hopefully by the stage we can make our own black holes and contain them such niggling little problems might have been worked out.
To all those who mocked me for saying that science fiction is becoming science fact, WHO WAS RIGHT!? HUH!? This is about the coolest thing I've read in the news in my entire life.
Its still science fiction, since they're extrapolating a wildly complex application based on principles that are not completely understood and requiring technology that is far beyond current capabilities. Now, if they pulled back a curtain and there was the Heart Of Gold, ready for its maiden voyage, THEN you'd be right.
Slightly different case than the Romulans. This is primarily the drive for the ship (it can provide some energy, but as I'll get into with parts of the article itself, it seems impossible for it to provide more excess energy than is needed for the drive itself). The Romulans use a singularity to power their ships, but use other systems as drives for the ship. Technically, it's not powering the ship (as I started in on above this). It's just providing the greatest possible compression ratio for Drive Reaction Mass. Much better than the storage that would be needed for current (and currently-proposed) thruster-type drives. Well, with the proper handling, using a black hole for your drive system is no more dangerous than being on a ship that blasts out ignited rocket fuel (or drops nuclear bombs out the backside and rides the shockwaves). They all work fine while things are kept in the proper tolerances. They all end catastrophically when things fall outside the proper tolerances. A much bigger dampener of your dream of being on board a starship exploring other worlds realistically is human lifespan. Since the concept in the article is a thruster-type drive, you wouldn't contain it completely. One would stop current drive thrust, use maneuvering to rotate the ship around (better yet, there would be a drive module attached to the ship which could simply be rotated by itself), then apply reverse thrust. The only real solution is the same as initial acceleration - do it gradually. Too much acceleration either way, forward or reverse, is very messy for humans. Hawking Radiation as defined by Hawking has not been proven to exist. The two researchers that have come up with the idea central to this article have used Hawkings' theoretical calculations (along with other theoretical calculations about Black Holes) to calculate the optimum mass of a black hole to provide enough useful particle emissions from a lasting source. It's all dependent upon these other theoretical calculations being correct. Of course, if the other calculations are only off somewhat, but are still basically correct, then the optimum mass can be quickly re-calculated using the work of these researchers. Well, it's not exactly stable, it is spewing out massive amounts of radiation as part of a shrinking process. As to the rest of what you're asking here, Coeloptera already covered it. Sorry to directly disagree with you, but defined Hawking Radiation has yet to be detected. Wikipedia's article on it dates their pretty reliable information on the matter, and I know I haven't seen any articles about it since that date (that's a big enough discovery that I wouldn't have missed it over the last year and a half). Virtual particles, as you note here, can be one form of Hawking Radiation. Coeloptera already noted the relative production value from Black Holes. However, without the intense gravity of the Black Hole, the Virtual particles would not become real particles. So, in one way they are not emitted by Black Holes, but in another way they are. It does break down one barrier. As I noted earlier in my post here, this does bring forth the best possible compression ratio for Drive Reaction Mass (and that fuel can be restocked without special facilities or resource harnessing, up until a point, anyway). ..... And since I've picked apart and answered various responses, I'll do the same for the originating article at this point: Having a projected natural life-span of this size of black hole would be nice. I can't run the calculations myself, but that previously linked to Wikipedia article on Hawking Radiation has thes numbers in it: Black Hole mass --- Natural life span 2 x 10^5 kg --- 1 second 10^11 kg --- ~2 billion years The article's Black Hole has a mass of 10^9 kg. That leaves me at a loss for exactly how long this lasts without being 'fed'. Is that more or less than a decade? Okay, I see why gamma-ray lasers are needed, but that puts possible development for this way off. We still don't know of anything that can manipulate gamma rays other than gravity (so by current understanding, we're left with controlling gravity before we can make a gamma-ray laser. Not happening this century... Electron-gas mirrors are another far-off technology. There hasn't been much research done on them since roughly 1955. There doesn't seem to have been much research on them since then. Although, a properly implemented one of these could be part of a system to create gamma-ray lasers without having to control gravity. That's going to need to be some incredibly powerful particle beams to keep the million-kg black hole mass moving along with the ship. So much for any extra power the black hole could provide for the ship. It'll all be going to powering those particle beams. Yeah, right. I think they forgot about those particle beams that they need to move that black hole. There's also still no observed phenomena that allows Black Holes to bypass Conservation of Energy/Mass. So even standing still, there doesn't seem to be any point in using the power from one of these to create other black holes. After all, they would have notably less mass and therefore an accordingly exponentially shorter lifespan. From our current scientific understanding that's correct. Further advances in technology and understanding could provide something better than harnessing black holes, though. I pretty much have to agree with Coeloptera on this one. I wouldn't put my money on this horse.
Hell, lets go for it. If we kill ourselves in the process atleast we discovered something I wish I was born in a futuristic time, something akin to the Mass Effect franchise. I'd be at home.
How the heck someone can compare two technologies that doesn't exist? That's like comparing Bay Optimus Prime to G1 Optimus Prime. Who will win?
