same thing as a ''nova''. A nova requires a close-orbiting white dwarf to siphon material off a companion star; solitary stars like the sun cannot go nova. The sun is also not quite massive enough to ever go supernova.)[[/labelnote]] You can imagine the desperation a planetary civilization will feel when it's ''their'' turn to see their sun die. Cue an attempt at Solar CPR. A [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien sufficiently advanced]] civilization may develop a MagicAntidote or solar-scale WorldHealingWave that can stop this from happening (or at least discover a group of aliens who do).

* In the end of ''[[VideoGame/OsuTatakaeOuendan2 Moero! Nekketsu Rythm Damashii! Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! 2]]'' [[spoiler:the sun dies, and the two rival cheer squads act together to raise everyone's spirit level enough to resurrect it.]]

* At least two different versions of ''Anime/AstroBoy'' end with the title robot making a HeroicSacrifice in order to do this. At the end of the 1960s anime he flies a device into the sun to stop it from going nova, though he was later brought back to life in three different continuation manga by three different aliens (and one was later retconned to bring it in line with the manga continuity where he never flew into the sun, but that's neither here nor there). In ''VideoGame/AstroBoyOmegaFactor'' he flies a piece of scrap containing his girlfriend's CPU in to deactivate the remains of the game's final boss before the radioactive alien alloy he's made of starts a deadly chain reaction.

* [[ComicBook/MsMarvel Carol Danvers]] once [[{{Depower}} gave up her cosmic-level powers]] to stop the sun from exploding.

* This is the plot of ''Film/{{Sunshine}}'', using a type of bomb to restart Earth's dying sun. Or rather, in an attempt to disrupt a [[AllThereInTheManual barely-understood sub-atomic particle that is putting a dampener on the fusion reaction therein]].

* ''To Save the Sun'', by Ben Bova and A.J. Austin. Exactly what it says on the tin.

* In ''Wolfsbane'' by Creator/FrederikPohl and C. M. Kornbluth, Earth's moon is turned into an artificial sun to keep the Earth livable since it was stolen from the solar system by aliens. The moon needs to be relighted periodically.
* Creator/ArthurCClarke:
** In ''[[Literature/TheSpaceOdysseySeries 2010,]]'' the alien monolith turns Jupiter into a star, which gets the name Lucifer.
** In ''The Sands of Mars'', Mars's moon Phobos is turned into an artificial star to make Mars more livable for humans.

* This trope triggered the asking of Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''[[http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html The Last Question]]''.
* Unusual example in ''[[Literature/{{Narnia}} The Voyage of the Dawn Treader]]'', which features a faded star being made to age backwards until it is once more young again to shine. Unusual, because in Narnia's world, stars are angel-like ''people'' and the 'CPR' consists of the star eating fire-berries that grow in the valleys of the Sun, brought to him by birds.

* Implied in ''Literature/{{Hogfather}}'', where it's said that if the Hogfather (Discworld's answer to SantaClaus, who in this case is actually a minor god who used to be associated with more... primal midwinter celebrations) isn't saved, the sun won't rise on Hogswatch Day. As it turns out, [[spoiler: Death meant that instead, "[[AC:A mere ball of glowing gas would have illuminated the world]]". Or in other words, humanity's sense of wonder and imagination would be snuffed out.]]
* ''Literature/StarCarrier: Singularity'' reveals that the Sh'daar have been maintaining six blue supergiants arranged in a hexagon pattern by periodically dumping additional stars into them. Otherwise they'd burn themselves out in about 100 million years.

* In the fangame ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyEndlessNova'' the sun is misshapen. It turns out that the Specran race has been using a 100-year cycle of powerful magic to prevent the sun from turning into a black hole, dooming the solar system (and possibly the universe). Of course, the game starts when this cycle is about to be disrupted.
* A star going nova is a random event in the ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion'' series. The player can prevent it from happening by diverting enough research. Upon succeeding, a message appears about scientists developing a device to "rejuvenate" the star's core.

* One of the main objectives in ''VideoGame/OneShot'' is to bring a new sun, in the form of a lightbulb, to its proper place in order to replace the previous sun that died out.
* ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'': one star in a given galaxy is usually being consumed by the Stellar Devourer, a giant life-form that... well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin devours stars]]. If you kill it, you're given the option to try to take the energy from its corpse to try to restore the star to what it once was, which will usually yield a couple of habitable worlds for colonization. Sometimes it works... and sometimes your science vessel explodes.
* In ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'', players are introduced to Kuumarrke and the Lukari race when she is attempting to revitalize her planet's sun. Her attempt fails, but a traveler from the future, Kal Dano, arrives and uses the Tox Uthot to do the job instead.

* ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'' had an episode based on the "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Planet Jackers]]," who ''steal planets'' to drop into the sun their home planet orbits, in hopes that their burning will continue to fuel the sun. We didn't get to see if it actually works, but presumably it does since there's evidence that they'd been doing it for a while... or, the ''Invader Zim'' 'verse being what it is, their sun was never in any danger of dying in the first place and they just don't know any better.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_a_Life_(TNG_episode) Half a Life]] a planet's sun is going to go supernova in a few years. The one scientist they have whose work has come closest to fixing the problem is required by custom and law to commit suicide at age 60, just a few days away. He refuses, and his planet refuses to use his research because he's a traitor to their way of life (their deeply held commitment to this way of life is also why they don't just evacuate their home planet instead of trying to fix the star). Oddly, a test run on a similar star shows it getting ''larger'' as it "heals" and brightens, which is the opposite of what would actually happen.
* In the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' episode "Second Sight", they used protomatter to reignite Epsilon 119.

* In ''Franchise/GreenLantern'', Blue Lanterns can rejuvenate dying stars with the Hope of those on a nearby planet; the process turns the star blue, which is implied to mean it has been made young again.[[labelnote:FridgeHorror]]The ecological damage from changing a star's radiation output like that could potentially be massive. Earth's plants are adapted to the sun's current mixture, and could be sunburned by such a large increase in higher-energy blue light. Let alone plants adapted to a planet orbiting a dim red star.[[/labelnote]]

* This is the basis of the plot for the ''Animation/SimpleSamosa'' episode "Space Snax". When the sun suddenly stops glowing, it falls into the hands of Samosa's gang to prepare under the wing of space travel lover Melon Musk to make a trip into the cosmos and light the sun back up. Once there, Samosa, with the help of Doctor Goti Sodawala and another person who had been trapped there, set a piece of wood on fire to get the sun burning again... which ''somehow works''.