Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Can a black hole power a spaceship?

Episode Date: September 24, 2020

Daniel and Jorge tackle the physics, engineering and safety questions of using a black hole to visit nearby stars. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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There aren't any Airbnb reviews yet? You can't trust Yelp to do everything for you. But I guess the problem is how would we even get there? Isn't it really hard to go to another star or galaxy? It is really hard, which means we have to be really creative and sometimes look in unexpected places for sources of inspiration and power. Banana fusion. use the energy trapped in bad puns.

Well, what if I told you you could actually make use of a black hole? But I thought black holes were just like traps that trapped you there forever. I mean, they can actually be useful? You might get nervous when we talk about black holes in a positive light, but they do have possible practical applications. Hi, I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and a creator of PhD comments. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm paid by the Big Black Hole Corporate Consortium to talk positively about black holes wherever I can.

Really? You've switched to Black Hole PR now or astronomical PR? That's right. I'm funded by Big Black Hole. You went from physics research to public relations PR? No, but I like black holes. I'm definitely pro-Black Wholes. hole. I mean, I'm not pro the earth getting sucked into one or you and your loved ones being killed by one, but I'm fascinated by them. And I would love to study one and to create one. And of course, do it all very safely. Would you visit one? I would visit a black hole if it was big enough that you could come close to the event horizon without being torn apart by the title

forces. So yeah. Are you starting a tour company to the center of the galaxy? I am definitely anti-black hole. But in this universe, it's hard to tell sometimes what could be useful or what could be something that will kill you instantly. So welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of IHeart Radio. In which we examine everything in the universe from the tiny to the massive, from the dangerous to the cozy.

And we talk about whether it could help us answer our questions, whether it could take us on a journey to the stars, or whether it just helps us zoom in and understand the universe at the smallest, most microscopic level. Yeah, we like to talk about all the possible ways out there that we could maybe visit or travel to other places in our galaxy or in the universe, because it seems like it's all out there waiting for us to go visit and study. That's right. I feel like we are in the early days of the human age of exploration, where we learn about what

our galaxy looks like and what's out there and who is out there. But so far, it's still sort of shrouded in mystery for us. And if we could only get out there, if we could send people or probes or something, we could learn so much about what's out there in the universe and how things work. Yeah, I feel like we're almost like stuck in a deserted island in the middle of the ocean, you know? Like there's such a huge gap between us and maybe other things. And we don't even know if we can make it out there or what would happen if we went out there that it's kind of preventing us from spreading out into the cosmos. It is. And it's frustrating to know that that knowledge is just sitting out there waiting for us.

alien civilizations or not, crazy planets or not, whatever is out there, it's just waiting for us, literally sitting there waiting for us to come and check it out and learn things about the universe. And whenever there's like a barrier between us and deep, powerful cosmic knowledge about the universe, it just drives me crazy. I just want to pierce through it or around it or whatever preposition you need to use. But I want to get that knowledge. And I want us to understand how the universe works. Does it make you want to be an engineer, Daniel, so you could actually make something useful? It makes me want to be a physicist so I could have a clever idea, which I could then pass

to the engineers who would make something useful. I see. There are limits to your curiosities, what you're saying. There's limits to my practical ability to build something, but no limits to my imagination. All right. Well, it is a very big problem to get to other stars and to other galaxies, and we've talked about in the program before about different ways to power our spaceship out into the cosmos because it's really hard to bring all the fuel with you that you'll need to get to somewhere

far away. Yeah, you need to build a really big ship if you're going to bring a lot of people and you're going to keep them safe from cosmic radiation. And then you need to bring some source of fuel to get you there. So people have been struggling with this question for decades, for maybe even longer than that. And there's some crazy ideas out there we've talked before about instead of just building a ship, move the whole solar system by building a stellar engine, something that would turn our star into an engine. Yeah, and so on the episode today, we'll be talking about another crazy idea

that physicists are toying with thinking about and spitballing about. And this one involves black holes. All the craziest, most fun ideas involve black holes. It's about as crazy as you can get, I guess, in this universe. So today on the program, we'll be asking the question. Could a black hole power a starship? Wow.

That's crazy. What does that even mean? Well, first of all, stem me through it. Like, where did this idea come from? Did you just wake up with it one morning? Or is this something that's actually being discussed at like physics conferences? Oh, man.

I wish I could take credit for this idea. But no, this idea, like many great creative ideas in science, came from science fiction. This was first written about by Arthur C. Clark. And a short story he wrote called Imperial Earth. Wow. So a long time ago. Quite a while ago, yeah. It's a fairly old idea.

And then since Hawking revolutionized our understanding of black holes. And in the last 10 or 15 years, we've made some progress in quantum gravity. People have started sitting down like doing the calculations and figuring out like, could you do this? Is this possible? Is there a fundamental physics reason that says no? Or can we just pass it off to the engineers to figure it out? Didn't Arthur C. Clarke sort of foresee another huge thing? Wasn't it the internet or something like that?

