Questions tagged [black-holes]

For questions about a region of space time where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it.

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Could you 'deconstruct' a blackhole by firing heavy metals into its orbit?

Using the process of 'pair production' and using the nature of a blackhole to separate and destroy one of the particles from that pair, would surrounding blackholes with heavy metals (which increase ...
equilibriator's user avatar
-4 votes
1 answer
164 views

Effects of closing a Black Hole in a solar system (let's say ours?) [closed]

Lets say for instance an alien civilization decided to drop an artificial star on the edge of our solar system's Heliosphere, resize it 20x the size of ours, implode it into a black hole but omit the ...
Crashie-J's user avatar
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24 votes
5 answers
2k views

Is it safe to orbit HDE 226868?

I'm considering a story where an exploration is devised to explore a binary system containing a black hole; the choice is Cygnus X-1, with its companion supergiant star HDE 226868. It would likely be ...
HDE 226868's user avatar
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-2 votes
2 answers
255 views

What if a molecule turned into a black hole? [closed]

Could it turn into the size of a quark? Could there be a quark-sized black hole?
science error's user avatar
6 votes
4 answers
1k views

Life on planets near quasars

To be very-very simple: The very main setting of my world is a very special and very small galaxy, the galactic core of which is a quasar - with the "iconic" light beam in the middle, serving a ...
Z..'s user avatar
  • 5,356
8 votes
1 answer
475 views

What density can I set for Uium, to be reshaped by moon-mass black/white holes

How do you cut through an unbreakable armor? With an all-powerful sword, of course. No really, if we had seemingly unbreakable matter (lets give it the original name of Unobtadamentium, or Uium for ...
Nahshon paz's user avatar
  • 6,098
4 votes
3 answers
284 views

Seeing Using Gravitational Waves [duplicate]

I know that humans' eyes are adapted to detect some electromagnetic waves, and their ears are able to detect sound waves. What I would like to ask is: Is it plausible for a species to biologically ...
Generic User's user avatar
3 votes
5 answers
344 views

Assuming there was a spaceship that could counter-act the effects of being near a black hole, could a human observe the hole dissipating?

The most common explanation of what would happen to a space-ship that falls towards a black hole ends with spaghettification. However imagine there was a space-ship built out of unobtanium, that could ...
JonathanReez's user avatar
83 votes
11 answers
16k views

Is it worth sending a manned mission to a black hole?

Suppose we detect a stellar black hole passing near the Solar system, and we have technology and time to send a manned mission to study it. Are there any experiments or observations that would help ...
Just Larry's user avatar
  • 1,228
4 votes
2 answers
544 views

Harnessing energy from a Black Hole

If a race were advanced enough to colonise space and travel between galaxies, would it be possible for them to harness a black hole in some way to generate power for the massive ships needed to ...
Lord Thanatos's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
389 views

How structurally strong would an object need to be to survive a trip through an ergosphere?

Let us assume we have a Kerr metric (rotating) black hole of 10 Sol-masses, spinning at 300 revs/s (as measured by a rest frame observer). What yield strength (assume that yield strength is limiting ...
Shalvenay's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
1k views

Is there a practical method of storing a kugelblitz?

Could a kugelblitz be stored in a container lined with metamaterials to reflect back the outpouring of hawking radiation or would it require something more exotic? Could it be pinned in the center of ...
Joe Kissling's user avatar
  • 6,716
2 votes
1 answer
256 views

Generating power using a black hole's accretion disk?

Could you power a starship by feeding matter into a black hole and collecting the plasma produced by the tidal forces ripping apart whatever you fed it, or is this impossible/impractical? I keep ...
Z.Schroeder's user avatar
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8 votes
4 answers
4k views

Building a Dyson Shell around a black hole?

What's the minimum safe distance to start building if you don't want any part of the shell or swarm to fall into the event horizon? Could you build a stable structure just short of the Schwarzschild ...
Z.Schroeder's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
356 views

What is safest distance for a dormant black hole? [closed]

Would it be safe for humanity if instead of Proxima Centauri being a red dwarf, it was a stellar mass black hole? Edit: Narrowed the question
Platypus's user avatar
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3 votes
5 answers
846 views

Travel (how far?) into the future using a black hole and light-speed space craft?

A person is traveling in a space craft that was designed and built by sufficiently advanced aliens. This space craft left from Earth and is capable of traveling infinitely close to the speed of light. ...
jakecento's user avatar
10 votes
13 answers
8k views

Destroy a Planet inside a black hole?

Imagine a race whom have mastered the knowledge of black holes, at least a bit. They've found a way survive, with their planet intact, inside the gravitation of the black hole without getting ...
Xxy's user avatar
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4 votes
4 answers
435 views

Does this SciFi plot about quantum singularity violate laws of physics?

