David Forge wrote:Note: I am neither a physicist nor a mathematician.
I threw together some rough numbers just for fun, taking into account the above disclaimer it's very possible I made a mistake or two. Anyone with any real knowledge on this sort thing feel free to correct and shame me.
Assume:
1 Charon with 785,000 m3 of cargo space filled with antimatter.
Now, antimatter could come in all types of densities depending on what you make it out of, this is practically back of the napkin so I just assumed one cubic meter would contain one ton of antimatter.
I used a calculator to do the antimatter reaction energy output as I do not trust myself to do it but at 785,000 tons of antimatter I got an explosive output of 30,646,400,000 megatons. Converting into joules (again, with a calculator made by someone smarter than I) I got 1.2822454 x 10^26 joules. Wikipedia says that the energy output of the sun (a smallish star) per second is 3.8 x 10^26. So we're looking at an explosion that (let's say happened in a single second which is unlikely but simplifies the problem) would increase the energy output of a star of the same size and type as ours by almost exactly 1/3 for one second. This effect diminishes quickly if the time for the explosion to occur increases. A ten second explosion would (I'm guessing) result in ten seconds where the energy output of the star was increased by only a little over 3%.
So, after this cursory examination, I would advise the OP to find a very small star or a very large number of freighters. Alternatively, figure out Sansha wormhole technology and open one directly into or through a star. That's bound to cause problems.
Lets leave aside rate of annihilation reaction (and won't call it as an explosion, well, you know, even heaviest of thermonuclear bombs do not explode, but
burn) and look at the result.
First, pressure in the core of sun is about 10^17 Pa, if our charon is filled with antimatter at pressure of ~100 atm (10^7 Pa), it will collapse like in 10^10 times, well, practically, it will become much less than 1m-¦.
So, at first, we will have to stretch star by 1m-¦ (how rude!) :D
Next, the annihilation happens. This reaction causes transformation of fermion matter (like electrons, protons, that cannot take the same place in space) to bosons (like photons). The sum of mass-energy in this reaction persists, so calculation of released energy is not important. What is important, that we take away matter from the star, making a 'hole' of size less than 1m-¦ (neglecting pressure of photons in first iteration, since it will be times less than pressure of fermions).
Well, returning to energy as a measure of going supernova, one should give star about ~10^44 Joules for it to cast off a layer.
Applying point of energy-mass to the star won't make any effect. Stars are bubbles of matter, even if you 'shift' say, like half of the Sun, it will return back, of course spitting some plasma and heavy radiation from the core, but still it will reorganize itself without blowing apart.
What causes stars to go supernova, is the change in the whole volume of the star, or at least in a significant amount of volume, making a whole thick enough layer.
Well, so far it turns out to be 'how to not blow up a star'.
However, there is a 'sci-fi' solution of blowing up a star. Just open a wormhole in the core of the star. This will lead to leaking of star matter through wormhole, making new star on the other side (on the other hand the matter will just be dissipating (exploding) with high velocities because of tremendous pressure inside the star). If the wormhole will be large enough to channel huge amount of solar matter, upper layers will collapse towards the emptied core, tear apart and throw matter in different directions, making supernova.