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'Halo Drive' Would Use Black Holes To Power Spaceships (space.com)
A new study from researchers at Columbia University in New York suggests future spaceships could use black holes as powerful launch pads to explore the universe. The study "envisions firing laser beams that would curve around a black hole and come back with added energy to help propel a spacecraft to near the speed of light," reports Space.com. "Astronomers could look for signs that alien civilizations are using such a 'halo drive,' as the study dubs it, by seeing if pairs of black holes are merging more often than expected." From the report: Study author David Kipping, an astrophysicist at Columbia University in New York, came up with the idea of the halo drive through what he calls "the gamer's mindset." Using what he called a "halo drive" -- named for the ring of light it would create around a black hole -- Kipping found that even spaceships with the mass of Jupiter could achieve relativistic speeds. "A civilization could exploit black holes as galactic waypoints," he wrote in a study accepted by the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society and detailed online Feb. 28 in the arXiv preprint server.
The major drawback of a halo drive would be that "one has to travel to the nearest black hole," Kipping said. "It's akin to paying a one-time toll fee to ride the highway system. You have to pay some energy to reach the nearest access point, but after that, you can ride for free as a long as you like." The halo drive works only in close proximity to a black hole, at a distance of about five to 50 times the black hole's diameter. "This is why you have to travel to the nearest black hole first and [why you] can't simply do this across light-years of space," Kipping said. "We still first require a means to travel to nearby stars to ride the highway system. Kipping is now investigating ways to exploit other astronomical systems for relativistic flight. Such techniques "may not be quite as efficient or fast as the halo-drive approach, but these systems possess the deep energy reserves needed for these journeys," Kipping said.
The major drawback of a halo drive would be that "one has to travel to the nearest black hole," Kipping said. "It's akin to paying a one-time toll fee to ride the highway system. You have to pay some energy to reach the nearest access point, but after that, you can ride for free as a long as you like." The halo drive works only in close proximity to a black hole, at a distance of about five to 50 times the black hole's diameter. "This is why you have to travel to the nearest black hole first and [why you] can't simply do this across light-years of space," Kipping said. "We still first require a means to travel to nearby stars to ride the highway system. Kipping is now investigating ways to exploit other astronomical systems for relativistic flight. Such techniques "may not be quite as efficient or fast as the halo-drive approach, but these systems possess the deep energy reserves needed for these journeys," Kipping said.
Maybe at some point civilizations come across a promising technology (like black hole creation) and don't see some hidden danger until it is too late?
And it would take a lot of energy to make one
All you have to do is wait 6000 years until the light beams return from the nearest black hole.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Let me get this straight. Photons would be fired toward the periphery of a black hole, so that they'd slingshot around and come back... faster than light? What?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
If this actually worked well, wouldn't we see halos around plenty of black holes, since other space-faring civilizations would be using the technique? Presumably enough laser light would be scattered by gravitational lensing or turbulence or whatever to be visible from here.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
My analysis of the summary is that this is a pretty stupid idea.
TFS doesn't say this, but the idea is to use spinning pairs of black holes. You shoot photons back, and by gravitational slingshot they come back with more energy, and they propel the vessel by hitting the sail.
Co-orbiting black holes, moving at relativistic speeds before their merger, are untapped batteries. There are an estimated 10 million black hole pairs in our galaxy.
Nonsense, Trump has found his Space Force generals. He knows a powerful laser system when someone bullshit bar napkins it, we're building it, it's an emergency.
