Science Fiction Ideas That May Just Become Reality: A Civilisation Built Around Black Holes
The power to run our civilisation just might come from an unexpected source.
By Helena Chen
Edited by Viola Spada
We all have ideas of the technological future: space elevators and shuttles able to carry us across millions of kilometers in just hours, but what about when all the stars have dimmed, only leaving behind the dense core of their formerly luminous selves? What about during the times where there will be no “natural” light and only artificial day-night cycles? During those days void of sunlight, after we have run out of fuel as a source of electricity, we will still have one final object able to help create electricity: black holes.
Considering the amount of years which would need to pass before even half the stars in the universe die out, we will most likely have found and set up lab stations around black holes already. To start our newfound civilization’s infrastructure, we could expand from those platforms, but we would still be missing one crucial component of any modern civilization: an electricity generator and source.
Fig 1
This is where the black holes come into the picture, as they can act as an electricity amplifier, theoretically generating enough energy to last us until the black hole itself fizzes out. The method’s core ideas are quite simple: envelop a preferably small black hole in a mirror dome (Fig 1), then open a window to shoot electromagnetic waves (forms of light) inside. Even though an amount of energy would fall into the event horizon, a larger portion would still be propelled, beginning superradiant scattering (the superradiance being permitted by energy dissipation near the event horizon allowing for an exchange of energy and angular momentum extraction from even the vacuum), an illustration of this process is found in Fig 2
Fig 2
Thereafter, by opening other windows, we can extract the energy, and the only maintenance needed is to occasionally feed “wild” asteroids into the Fig 2 black hole, to provide an energy boost.
Using this theoretical procedure, we could sustain a civilization until
the black hole evaporates from Hawking radiation (here is a good page explaining what Hawking radiation is).
Even though the method seems easy to execute, if the amount of energy inside the mirror dome is not maintained properly, the black hole energy pack could very well become even more powerful than our most dangerous nuclear bombs nowadays. That would lead to the creation of a black hole bomb, perhaps containing enough energy to rival the explosion of a supernova, highlighting the theoretical drawbacks and risks of such a method, though we may not have much of another choice in the future, when a black hole energy source might be needed.
Currently our technology may not allow us to arrive near black holes, but seeing as the situation for us to require considering this method will be billions of years in the future, we would hopefully have already created technology rivaling that of the most sci-fi dreams. And so we, and many generations after us, will not have to worry about the constant lack of light just yet, though for now the prospect of being able to physically recreate such an idea which currently only exists in fiction.
Works Cited
Brito, Richard, et al. “Superradiance.” ResearchGate, January 2015, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271532772_Superradiance. Accessed 26 September 2024.
Kurzgesagt. “The Black Hole Bomb and Black Hole Civilizations.” YouTube, 22 April 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulCdoCfw-bY. Accessed 26 September 2024.
A GRAVITATIONAL WAVE TRANSMITTER - Scientific Figure on ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Schematic-of-the-Kerr-power-plant-a-pulsating-black-hole-bomb-in-operation_fig4_325176592 [accessed 26 Sept 2024]
