4 ms·

> Roger Penrose already pointed out in the early 1970s that it’s possible to extract energy from a big, spinning black hole by throwing an object just past it.

> Roger Penrose already pointed out in the early 1970s that it’s possible to extract energy from a big, spinning black hole by throwing an object just past it. This slows down the black hole by a tiny bit, but speeds up the object you’ve thrown Black hole railguns/artillery? Or, in the name of safety, mobile satellites in low earth orbit armed with hard tungsten rods, accelerated by temporarily generated black holes to relativistic velocities for prompt global strikes on time sensitive targets. Could make for a good movie.

flatiron 4y ago
small black holes are there for nanoseconds, im not really sure you could find a good method to "shoot" them the whole "you can shoot somin near a black hole and speed it wayyyyy up" reminded me of the three body problem. some advanced species just tossing crap at black holes and blowing up stars
Jenk 4y ago
surely the law of conservation applies, in that it would be more efficient to take the energy used to generate the black hole and apply it directly to launching the projectile instead?
- Out_of_Characte 4y ago
  Well, its essentially a black hole railgun. Exept a railgun uses the magnetic force instead of gravity. and black holes are 'theoretically' really efficient at converting mass to energy.
- XorNot 4y ago
  It would, although the utility of using a black hole has a universal mass-energy converter would be substantial. Take any matter you want, toss it in to be crushed and then extract it back out as kinetic energy you can use to make electrical power.
samstave 4y ago
How would one "rods from god" on a timely manner.. You cannot harvest the energy given to you by a blackhole... unless the impacts of tungsten objects yield harvestable energy.
- ravi-delia 4y ago
  You don't have to chuck in rods, that's just the intuitive explanation for why you oughta be able to take energy back out. Realistically (for a certain value of realism) you'd use the magnetic field generated by charged particles accelerated in such a fashion, or something like that

flatiron 4y ago

small black holes are there for nanoseconds, im not really sure you could find a good method to "shoot" them the whole "you can shoot somin near a black hole and speed it wayyyyy up" reminded me of the three body problem. some advanced species just tossing crap at black holes and blowing up stars

Jenk 4y ago

surely the law of conservation applies, in that it would be more efficient to take the energy used to generate the black hole and apply it directly to launching the projectile instead?

Out_of_Characte 4y ago
Well, its essentially a black hole railgun. Exept a railgun uses the magnetic force instead of gravity. and black holes are 'theoretically' really efficient at converting mass to energy.
XorNot 4y ago
It would, although the utility of using a black hole has a universal mass-energy converter would be substantial. Take any matter you want, toss it in to be crushed and then extract it back out as kinetic energy you can use to make electrical power.

samstave 4y ago

How would one "rods from god" on a timely manner.. You cannot harvest the energy given to you by a blackhole... unless the impacts of tungsten objects yield harvestable energy.

ravi-delia 4y ago
You don't have to chuck in rods, that's just the intuitive explanation for why you oughta be able to take energy back out. Realistically (for a certain value of realism) you'd use the magnetic field generated by charged particles accelerated in such a fashion, or something like that