It never ceases to amaze me at the amount of fantasy physics that occur in science. Take the classic "wormhole" concept where they fold a piece of paper and put pencil through it to imitate space being folded by phenomenon so that great distances can be traveled with little effort. It is entirely bunk, just like time, everyone knows it, but because they are enamored by the fantasy of it, they agree to it as a concept. Well here is a real physics check, collapsing that much volume (space is not actually empty) into a small space like that would become a black hole... and then you have your next problem... getting whatever mechanism that caused the collapse to un-collapse it, considering the nature of that phenomenon. Good luck with that madness. Same problem here... to drive a laser powerful enough to do what they are talking about likely means having enough power to accomplish the task in other ways. not to mention a few other important factors. Space is moving, things are bending, we cannot see what is on the other side, we cannot effectively predict where we will be when the beam comes back around... and finally... light is still too slow for that kind of effective use because of relativity. The light itself may speed up or slow down but our usage of it will drastically reduce its effectiveness, unless some other new technology like the EM drive were to be discovered. Right now.. its a bleeding fantasy.
Instead of calling it spacetime, it should be called Space and Energy. Time is nothing more than a conceptual tool we use to facilitate the measurement of Space and Energy as it changes in the reality we are able to grasp and observe.
You shouldn't have far to look for a blackhole, it should be really close.
2F resonance model black holes are trivial to make and literally can be proton sized, its the matter around it that defines whether it gets pulled back to be 1F or not. My fake 2F proton, continues to be 2F when I turned off the forced 2F oscillation field until I started moving a few hydrogens around it. Black holes should be *everywhere*, as 2F they are largely decoupled from us except for the spin. So where would you look for the nearest one?....
1. Suppose a black hole is a 2F oscillation universe, relative to the outer 1F universe. (Postulate N)
2. Suppose we are in a black hole, the edge of our observable universe is the event horizon of our containing black hole.
3. Matter moves in to the center, through the center, and back out of the other side.
4. Matter dense enough to sustain a 2F oscillation against the push of the outer universe forms a black hole and an event horizon forms around it.
5. It's only 8x the density (W/2 in 3 axis), what stops more black holes forming is the matter around it.
6. Black holes are not one way trips, there's nothing stopping 2F oscillating matter from escaping through a 1F event horizon. Speed of light is not a limit here.
7. We are in the latter phase of a black hole, expanding back out, and stuff is disappearing over our outer event horizon.
8. As less matter is inside, so the event horizon is shrinking, the bubble of 2F oscillation is getting smaller.
9. The outer black hole gets smaller and smaller.
10. It ejects matter as it shrinks
11. 3 dimensional matter cannot cross the event horizon, it cannot both be oscillating at 1F and 2F.
12. So matter is ripped apart as it crosses the event horizon.
13. So proto-matter is ejected, just monopoles and dipoles, no quarks, no electrons, no donuts of any kind.
14. As the black hole shrinks and spins it ejects a spiral galaxy.
SPIRAL GALAXIES ARE BLACK HOLE EJECT.
TESTABLE ITEM:
15. The outer edge of such a spiral galaxy should contain the oldest stars, because that matter was ejected first.
16. Conversely if a black hole is sucking in matter, then the oldest stars should be near the middle, since that is the most dense for the longest time, the old stars should be near the black hole and about to fall in. So by observing whether old stars are at the outer edge of galaxies you have a mechanism for telling if the central black hole is swallowing or ejecting the galaxy. Since our univser is expanding, our black hole is ejecting matter and I expect to find far more galaxies being ejected than absorbed, because the outer galaxy is in the ejection phase.
Screamingly obvious observation
17. How can there be young stars? Given an even distribution of matter, and the same time since 'big bang', how can new stars still be forming, while there is old stars? Would they all form at a similar rate? Wouldn't the older bigger stars already have sucked up the matter?.... If a black hole shreds matter as it ejects, that would explain it. And if you find the young stars in the center again that would be consistent with it.
18. So the black hole is shrinking, how small can it get?... Right down to electron size depending on what's around it.
19. Velocity in this model is motion of oscillating field. 2F resonance inside the black hole is essentially disconnected from 1F resonance outside. Magnetic = F/2, so magnetic inside, is resonant with electric outside. If resonance angle switches 90 degrees from inside to outside, then so does velocity. i.e. tangential velocity outside is radial velocity inside. (Yeh that's a vast oversimplification).
