Would it be possible to create an artificial iron star?

I ran a quick calculation, and the mass of iron required to form a black hole is on the order of 10^40kg. So, suppose that in my story there is this almost much iron available to somehow be brought together in one place, but the builders don't want to create a black hole, but instead want to fuse iron into heavier elements. In the beginning a large sphere would be created, and then more iron would be added with low temperature and kinetic energy. For the purpose of the story ignore any practical issues with doing this or the usefulness thereof.

Such a large mass should, under its own gravity, be under tremendous pressure (and possibly temperature) at the core. Normally, iron doesn't fuse because such a reaction would be endothermic, but because we aren't starting with a star is it possible for such fusion to occur in such an artificially constructed setting? For comparison, the mass of the Milky Way galaxy is estimated to be only about two and a half orders of magnitude more than the amount of iron we are talking about, so this is a LOT of iron.

posted about 6 years ago

Michael‭

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