Blog Post 1: We have a Problem

Hello fellow physics enthusiasts,

I am Dr. Chinmay Patel and together with Dr. Catherine Pan and Dr. Mohammed Mehkari, I will be conducting research into black holes, their properties and their potential.

As the world’s hunger for energy increases and interstellar prospects of humanity get bleaker, scientists are looking for innovative fuel sources to answer this need. A novel idea is to harness the energy of black holes. This will prove extremely challenging but if it can be done, Earth and its colonies will have an infinite source of energy.

One of the primary goals of this research project is to identify the proper size of black hole to harvest. The other is to conduct theoretical research into a suitable energy collection model. However, we cannot compare and contrast methods of energy collection from black holes before fully understanding how black holes and hawking radiation work.

First and foremost, let us first discuss how a black hole is created in nature. In nature, a black hole is created by a collapsing star. A star, like our sun, is carefully balanced between the outward expulsion of energy through nuclear fusion, and the inward gravitational pull of the star’s own mass. Normally, this process is successful in helping the star maintain a careful balance. However, when the star runs out hydrogen (its fuel) to fuse. The outward expulsion is stopped and the star collapses onto itself to create – the singularity.

The singularity is an infinitely small point in space that contains a specific amount of mass. This is very important! Now, because the black hole only contains a certain amount of mass, we can find the exact distance from the singularity that light (the fastest thing in the universe) can stop escaping from the black hole. This distance is called the Schwarzschild radius. It creates the event horizon.

Many people know that black holes suck in anything in the universe, even light (within a certain radius of course)! However, this would violate one of the most important laws of nature: Energy cannot be created or destroyed! Due the fact that black holes were thought to only suck in suck in energy, it was thought for a long time that black holes were fake, or that they must be, because energy cannot be created or destroyed! However, Stephen Hawking showed the world that black holes are not an energy sink, but in fact the energy they create could even be harnessed for our own purposes.

Hawking theorized that due to the vast amounts of energy fluctuations in the black holes

event horizon; virtual particles would be generated. Virtual particles only exist for a limited time. They are predicted by the equations governing quantum physics. In specific, black holes cause the generations of particle-antiparticle pairs of virtual particles near the event horizon. Something spectacular then happens, the anti-particle falls into the black hole and the positive energy particle escapes, before the two have an opportunity to annihilate each other like in common scenarios. The positive energy participle that is released is the one we call Hawking Radiation.

All of these pieces of information that I have shared today will help us understand how exactly to approach the problem of energy collecting from black holes. Important question that I will be answering in my next blog post will be: What are the characteristics of black holes? How is immense mass not a quality required by a black hole?

Dr. Chinmay Patel (PhD in Astrophysics)

Professor at Stanford University

Links:

Ball, Philip (Dec 3, 2013). Could we harness energy from black holes? Retrieved From: <http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131203-could-black-holes-provide-energy>

Anderson, Ryan (November 19, 2009). Black Hole Drive could power future Starships. Retrieved From: <http://www.universetoday.com/45571/black-hole-drive-could-power-future-starships/>

Jones, Zimmerman, Andrew (2010). What is Hawking Radiation? Retrieved From: < http://physics.about.com/od/astronomy/f/hawkrad.htm>

123HelpMe.com. "Black Holes: The Power Source for Future Space Travel?" Retrieved From: <http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=43865>

Whiting, Jim. (2011). Mysteries of the universe: Black Holes. New York, USA. Publisher: Creative Education. Book.

DeGrasse, Tyson. (2007). Galactic Engines. Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries. (pg. 268-274). New York, USA. Publisher: Norton. Book.

Begelman, Mitchell. (2010). Gravity Triumphant. Gravity’s Fatal Attraction: Black Holes in the Universe. (pg. 1-22). New York, USA. Publisher: Cambridge University Press. Book.

#Chinmay