I'm writing a science fiction, although I'm not from a physics background. A part of my plot is: In a futuristic Earth threatened by huge power demand and climate change, a scientist creates a ...
Bagho's user avatar
  • 41
3 votes
5 answers
259 views

What forces would make leaving a planet impossible?

My idea is to have a place that is "inescapable" by any conventional propulsion system, except it has Earth-like conditions: a breathable atmosphere, 1.0g gravity, etc. What would have to be the ...
GideonKain's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
266 views

Could a man-made black hole deorbit the moon?

In the story I'm writing, humanity has cracked FTL travel by compressing a chunk of matter outside the craft into a short lived, gravitationally weak black hole that leads to a higher dimension (known ...
Mattias's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
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How close would merging black holes have to be to feel gravitational waves?

Recently LIGO discovered gravitational waves caused by two black holes that were orbiting each other, and then collapsed into one black hole. A few months later, we find out that this actually happens ...
Cameron Payton's user avatar
4 votes
4 answers
5k views

Safe distance from a black hole?

Okay so we all know that one planet from the movie "Interstellar" that orbited the black hole Gargantua. How do I NOT get that? What's the minimum safe distance for a planet to be from a black hole ("...
Z.Schroeder's user avatar
  • 11.3k
-1 votes
2 answers
209 views

If Earth was sucked in black hole,would it just stay there or it would be crushed by gravity pressure?

If Earth would have been sucked into black hole. Would it be crushed by gravity pressure or not?
Confused Tom's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
338 views

How to adjust our Goldilocks Zone if Nemesis turns out to be real?

I'm drafting a story where a solar system is a binary star system, except that one of its stars turns out to be a black hole with 1.5 solar mass. However, I have realized that adding a black hole ...
user6760's user avatar
  • 46.5k
5 votes
3 answers
499 views

How could you rapidly increase a black hole's mass?

Say you were using a black hole as a propulsion drive á la Crane and Westmoreland http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1803.pdf- so your black hole has a radius of around .9 attometers - super tiny - around 600,...
B. Evett's user avatar
  • 155
1 vote
2 answers
543 views

How big would a wormhole have to be to allow a radio signal to pass through? [closed]

Assuming advanced alien technology to create and control wormholes, how big would a wormhole be that would allow a radio signal to pass through? Is there a way to know the size of the mouth as ...
B. Evett's user avatar
  • 155
6 votes
2 answers
1k views

How massive would a black hole have to be to swallow a person

As I understand it, very small black holes have very small and close event horizons, and wouldn't necessarily pose a gravitational risk (I know they give off huge amounts of energy, but let's leave ...
B. Evett's user avatar
  • 155
21 votes
13 answers
11k views

1 Light Year Diameter Planet

Suppose a species has limitless resources and the ability to construct megastructures of an astronomical scale. Would it be possible, given antigravitational technology (hypothetical), to create a ...
Kcronix's user avatar
  • 612
43 votes
14 answers
6k views

How would one destroy a black hole?

Science-Fiction has tools to destroy anything: atoms, molecules, DNA, cellular organisms, multicellular organisms, buildings, streets, cities, countries, continents, planets, and even stars. Some ...
Nzall's user avatar
  • 8,439
0 votes
3 answers
486 views

What would getting hit by a micro black hole laser look like?

So your star and/or planet gets hit by the CrushSun. The huge laser looks terrifying, but then you realize that the main weapon is the microblack hole it hit you with. What does it look like when a ...
PyRulez's user avatar
  • 12.6k
0 votes
1 answer
509 views

How much energy does this sun crushing ship, the CrushSun, use?

Useless Backstory "Why are you waking me up Sergeant? And why did we enter near-light speed?" "We received a distress call, and there wasn't enough time to notify you, sir." "What kind of distress ...
PyRulez's user avatar
  • 12.6k
17 votes
4 answers
4k views

What would happen if the black hole at the center of a galaxy was removed?

Say you have a galaxy, possibly ours, with a central black hole. In an instant the black hole falls through a plot hole and vanishes. What happens to the rest of the galaxy? Does everything keep on ...
AndyD273's user avatar
  • 34.6k
2 votes
1 answer
355 views

How would something faster than light be affected by a black hole?

What would happen if something (having mass) existed which has a greater speed than that of light? How would it be affected by the black hole when it, say, speeds past a black hole? Would it ...
Fᴀʀʜᴀɴ Aɴᴀᴍ's user avatar
3 votes
3 answers
1k views

What would happen to a planet 10x the size of Jupiter, if there was a golf ball sized black hole in its core?

