wnoise comments on Open Thread: April 2010 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (524)
PDF: "Are black hole starships possible?"
This paper examines the possibility of using miniature black holes for converting matter to energy via Hawking radiation, and propelling ships with that. Pretty interesting, I think.
I'm no physicist and not very math literate, but there is one issue I pondered: namely, how the would it be possible to feed matter to a mini black hole that has an attometer scale event horizon and radiating petajoules of energy in all directions? The black hole would be an extremely tiny target in a barrier of ridiculous energy density. The paper, as rudimentary it is, does not discuss this feeding issue.
I prefer links to the abstract, when possible.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803