As hinted at in the title, assuming the technology/means existed that could absorb energy fast enough, would it be possible to stop a star from going supernova, effectively “calming” it?
This is for a novel (not exactly a sci-fi one) but I’d like to keep in the realms of “technically possible”.
Edit. Thank you to everyone for providing answers and specific thanks to @[email protected] @[email protected] and @[email protected] for the for the further reading/watching materials that have inspired a narrative solution that is kinda hand-wave-y but should be good enough to hold up to scrutiny until the moment someone with a PhD (or good enough knowledge) takes a closer look at a fictional word with a soft magic system and smashes the big ol’ BS button which I think is about as much as fantasy novel writer can ask for.
A requirement for supernova is a star’s total mass being above a certain threshold.
If you can imagine some way of siphoning off mass, you could do it.
One imaginable way would be to move the sun (entire system in tow) close to a black hole or larger sun or something to feed off it. This might well be a recipe for causing a bigger mess, but it might be believable. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU
Wormhole is also a scifi magic solution.