What would happen to to a planet 10 times the size of Jupiter, if there was a black hole the size of a golf ball in the core of the planet? Would the planet be eaten by the black hole? Or would the ...
Stefan's user avatar
  • 191
4 votes
2 answers
389 views

How would intelligent life evolve on an Earth-like planet with dangerous high tide?

Inspired by the 2014 film Interstellar directed by Christopher Nolan, the crews landed on a planet with water flooded up to knee level. Suddenly a wall of water like mega tsunami appears from a ...
user6760's user avatar
  • 46.5k
5 votes
2 answers
180 views

Protocol between an information sharing black and white hole pair

Premise: Imagine a "sender" construct that has the ability to create it's own micro black hole and send information as light into it. On the receiving end, a "receiver" construct would contain it's ...
chriszumberge's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
1k views

Could a wormhole exist on a planet?

For my story to work, my characters have to stumble across a small wormhole that actually exists on Earth and is responsible for multiple disappearances throughout history. It connects a point on ...
Alyk's user avatar
  • 53
5 votes
3 answers
569 views

How to convert a traversable wormhole into a black hole?

So the premise goes: A previously-traversable wormhole evolves into a black hole because (x) happens. What's (x)? What would it take for this to occur? Either naturally (a cosmic occurrence), by ...
equustel's user avatar
26 votes
9 answers
8k views

Protect a planet against a black hole attack

Suppose in a very very long future, humans have become relative powerful military force in galactic politics due to a very powerful weapon: the ability of creating black holes wherever we want. Now we ...
Freedo's user avatar
  • 785
3 votes
1 answer
369 views

How can an advanced civilization harvest energy from an x-ray binary?

An x-ray binary is a binary star system consisting of a star and a stellar remnant. As matter is ripped from the star and is then accelerated into the neutron star/black hole by its gravity, x-rays ...
user6760's user avatar
  • 46.5k
5 votes
2 answers
535 views

What is the best planetary orbit around a black hole in order to support life?

Note: I am aware of a previous question Physiological effects of living on a world close to a black hole As I understand it, that question refers specifically to a planet that is in a non-ideal ...
chasly - supports Monica's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
558 views

Would the gravitational waves from a binary black hole system make a feasible weapon?

Backstory: Okay, so we have decided to wage war on numahs for the macguffenite. We mostly are doing things like shooting lasers at each other ships, and occasionally shooting high velocity projectiles ...
PyRulez's user avatar
  • 12.6k
-2 votes
2 answers
594 views

How will humanity survive when black holes gain sentience and turn on us? [closed]

Okay, so humanity has been orbiting black holes so that we can time dilate, and explore the galaxy. The black holes enjoy being in the presence of the most complex things in the universe, and we have ...
PyRulez's user avatar
  • 12.6k
6 votes
6 answers
930 views

How to accelerate living things really fast without killing them?

Okay, so our society has starting harnessing significant amounts of energy from its sun, and has started mass producing micro-black holes (although there have been experiments with gathering energy ...
PyRulez's user avatar
  • 12.6k
2 votes
6 answers
628 views

How can Earth prepare for hyper velocity black hole?

Suppose in ten decades time, a hyper velocity black hole estimated to be as massive a 3 Suns are approaching us at 1.5 millions mph (670000 m/s). Our Earth bounds telescope and orbiting satellites ...
user6760's user avatar
  • 46.5k
10 votes
4 answers
2k views

Would the Hawking radiation from a small black hole make a feasible propulsion source?

I was wondering if a small black hole would make a feasible/possible propulsion source, and if so, how. Pros Black holes release Hawking radiation, would should be easy to direct in a certain ...
PyRulez's user avatar
  • 12.6k
3 votes
1 answer
136 views

Short Term Effects of Orbital Decay

The Earth has suddenly been decelerated, "bumped" into an unstable orbit. Guess you missed the jolt. The velocity has been reduced such that the planet's orbit will hopefully restabilize between ...
Josiah's user avatar
  • 2,159
23 votes
3 answers
3k views

How big a black hole is needed for this story?

The story begins in classic disaster film style. A small rogue black hole is approaching our Solar System. It isn’t going to get close enough to destroy everything, but it will agitate our Sun, ...
Henry Taylor's user avatar
7 votes
7 answers
3k views

How to Create and Use a Black Hole Computer Drive?

I have been working on a futuristic story where information can be stored and used with a black hole. This is a highly advanced human society that has accomplished interstellar space travel via both ...
Jax's user avatar
  • 11.9k
5 votes
4 answers
489 views

Racing Around the Edge of a Black Hole

I am trying to understand the physics of an interstellar race. Say two ships are racing past a black hole as if it were a corner on a race track. One of the ships takes a hard line and comes very ...
John Watmuff's user avatar