The Black Hole Bomb and Black Hole Civilizations
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell・2 minutes read
Black holes are powerful entities in the universe, with spinning black holes having a unique property called angular momentum, leading to the formation of a ringularity at their core. The Ergosphere surrounding the ringularity allows for the extraction of energy from a black hole, potentially providing a significant energy boost for a rocket or creating a powerful energy source or weapon.
Insights
- Black holes can be exploited as a potential energy source through methods like extracting energy from their Ergosphere, offering a way to boost a rocket's energy while affecting the black hole's rotation.
- Constructing a mirror around a fast-spinning black hole could lead to the creation of a powerful energy generation system or weapon by utilizing the super radiant scattering effect of electromagnetic waves bouncing between the mirror and the black hole.
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Recent questions
What are black holes?
Massive collections of violent energy in the universe.
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Summary
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Harnessing Energy from Spinning Black Holes
- Black holes are the largest collections of violent energy in the universe, capable of devouring anything that comes too close and adding their energy to their own collection, making it seemingly lost forever.
- Spinning black holes, formed from the collapse of massive stars, have a unique property called angular momentum, causing them to spin faster as they shrink, eventually forming a ringularity at their core, containing all their mass.
- The ringularity of a spinning black hole creates an Ergosphere, a region of space-time where space is dragged along with the black hole's rotation, making it possible to extract energy from the black hole by entering this region.
- By sending a rocket into the Ergosphere of a black hole, it's possible to trade mass-energy with the black hole for its rotational energy, resulting in a significant energy boost for the rocket while slowing down the black hole slightly.
- A potential method to harness energy from a black hole involves constructing a mirror around a fast-spinning black hole, allowing electromagnetic waves to be bounced back and forth between the mirror and the black hole, creating a super radiant scattering effect that could provide a nearly endless source of energy or be used to create an immensely powerful bomb.
