New proposed power source for spaceships

[Arbystrider]

You might as well call it a gamma ray.

And how can a massless particle decay into a particle WITH mass?!?! And aren't positrons produced by positron decay in unstable elements?

[AHadley]

And how can a massless particle decay into a particle WITH mass?!?!

e=mc^2

This equation details how energy can be made from mass. If you take 100g of uranium-235 and you put it in a sealed container and you leave it there, when you take it out you will end up with 99.99999999g of uranium-235. Depends how long you leave it though.

[Arbystrider]

You forgot about mc^2/SqRoot of 1 - c^2/v^2.

And I remember trying to calculate light energy the other day using that equation. Thus, E = [0*300,000,000]/{SqRoot [1-((300,000,000^2)/300,000,000^2) = E= 0. So what I conclude as for now is that photons do not carry any energy. But I know I'm wrong. How do they get the energy?

HEY ZOMG we're talking about particle phyics, one of my interests.

[Crewman87]

I wouldn't really worry about using this type of power for short trips as stated. Even though black holes are something I wouldn't want to be anywhere near, micro black holes are short living and cannot create enough force (for lack of a better word) to increase its mass before it expires. At least this is what I am lead to believe, I'm not a scientist.

[AHadley]

Even if we did get it working, and even if we managed to get a ship to travel at the speed of light, then it would take the crew six years to get to the edge of the solar system (our front door in cosmic terms)

Since time passes slower the quicker something is travelling (even if I'm just walking around the room time is going slower for me than my brother slobbing on the sofa ) then it wouldn't be six years to the rest of us, but still... six years? That's going to get really boring after a while.

[Arbystrider]

Well... Einstein's theory suggests that time stops for the travellers when we move at the speed of light. So... I think they feel like going anywhere would take an instant?

[AHadley]

Einstein's experiment does nothing to suggest that the speed of light is the magic zero value. I haven't looked at it in depth because I am more a particle physicist.

[VSMIT]

Well... Einstein's theory suggests that time stops for the travellers when we move at the speed of light. So... I think they feel like going anywhere would take an instant?

Einstein's theory states that time is relative (hence "Theory of Relativity"), and the closer to the speed of light you travel, the slower time will go (for you).  If you're going at the speed of light, and you're going further than 300000000 miles, it would feel like longer than one second, but for the rest of the universe, it would be longer, since you're moving at the speed of light.  Time does not stop.  Time never stops.

[Dx]

This isn't new, Romulan ships use it in Star Trek and i saw it used in a movie long ago.

[mrtwosheds]

I never did really understand that theory, I think it all depended on the concept that the speed of light was a constant, It has since been shown that it is not.
In fact allot of these space/time theory's seem to depend on imaginary constants, that probably don't exist at all. Its very hard to perform meaningful calculations without some fixed point to anchor them to. Infinity/nothing has no fixed points at all.

[iron maiden]

In fact allot of these space/time theory's seem to depend on imaginary constants, that probably don't exist at all. Its very hard to perform meaningful calculations without some fixed point to anchor them to. Infinity/nothing has no fixed points at all.

i know, these scientists always come up with new theory's revolving around "If it exists" or " should this happen" bah, makes me sick! [i know, overexagerated]

[NoStr0m0]

Just a sidenote for those who might not know... the image in the post is from the motion picture Event Horizon, which is also the name of the ship that had that device installed. It was thought that it would punch a hole in spacetime and create an artificial wormhole but things went horribly wrong and it crossed into another dimension altogether, which drove the crew mad and made them kill eachother. It was said that they actually made it to hell.

As far as I understood, at least one idea was to collect the radiotion emitted by the black hole to propel the ship forward, kind of like a solar sail, only having the sun anchored to the ship. It's different, I must admit, and it could actually work.
But they're using such an exotic body to power a ship in such a conventional way... it seems such a waste. I was hoping for something more along the lines of a pair of black holes creating a pseudo warp effect, causing the ship to move inside a gravitational bubble.

On a side note: someone said that the holes would be too small to create very much trouble, but wouldn't accidentally feeding it enough mass turn it into the world gobblers we all know (and love) ?

On another side note: The article states that it would require the sun's energy over a period of a year to be stored (somehow, that would be in itself a great feat of engineering) in order to create a black hole. And after we create several we could harnes them to create more. But, would't that fail? I mean... all energy to energy or energy to matter conversions happen with a loss of said energy.
Say you have a battery and you use it to power a motor that in turn power a generator to charge another battery of the same type, then reverse batteries. After a while, because of friction and heating in the wires and whatnot, both batteries would be dead. So if we create two black holes and harnes their power, wouldn't we be able to create only one and a leftover?
I must admit, I'm not great with advanced physics so correct me if I'm wrong.

I also have a question. I have read that in a revolving black hole, the event horizon is not a sphere, but a torus, or a ring. Would that mean that in the exact center, gravity cancels itself out... and could that be a gateway of some sorts, seing as space is so curved around that point? Or would it just be a normal region of space in the middle of a maelstrom?

[Nielk1]

The thought is the black holes make energy in a way other than what you put in. Think of it like using energy to mine coal that we burn for energy.

[NoStr0m0]

Yes, but in coal, the energy is already there, and we only release it through combustion. If we create black holes, we will have to inject energy into them, by accelerating particles and smashing them against each other so they fuse and collapse. But we will have to come up with all the energy since the particles themselves will not have as much as a lump of coal, hence the solar array. Also... the hawking particles the black holes give is a kind of evaporation so with each hawking particle emitted, it will get weaker and weaker  ...and so it would consume more energy than it will give off.
But, like I said, I'm not that good at physics so I might be wrong.

[Nielk1]

IIRC they expel radiation from their poles from matter they absorb, unless it was the multidimensional energy from somewhere else thing.