Infinite Power
Researchers at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in New York believe they may have produced an artificial black hole. Why is this important? The most obvious reason is that many people have hypothesized that a "tamed" microscopic black hole--one that is self-sustaining--could be trapped in a gravity bottle and used as an unlimited energy source. By feeding it miniscule amounts of matter, it would produce enormous quantities of thermal waste and Hawking radiation, which could be converted into usable energy.
Obviously this won't happen overnight, or probably even in the next century, but it's a proof-of-concept, if it can be replicated, that we can indeed create an artificial black hole. Of course, learning to sustain it is a whole new level of technology, not to mention the slight inconvenience of having to invent functional gravity bottles, but those are engineering concerns. The idea is valid.
How much power would one of these things produce? Well, hypothetically speaking, a single microscopic black hole could output more energy than every nuclear power plant currently in operation... combined. And it would do it at a tiny fraction of the mass conversion rate. It would also make practical, constant thrust interplanetary spacecraft a real possibility, as teamed up with an ion engine, (which we already do have; several deep space probes from both NASA and ESA have utilized them), the ship could follow a constant-thrust-to-turnover flight plan. This would make transit times to the asteroid belt of less than three months a reality. And that, in turn, would make system-wide mineral and gas mining operations a practical matter.
If all of this sounds like wild-eyed, flight-of-fancy sci-fi to you, it would behoove you to remember that forty-five years ago, when my father was in college, the device you are reading this article on was an impossibility-- one not even imagined by the boldest and wackiest sci-fi writers of the time. The Internet you used to access this weblog wasn't even a gleam in DARPA's eye. My cell phone has more computing power than an IBM mainframe of 1970 vintage. And my home PC, which I built myself in a couple of hours and for less than five hundred dollars, dwarfs the capabilities of the early Cray supercompters in pure number-crunching capabilities. So don't be too quick to sneer at the idea that your grandchildren may very well be asteroid miners. Science fiction has an uncanny knack for becoming science fact.
Of course, I will most likely be quite dead when all of this comes to fruition, but it's exciting to see the groundwork being laid, nonetheless.
If you wish to read the researchers' full paper (and have brushed up on your math skills), it can be found here.
Obviously this won't happen overnight, or probably even in the next century, but it's a proof-of-concept, if it can be replicated, that we can indeed create an artificial black hole. Of course, learning to sustain it is a whole new level of technology, not to mention the slight inconvenience of having to invent functional gravity bottles, but those are engineering concerns. The idea is valid.
How much power would one of these things produce? Well, hypothetically speaking, a single microscopic black hole could output more energy than every nuclear power plant currently in operation... combined. And it would do it at a tiny fraction of the mass conversion rate. It would also make practical, constant thrust interplanetary spacecraft a real possibility, as teamed up with an ion engine, (which we already do have; several deep space probes from both NASA and ESA have utilized them), the ship could follow a constant-thrust-to-turnover flight plan. This would make transit times to the asteroid belt of less than three months a reality. And that, in turn, would make system-wide mineral and gas mining operations a practical matter.
If all of this sounds like wild-eyed, flight-of-fancy sci-fi to you, it would behoove you to remember that forty-five years ago, when my father was in college, the device you are reading this article on was an impossibility-- one not even imagined by the boldest and wackiest sci-fi writers of the time. The Internet you used to access this weblog wasn't even a gleam in DARPA's eye. My cell phone has more computing power than an IBM mainframe of 1970 vintage. And my home PC, which I built myself in a couple of hours and for less than five hundred dollars, dwarfs the capabilities of the early Cray supercompters in pure number-crunching capabilities. So don't be too quick to sneer at the idea that your grandchildren may very well be asteroid miners. Science fiction has an uncanny knack for becoming science fact.
Of course, I will most likely be quite dead when all of this comes to fruition, but it's exciting to see the groundwork being laid, nonetheless.
If you wish to read the researchers' full paper (and have brushed up on your math skills), it can be found here.
posted by Jar(egg)head at 09:30
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