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My story at its final stages is based around K3 civilizations whose technologies are within the known laws of physics and for plot reasons have managed to control all superclusters and lone galaxies within their region of space (500 million light years to 2 billion light years)

With all their methods of collecting stars and storing their matter in supermassive black holes they are still only able to collect the smallest fraction of matter in their local area. As dark matter and dark energy is a mysterious component these will remain a mystery but there is still a massive portion of known matter available to collect.

My previous questions have answered many problems including how to move black holes and how to collect quasar energy but other than creating a massive Bussard ramjet net/scoop to collect the available matter I cant think how this matter along the galactic filaments and cluster/galaxy edges can be collected?

One idea I had which feels completely hopeless and pointless is sending super or ultra massive blackholes along these galactic filaments on route to the nearest galaxies and feed off what matter they can in their path, when they reach the end of their path at the nearest galaxy they are slowed down by particle beams and sent off to collect more matter on the path to the next galaxy, all paths will be monitored and controlled by branch of the K3 civilization in that area.

Is this method possible or even worth doing as the energy needed to slow the black hole on arrival may be more than what is collected on the journey or are there other solutions to be explored?

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  • $\begingroup$ This is going to take a very long time. You're restricted to lightspeed at best, and accelerating huge black holes to significant fractions of lightspeed will be a huge drain on energy supplies. Will your society remain interested in this project for tens of billions of years? $\endgroup$
    – John Dallman
    Sep 4, 2020 at 13:47

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An absurd number of co-orbiting black holes. Don't just use one. Let's say you have two super-massive black holes that are large enough to orbit each other over a large distance. Then, one could plausibly (well...not plausibly, but at least less magically) set up a series of these orbiting black holes that all orbit each other. If it were set up correctly, and the timing were exactly right, you would have a single vacuum black hole that traverses the space between the complex number of orbiting black holes. In essence, it would follow something akin to The Interplanetary Transport Network, using very little energy to scoop up all the mass on its path and, crucially, the civilization sets it up so that the black hole is at a very low relative velocity when it gets to its endpoint. Only a little bit of velocity to cancel, and all the mass it picked up.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thats true following the filament flow means less initial energy but do think even the largest system of stable orbiting bh's could swallow a worth while chunk of the available matter? $\endgroup$
    – user78658
    Sep 2, 2020 at 18:49
  • $\begingroup$ I don't know, let's start there. But if the black hole is very large, and you have lots of time, I don't see a reason why its orbit wouldn't dramatically affect the orbits of the matter and eventually cause it all to be shepherded into something easier to catch. However, I'm not an astrodynamicist, and I doubt even they would be able to analyze the "move a billion black holes" problem :-P $\endgroup$
    – Michael Stachowsky
    Sep 2, 2020 at 18:51
  • $\begingroup$ So you have essentially said no matter the size or the amount they dont have enough pull to make a dent on the larger scales? $\endgroup$
    – user78658
    Sep 2, 2020 at 18:55
  • $\begingroup$ The opposite. "I don't see a reason why its orbit wouldn't..." should read as "I believe that its orbit WOULD dramatically affect..." $\endgroup$
    – Michael Stachowsky
    Sep 2, 2020 at 18:56
  • $\begingroup$ I have a tendency of using double-negatives a bit too much, sorry :-P $\endgroup$
    – Michael Stachowsky
    Sep 2, 2020 at 18:56

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