Stefan Mileschin

Dr Who got it right

It is possible for a civilisation to power itself using the captured heart of a black hole.

For those who are not slaves to US television Sci-Fi and think the only innovation came from Star Trek, the British show, Dr Who, came up with some rather good higher level sci-fi ideas. One idea is that the Time Lords, who were good guys for most of the long running series, powered their time travel and civilisation using a captured black hole. For years trekkies laughed at that one and pointed to how Star Trek invented tablets and mobile phones as proof of its far thinking thoughts.

Now according to Science magazine the Dr Who idea has merit.

Researchers have shown that highly advanced alien civilizations could theoretically build megastructures called Dyson spheres around black holes to harness their energy, which can be 100,000 times that of our Sun. The work could even give us a way to detect the existence of these extraterrestrial societies.

Black holes are typically thought of as consumers rather than producers of energy. Yet their huge gravitational fields can generate power through several theoretical processes. These include the radiation emitted from the accumulation of gas around the hole, the spinning "accretion" disk of matter slowly falling toward the event horizon, the relativistic jets of matter and energy that shoot out along the hole's axis of rotation, and Hawking radiation—a theoretical way that black holes can lose mass, releasing energy in the process.

https://fudzilla.com/news/53411-you-...g-a-black-hole