Are Black Hole Starships Possible · HackerPapers discussions

Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by octaane

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 22:56:20 GMT

There have been several proposals. This paper proposes a feasable mechanism[1]: -"a SBH could be artificially created by firing a huge number of gamma rays from a spherically converging laser. The idea is to pack so much energy into such a small space that a BH will form." 1. https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by adrianN

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 17:21:31 GMT

See also: https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803 "Are black hole star ships possible?"

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — HN submission

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 22:53:00 GMT

Are Black Hole Starships Possible?

1 point; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by blincoln

Sat, 14 May 2022 19:51:36 GMT

I skimmed over Crane and Westmoreland's paper[1] and an article that discusses specific designs[2], and I'm still unsure how one would keep the vehicle and black hole moving together while also generating thrust. It seems like there would be a conservation of energy problem, regardless of the design. I'm not a physicist, so I'm probably missing something. Most things one would use for thrust in space are inherently repulsive. The part I'm having trouble with is that it seems like even though a black hole would put out a lot of energy, it wouldn't be inherently repulsive, and so any vehicle…

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by karelpeeters

Sat, 14 May 2022 17:37:49 GMT

The paper you linked, https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803, is also a fun read.

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by sbierwagen

Thu, 19 Aug 2021 07:27:19 GMT

Hawking radiation propulsion has the perfect specific impulse: exhaust velocity is the speed of light. Black hole hawking radiation also is perfectly efficient: 100% of the mass is converted into energy. D-T fusion only converts 0.4% of the mass to energy. There are many awful engineering problems of a black hole drive, but they're not so bad as to dismiss out of hand. See https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803v1

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by sbierwagen

Thu, 19 Aug 2021 07:22:47 GMT

Crane and Westmoreland looked into this: "Are Black Hole Starships Possible" (2009) https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803v1 A black hole is generated when mass-energy density is above a certain threshold. You need to pack about a megatonne of mass-energy in a sphere 3 attometers in diameter to get a black hole approaching a useful lifespan. You could do it with bosonic matter, but photons are easier. Well, "easier": >In Section V below, we discuss the plausibility of creating SBHs with a very large spherically converging gamma ray laser. A radius of 1 attometer corresponds to the wavelength of a…

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by adrianN

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 18:26:14 GMT

I like black holes because once you have one you don't need an accelerator for refueling. https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by adrianN

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 08:50:50 GMT

Creating a microscopic black hole is not completely out of our reach. https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803 discusses this topic a bit. If the assumptions there are not wrong, and climate change doesn't get us first, creating small black holes might be become possible an a couple of generations.

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by adrianN

Tue, 05 May 2020 04:49:25 GMT

If you have a small black hole, you'd rather build a dyson sphere around that. They're pretty good matter-to-energy converters: https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by adrianN

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 17:21:32 GMT

The best way I know is creating small artificial black holes, feeding them matter at just the right rate and harvesting the Hawking radiation. That's actually a lot easier than building a Dyson sphere. https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by kristianp

Mon, 06 Jan 2020 06:10:02 GMT

Does it make sense to build the FCC, when it costs so much money and doesn't necessarily have enough energy to discover any new physics, at 10x the energy of the LHC? Maybe it makes more sense to start working towards producing microscopic black holes in space, where results about quantum gravity can be gained [1]. [0] https://www.technologyreview.com/f/612766/cern-wants-to-buil... [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803 , Are Black Hole Starships Possible

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by sbierwagen

Fri, 01 Nov 2019 00:47:30 GMT

Manufacturer's notice: the event horizon temperature goes up as well. By the time it has just five thousand years left, it'll be radiating super-energetic x-rays at (an average) 1.57 giga-electronvolts each. https://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1803v1.pdf#15

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by jessaustin

Thu, 12 Sep 2019 03:21:31 GMT

This paper has some interesting ideas. They want to manufacture really tiny black holes (radii of "a few attometers") and use Hawking radiation (which is inversely related to mass) to drive the vehicle. The black hole serves as both engine and fuel tank. https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by adrianN

Mon, 25 Mar 2019 05:50:57 GMT

Artificially creating microscopic black holes is not extremely difficult [1], and after that you can "just" feed them a few stars. Probably you can harvest them while travelling less than 25000 LY. [1] Section V of this paper https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by adrianN

Thu, 19 Jul 2018 07:40:29 GMT

It's not as hard as you think. Check out this paper here for some pointers https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by adrianN

Fri, 10 Mar 2017 16:17:16 GMT

I like to think that black hole propulsion is the way to go https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — HN submission

Fri, 14 Oct 2016 12:47:11 GMT

Are Black Hole Starships Possible (2009) [pdf]

2 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by throwawaytire

Sat, 20 Aug 2016 12:23:01 GMT

The title of this article sounds like a password [1]. Whenever one of these articles comes out I like to think of this fun paper: [2] Are Black Hole Starships Possible?", http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1803 [1] https://xkcd.com/936/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_starship

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by ceequof

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 23:39:41 GMT

You are mistaken. http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803v1 (See the table on page 15) The lifespan of a 108,000 tonne black hole is ~350 hours. At that mass, its event horizon is .32 attometres across, and the Hawking radiation it emits is measured in gigaelectronvolts.

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by adrianN

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 17:23:46 GMT

One efficient way to convert mass to energy is using the Hawking radiation of artificial black holes. This seems to by allowed by the laws of physics according to this paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by kristianp

Wed, 22 Jan 2014 02:29:11 GMT

Microscopic Black Holes are cooler than anti-matter if you ask me. We are only centuries of progress away from this: "Are Black Hole Starships Possible", http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803 My question is, how long before we can build an accelerator that deliberately aims at creating black holes, so we can understand the Quantum effects? (In space hopefully).

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by kristianp

Fri, 01 Nov 2013 11:45:11 GMT

Reminds me of one of my favourite reads, "Are Black Hole Starships Possible", http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by kristianp

Fri, 25 Oct 2013 04:07:44 GMT

Reminds me of one of my favourite reads, "Are Black Hole Starships Possible", http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by kristianp

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 23:15:24 GMT

This kind of thing would require large scale industrialization of space (in orbit around various places). If we are doing that, why not create a black hole starship? Microscopic black holes have been theorized as power sources for starships. The power source is the Hawking radiation that is intense for microscopic black holes, with a mass of around a million tonnes according to calculations in [1]. Apparently, creating a black hole "would require millions of times less energy than a comparable amount of antimatter" [2]. We would need to learn more about quantum gravity first though. [1]…

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by Detrus

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 06:32:44 GMT

Most of their science paper is in layman English http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1803v1 and explains such questions. The black holes they would build are very very tiny, about the size of a proton. They are relatively light, about 600,000 tons. Such a body doesn't have noticeable gravity, it's too light to attract anything and too small to absorb it. The big danger from these are explosions at the end of their life. The explosions are serious if they happened near Earth, but safe at the distance of Earth to Sun. They're built near the host star anyway.

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — mentioned by cletus

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 03:02:45 GMT

That's a good, grounded assessment of the scale of the problem. I too believe that the human colonization of space, even near-space (ie within the orbit of the Moon) is a long way off. The energy costs are simply too high and resources too cheap on the Earth to make it viable (in spite of typical SF fodder of asteroid mining). This is a problem because with 6.5 billion people we're using up resources. Fast. Anyway, I see two potential solutions to this problem: one not-so-far-fetched and one incredibly far-fetched. The not-so-far-fetched version is... hitch-hiking. Our understanding of the…

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Are Black Hole Starships Possible — HN submission

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:46:55 GMT

The Physics of Building a Black Hole Powered Starship [pdf]

44 points; 25 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.