Depends on which 'heavier' elements you're referring to, like beyond the periodic table? or iron?

Right now we're having a heck of a time figuring out how to mash hydrogen into helium. We can do it for a few seconds at a time. Imagine trying to fuse lead into gold. It would take energies we can't yet harness on Earth.

This is how most heavy, non-naturally occurring elements on the periodic table were made! Here is a great video on the history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe5WT22-AO8

It is far too costly to make more than a few atoms of the heaviest elements and they don't last for long.

Yeah on a megastructure scale.

A Dyson swarm conducting starlifting, using magnetic pulses to induce coronal mass ejections if hydrogen from a star, collecting the flared material and running it through cascades of fusion reactions to produce heavier elements. The power for energy negative fusion reactions being collected as solar energy from the star the Dyson swarm encircles.

If you've got a star caged enough to capture a significant portion of its energy output, then you have more than enough power to start manipluating the star to lift matter from the star and transmute it into elements to expand your dyson swarm

Very advanced compared to modern humanity, but theoretically possible, such that it's a potential signature of advanced interstellar civilization that SETI surveys have been looking for. A star anomalously dimming in visual spectra while being high on IR spectra, with unusual proportions of heavy elements would be detectable with modern telescopes at intergalactic distances; and would be strong evidence for intelligent technological life.

A long term project of a kardeshev 2 level civilization could be mass scale stellar optimization, shave down short life yelow-blue stars that only last mere few billions of years, and convert them to long life red dwarfs with stable lifespans measured in tens of trillions of years. This sort of mass stellar engineering if being done to thousands or millions of stars, you could spot in the most distant galaxies weve observed

I believe element 118 was made with a krypton beam fired into a lead target, so we do have the energy, but only for making a couple atoms at a time!

Agreed. To clarify, I don't think we have the energy to produce industrial quantities of heavy elements. Also the cost would be insanely prohibitive.

Fusion only release energy up to the point of reaching iron. After that the binding energy per neculeon decreases so energy is absorbed creating the heavier element

Fusion is endothermic for elements larger than iron. At least for larger than iron elements, it'd be energy prohibitive.

As far as smaller elements go, you need increasing temperature as you go up the periodic table. Hydrogen fusion in the Sun requires ~15 million °C. When the Sun runs out of hydrogen, it will collapse until it's warmed to 100 million °C and then helium fusion will begin. Heavier elements than helium need even larger temperatures. Probably am engineering challenge.

> m need even larger temperatures. Probably am engineering challenge.

im sure if we had long enough, say 10k years, or even 100k years to advance more, we could probably find ways to break the energy limits and highly optmize everything etc

it might not be the easiest way to get said elements. but ehh

Good point.

These larger elements are created in supernovae and neutron star mergers when nuclei absorb a bunch of extra neutrons, some of which beta decay into protons, and voila you have larger elements than iron. Maybe we'll find that strategy is better than fusion for this purpose.

Great analysis, if the type 2 is making stable red dwarves why wouldn’t they just set up around black holes and extract energy from them until heat death?

They could do both

Keep red dwarfs as a lamp while most if civilization is black hole based