Kugelblitz! Powering a Starship With a Black Hole

space.com ^ | January 16, 2014 | Jeff Lee

[12th_Monkey]

Interstellar flight certainly ranks among the most daunting challenges ever postulated by human civilization. The distances to even the closest stars are so stupendous that constructing even a scale model of interstellar distance is impractical. For instance, if on such a model the separation of the Earth and sun is 1 inch (2.5 centimeters), the nearest star to our solar system (Proxima Centauri) would be 4.3 miles (6.9 kilometers) away!

The fastest object ever built by the human species is the Voyager 1 space probe, moving at a speed of 18 miles per second. If it were heading toward Proxima Centauri (which it’s not), Voyager 1 would reach our nearest stellar neighbor in about 80,000 years.

Clearly, if interstellar travel is to be accomplished on human timescales, much greater speeds are required. At 10 percent of the speed of light (a thousand times faster than Voyager 1, but a conceivable speed for likely soon-to-be-realized fusion engines), Proxima Centuri could be reached in approximately 45 years — less than a human lifetime.

However, the necessary energies to achieve substantial fractions of the speed of light, thus cutting the travel time to the stars to less than a human lifetime, are equally mind-boggling.

Every pound of starship moving at 99.9 percent the speed of light will have a kinetic energy more than three times greater than the energy of the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated. Nevertheless, there may be a way of supplying an engine with such prodigious energies.

In his 1955 paper Geons, John Wheeler, one of the pioneers of the theory of black holes, coined the term "Kugelblitz" — which translates literally to "ball lightning." He suggested that if enough pure energy could be focused into a region of space, that energy would form a microscopic black hole,

[commish]

Everyone knows the only true way to conduct interstellar travel is through the use of an Infinite Improbability Drive.

[FatherofFive]

Therefore, the two observers (A and B) do NOT agree on what a "second" is.

Heisenberg was stopped by the police while driving at 95 mph. The officer asked, "Do you know how fast you were going?" To which Heisenberg replies, "No, but I know where I am."

[Rebelbase]

I have no clue as to the science but the concept reminds me of the first person to consider using moving water to power a mill.

Exploiting space’s natural resources.

[ETL]

That’s an effect due to extreme differences in gravity, between the head of the object and the tail of the object. It’s a different phenomenon from length contraction, which is simply a consequence of any motion.

You're right as to a definition of "spaghettification". I was thinking in terms of the dimensionality of space-time as one approaches a black hole, as seen from an outside observer's perspective. ie, a clock would appear to tick more and more slowly, as in the light clock example below.

In Relativity, the effects of gravity and accelerated motion are basically indistinguishable, and so the illustration below can be used to depict either a state of relative motion or a gravitational field.

The graphic below that shows how the space-time frames are increasingly stretched as you get closer to a black hole, or any considerably massive object. The more they're stretched, the more time dilation occurs.

____________________________________

[Svartalfiar]

All black holes eventually evaporate. They’re believed to emit radiation (Hawking radiation) in both thermal and gamma ranges. Also, black holes have magnetic fields, which, in interacting with the environment, can sap energy (and hence mass) from the hole. And we (I) don’t know much about how gravitational forces can figure in to such equations, especially when you start getting into such tiny quantum scales. In fact, most calculations start breaking down with such tiny sizes, and you can’t add much mass when the target is already so small.

“Every so often, a physics paper will appear claiming that black holes don’t evaporate. Such papers quickly disappear into the infinite junk heap of fringe ideas”.
-Leonard Susskind

[ETL]

Lol.

The Uncertainty Principle:

In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle known as complementary variables, such as position x and momentum p, can be known simultaneously.

For instance, in 1927, Werner Heisenberg stated that the more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice versa.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

[freefdny]

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Oh, do you like it? I’m not partial to desserts myself, but this is excellent.

[ETL]

Einstein was reportedly once stopped by the same highway patrolman. He told the officer that, according to his frame of reference, he was at rest and the cop was doing 95.

[Para-Ord.45]

Despite being so miniscule, Schwarzschild Kugelblitzes are incredibly heavy .

[12th_Monkey]

so the hole is plugged by matter and it evaporates because nothing can get in yo fuel it.

[12th_Monkey]

well the complainers can take it up with the physicists.

[12th_Monkey]

HA!

[12th_Monkey]

dyson shell is a new one, heard of dyson sphere, never shell.

That picture looks like something my wife baked.

[12th_Monkey]

I’ve heard of the singularity drive, didn’t know it had an actual name. warrants some additional reading on my part.

[tet68]

Of course it doesn’t do you much good if you
approach your target star at the speed of light
if you can’t STOP, not to mention course corrections.

That is where the folded universe method might have
advantages...

[12th_Monkey]

it would seem that you would need to start deceleration about the time you got up to top speed. I think it’s supply of matter would come from space itself. It’s rich in hydrogen, helium, carbon and other elements. Guy named Bussard proposed collecting free hydrogen with magnetic fields to use as a fuel source.

[12th_Monkey]

I’m good with that as long as it doesn’t cause me to turn into Obama.

Reality restored

[12th_Monkey]

as long as the process doesn’t have the word “fracking” in it, no one will care

[Sergio]

Physics bookmark.

[12th_Monkey]

even large ones? thought evaporation was limited to micro black holes.