20. So, what appears to be spherical, dense, difficult to send waves though, i.e. disconnected, have some weird electric driver generating some magnetic field, and be able to have motion as if its isolated from the matter around it?
21. The earth's core.
" Space is moving, things are bending, we cannot see what is on the other side, we cannot effectively predict where we will be when the beam comes back around " = Uneducated Republican 1/2-ass attempting relativistic physics proofs? Why?
You have zero concept of this.
Once you made it to the nearest black hole you can of course launch yourself in any direction, but if you ever want to change course you'll need to end up near another black hole. So this mode of transport basically involves aiming at a black hole over a distance of many, many light years, and then launching yourself almost directly at it. Don't forget to use your turn signal ;-)
Having said that, I'm in awe at the creativity that went into this.
There's a much bigger problem with this, and every other idea for accelerating to relativistic speeds: how the heck do you slow down? It takes just as much energy to slow down, but when you're traveling that fast you shoot past the next pair of black holes before they can reduce your speed anywhere near enough.
Same problem as a light sail, which might work for acceleration as you build up speed near the sun but can't possibly work for deceleration since it's going too fast to collect enough energy from the destination star before it's gone.
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And then your ship disappears into some hell dimensions, the crew rapes and tears each other apart and we end up gouging out our own eyes and shit.
I didn’t read the article, but since the energy described would result in very short wavelength photons, wouldn’t the just pass straight through any solar sail? https://science.nasa.gov/ems/1...
How do you slow down?
Just a few, teeny tiny problems:
1. So you need to be close to the black hole. Except for the very largest black holes, the tidal forces will rip you apart. See the answer to problem 3 in this exercise: solar mass black hole, distance roughly 30 times the radius, tidal forces on a human-sized object of 50,000g. Good luck with that.
2. Aside from that, they are relying on a "slingshot" effect for the laser beam. But the photons are already travelling at light speed, so they cannot speed up. They energy increase will go into frequency: you'll be transforming light into hard gamma radiation. Enough energy to accelerate you to relativistic speeds is more likely to simply vaporize your ship.
3. If you survive the tidal forces and the radiation and actually get to relativistic speeds, you're going to need to target another black hole to slow down, by reversing the whole process.
4. Meanwhile, you still have to travel interstellar distances by some other means, to get to and from the black holes.
This isn't science. It isn't even science fiction. Heck, I expect more realism in bad space opera.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I'm currently playing Elite dangerous and taking part in the Distant Worlds 2 expedition community event. 8 months across the Galaxy and back. 8 months.
And while I have an unrealistic space ship with a fictional "Frame Shift Drive" that can jump approx. 41 light years at a time after "collecting fuel" by flying around a sun at speeds faster than light for half a minute (just as unrealistic) I *still* need thousands of jumps and days to cover the radius of our Galaxy without stopping for vistas.
Frontier, the developers of Elite Dangerous, did some neat things in trying to be sort of scientifically correct with the representation of space and solar systems. And it has shown me one thing I wasn't fully aware of until now: the scales we're taking about when we talk about our solar system, our '''neighbor''' systems or let alone our Galaxy are so absolutely unbelievably big the words "large" or "huge" don't even fit in the faintest way.
Bottom line: I'm pretty sure somewhere out there civilizations exist, have existed and will exist. However, that we ever get to meet them or they us is, to be realistic, very very very unlikely. Like, I'd say, even orders of magnitude more unlikely that life and then intelligent life comes to exist in the first place. Life happens in extremely narrow margins at our scale as it is. That we get to change the laws of physics and get to travel around the system, Galaxy or even universe like we get to ride a bike is nice daydreaming, but it won't happen.
Not for us and not for others. It's pure physics and a game attempting to show the scale of our Galaxy can drive home the issue of scale and distances we're taking about.
