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Calliban

Member

From: Northern England, UK

Registered: 2019-08-18

Posts: 3,792

Artificial blackholes

Isaac Arthur discusses the possibility of Kugelblitz blackholes and their uses.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jPRdj5U2HqY

The power of hawking radiation from blackholes is proportional to 1/M^2.  When you get down to masses in the region of a million tonnes, they produce petawatts of power as they evaporate.  This power is emitted as x-rays and gamma rays.  So feeding matter into such a blackhole provides a way of converting matter into energy with perfect efficiency.  Exactly what is needed to power fast interstellar travel.

But that assumes we are able to build them, which looks extremely doubtful.  A megatonne mass blackhole would be a lot smaller than a proton.  To make it we must dump the energy equivelent of a million tonnes of matter into a volume smaller than a proton in less than a femtosecond.  Even a solar system spanning civilisation would struggle with that one.

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"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,365

Re: Artificial blackholes

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