Black holes are environmentally friendly

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

A new study of nine supermassive black holes has found that they are actually "green" - because of their efficiency.

 

Black holes typically emit energy in the form of jets of matter travelling at near the speed of light away from the core. In fact, this matter has more energy than the X-rays and light emitted from the black hole as well (as the jets emit X-rays due to their speed). The jets create cavities in the gas surrounding the black hole, and an estimate of the energy needed to create these cavities was combined with an estimate of the fuel available to the black hole to reach the conclusion that black holes are incredibly fuel efficient - "if a car was as fuel-efficient as these black holes, it could theoretically travel over a billion miles on a gallon of gas," said Christopher Reynolds from the University of Maryland.

 

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-04/cxc-ncf042406.php

[RyanJ]

Beat me too it... its very interesting just how effecient they are, maybe small ones could be harnessed as an energy source some day...

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[herpguy]

maybe small ones could be harnessed as an energy source some day...

That would be awesome.

[RyanJ]

That would be awesome.

 

Theoretically it should be possible, a bit out of our technology but possible.

 

Set up a black hole (very small) and feed it matter, anything, radioactive waste for example. If we can then get this hole to emmit its energy jets we can then directly use that power... the only problem we would have to deal with is that the black hole would grow as we put more and more materials into it so eventually the black holw would become to big to be useful...

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[5614]

I think the theory is great, dunno how realistic it is.

 

To creat a black hole requires a lot of energy. We couldn't make it that big because it can grow and we couldn't risk getting a black hole on the lose on Earth! Also as it would swallow other matter, such as the container it is in it might be hard to keep in one place. In fact unless we have an antigravity machine (lets assume we won't) then you could not confine it.

 

You'd need to keep it small which means the amount of energy we could get is limited.

 

Plus we need to keep it away from other things, put energy into making it and not get loads out (because it's small) so it might end up like fusion - requires more energy than it makes.

 

Dunno, interesting thought though.

[wpenrose]

Beat me too it... its very interesting just how effecient they are' date=' maybe small ones could be harnessed as an energy source some day...

[/quote']

 

They were on sale at Home Depot the other day, so I went and picked one up.

 

The clerk said, 'For God's sake, don't drop it!"

 

It's great. I fired Waste Management's weekly pickup. It takes cans, glass, pets, food, food wrappers, aluminum foil. You name it. It's gone and just a burst of hard x-rays to show for it.

 

Dangerous Bill

[GrandMasterK]

I'd be scared to death if a lab had created a blackhole on earth, no matter how tiny it is, I'd still have trouble sleeping at night thinking that something could go wrong and just start suckin everything up. Keep that thing a good couple lightyears away from my white pigmented buttocks.

[RyanJ]

I'd be scared to death if a lab had created a blackhole on earth, no matter how tiny it is, I'd still have trouble sleeping at night thinking that something could go wrong and just start suckin everything up. Keep that thing a good couple lightyears away from my white pigmented buttocks.

 

Just remember outside the event horizon its exactly the same as everything else, the strength of its gravity outside is relative to its mass so it can't exactly pull in the planet when its that size. Think of it this way, if we replaced the sub with a black hole of equal mass the planets would not get sucked in - they would stay in their normal orbits but everyhting would be darker.

 

Also, how do you know they have not made one already? How do you know that micro-black holes are not formed when cosmic rays interact with other high energy particles?

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[herpguy]

I'd be scared to death if a lab had created a blackhole on earth, no matter how tiny it is, I'd still have trouble sleeping at night thinking that something could go wrong and just start suckin everything up. Keep that thing a good couple lightyears away from my white pigmented buttocks.

Wouldn't it just evaporate quickly?

[RyanJ]

Wouldn't it just evaporate quickly?

 

The smaller they are the hotter the back hole is and the faster it evaporates so yea it would probably only be around for a few milliseconds.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[Gilded]

Indeed. Probably not surprising to many, it's also possible to calculate the evaporation time if the mass is known.

 

"So, for instance, a 1 second-lived black hole has a mass of 2.28 × 10^5 kg = 2.05 × 10^22 J = 5 × 10^6 megatons of TNT." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation)

[Severian]

To creat a black hole requires a lot of energy.

 

That depends on the theory. There are some (reasonable) theories which predict black holes will be formed at the LHC when it switches on next year.

 

The biggest problem I can see would be stability. Small black holes evapourate very quickly, while big black holes gobble you up. I haven't lloked into it, but I imagine keeping a black hole the right size would be very difficult.