We're alone and they are too. And it will stay that way until we fade.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I hope it works out better.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
How do you slow down when you get to the destination? You'd need to expend similar levels of energy to slow down at the other end.
Discovered how to use black holes for time travel. But we won't hear more about them until 2020. The BBC are such bastards at times.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Is this Venture Capitalist clickbait? Are they just trolling for research grant money? Sheesh. I've got a vivid imagination and love science fiction, but this is so far out from anything even remotely practical that I don't know what else to think. Trying to create Warp Drive would be more practical.
Small thinking mistake in this hypothesis,... Which life forms - or complex matter of any kind - is able to survive the gravitational pull at a distance of only 50 times the radius of a black hole?
"Take the classic "wormhole" concept... It is entirely bunk"
I'll let Einstein know you think he's a shithead next time I see him.
In the mean time I won't be taking my advice on science off some random on the internet.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
I believe the Romulans have prior art
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
That close to a black hole you get fantastic time dilation. After you move away, you find your whole civilization gone, or changed to something new.
How about we just start by building rockets and exploring the solar system a little bit before we start thinking about using black holes to get around space?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What a bunch of thieves.
The concept of a "Black hole driven starship" is called the Kugelblitz engine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Looking through the comments on a site *FOR NERDS* no one has brought this up yet. Shame.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Step 1: Find the closest black hole to your solar system (hopefully not that close)
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit
(Apologies to South Park)
I've seen some misunderstandings in several posts that warrant correction at the top level.
Dealing with relativistic speeds is an engineering problem, and not necessarily a difficult (at least when compared with other challenges of interstellar travel) one.
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-...
Deceleration with light sails is a solved problem, at least on paper. I'm not aware of any deployed examples.
http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/21...
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Isaac Asimov)
You are referring to the plot of The Quiet Earth. Only one of the best movies ever!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089869/
https://www6.putlockertv.to/watch/the-quiet-earth.k5lr/l140nq
"Is that a black hole in the engine room, or are you just happy to see me?"
using the old "industrial Revolution" mindset that bigger is better. Let us use the "information Revolution" mindset that smaller is better. Let us ask how can we reach the stars using the least amount of effort. We can do so by making biological machines that are very small that can reproduce. They would be called star seeds. They would plunge into the sun as close as possible and open their sails fully to get to a few percent of the speed of light. They would reach the nearby stars in a few hundred years.
1. How long does it take light to circle the black hole of choice?
2. How are they planning to brake?
3. Do they plan to visit only blackholes, or is there a way to visit star systems inbetween too? Because once you stop (by some means) to look around, you're no longer near any black holes, so you're stuck.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
Question: How do you slow down?
Answer: According to the article, you can propel up to a Jupiter-sized mass. Do you think a Jupiter-sized mass of fuel would permit you to slow down? Also, you only need to do that once, sending your Jupiter-mass to another binary black hole system and you've just created an interstellar highway between the two binary black holes and then you don't even need the fuel to slow down — you can slow down via rotating 180 degrees and sending a beam from the second black hole.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Do the laser beams come back from the black hole equipped with sharks?
If so, sign me up!
#4 basically makes this a moot point regardless of if it actually is feasible or not (which is probably isn't).
Can't travel interstellar distances? That's easy, just slingshot around a black hole! Oh all black holes are fantastically far away? Well I guess you have to travel there conventionally (not feasible). Oh how to you stop at the other end? Well just use another black hole! Oh the other black hole isn't remotely anywhere near where you want to travel... Um well... Science and stuff.
I'm not sure impractical and unfeasible really do it justice at this scale.
The altered trajectory of an asteroid also doesn't create energy.
The author of this post posted another mathematical impossibility like the founder of boingboing.net. The amount of energy to contain nuclear fusion will always be more than the energy created by nuclear fusion.
I wish I has a microphone like Beau Hamilton (author of this post) and Mark Fraunfelder (founder of boingboing.net) for people.
Give it a rest..