I'm sure that he and other science fiction writers foresaw a lot of what's real. The cool thing is that they also foresaw a lot of stuff that didn't happen, right? I see. You don't really pay attention to the denominator. Just like spew a bunch of crazy predictions. And if you hit a few, then, you know, you become famous for foreseeing the future. You're visionary. Right.

Even if your hit rate is low. That's right. I got a room full of monkeys predicting the future. One of them is a genius. And does I make you the genius For having the monkeys or But anyways, it's a crazy idea So the idea is to use a black hole

To power your starship And so we'll get into the diesel Because I have a lot of questions About this crazy idea But first we were wondering How many people out there Thought this was a good idea Or I had heard of this idea

So Daniel went out there And asked to the internet If they knew the answer to this question That's right And we're always looking for volunteers people who are interested in speculating baselessly on questions we ask them for future episodes. So if you'd like to participate, please write to us to questions at danielanhorpe.com. So think about it for a second.

If someone asked you, if you thought you could use a black hole to power a starship, what would you answer? Here's what people had to say. If you wanted to use an actual like black hole as an engine to propel yourself around, I don't think that would work because surely for a normal engine you need something that applies a force in the opposite direction that you're moving

so that the result in force pushes you to where you want to go but surely a black hole would just suck everything in well that would be cool yes I well probably theoretically can be done I don't know in how much time can this be put in practice

CERN, for sure, it's working on it. Of course, because they use one in Star Trek the next generation. I think you could use it in part for a spaceship that's designed for faster than light travel. It's the idea of compressing the space in front of you and expanding it behind you. As a primary engine, I don't think so. You can definitely use a stellar stationary black hole to propel your ship in an arbitrary direction. You just calibrate a trajectory so that you avoid falling in and avoid being destroyed by tidal forces and have the black hole slingshot you to an arbitrary direction. I think that you cannot use a black hole as a spaceship engine because everything near gets sucked in so it can suck in bits of your spaceship little by little depending on its size.

I'm not sure that an spacecraft can use a blackwall as an engine. I'm trying to think how would it use the energy from the black wool. All right, well, we got about as many different answers as people answering the question. Yeah, well, it seems like people think it's cool. It's a cool idea, but there was some skepticism. Like, how would that even work? And there are lots of different ideas here about how it could work. Like, could you use it to make a warp drive by compressing space in front of you?

very cool idea or just like the gravitational assist right uses it as a slingshot or people thinking that CERN is currently working on a black hole drive.

Are you? I can neither confirm nor deny that. Do you have a room full of monkeys working on it there at CERN? One of my monkeys is working on it. I bet you do. Look monkeys,

just don't press this button. I'll be back in an hour. I have to do a podcast. Well, these are pretty good monkeys if they can understand instructions like that, Danny. They come from the best universities. So it's kind of a crazy idea and people seem to think it was maybe possible.

And you're right. There are many different ways that you could attack this. Like you could use the black hole itself like as a gateway. Isn't that a possibility? Oh, I suppose if a black hole is just like a doorway to a wormhole connected to a white hole somewhere else in space, then yeah, I suppose you could use that as a way to get through the universe. I love that this question has inspired so much creative thinking, but nobody who answered these questions hit on what is actually the idea that's being considered in the community for how a black hole could power a starship.

Nobody had read Arthur C. Clark, I guess, or all of his collected works. No, none of those folks are up on the latest there. All right, well, let's jump right into it, Daniel. How would you even use a black hole to power your starship? And if it's powered by a black hole, do you have to call it a black hole ship? I'll leave it to you to name the eventual ship once we build it. But the idea is that a black hole actually satisfies a lot of the requirements you need for fueling a starship. It's very, very dense, and so it's a great way to store energy.

And it's very efficient because it turns that energy into radiation. Remember, many people think about black holes as a fold in space, a place where nothing can escape, not even light. But black holes are not actually totally black. They radiate a very small amount of radiation and they're turning essentially their own mass into radiation and the basic idea of the black hole starship is to take advantage of that the black hole turning its mass into radiation and using that radiation to provide thrust for a starship.

Oh, I see. All right, so a pro idea for using black holes as fuel is that one, first of all, you said it's very dense. I guess it is very dense in that you can cram a lot into but not require like a big chamber to hold it. Yeah. Is that what you mean? Precisely.

I mean, it doesn't get more dense than a black hole. Anything else you get to that same density is just going to turn into a black hole. So black hole is by definition the most dense storage of energy. So I guess like if you had to pack a star, that would be pretty hard because you need a big like container. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

And that's the other advantage about black holes is that they contain themselves. One of the common alternatives for fueling a starship is like antimatter. What if you stored antimatter in your starship and used matter-antimatter reactions to provide the energy? Right. That seems like a better idea. Yeah, well, the problem is antimatter is really hard to store. It's very reactive. It could blow up your ship. Black holes store themselves.

They contain themselves. They are their own bottle. And so they really have an advantage there over antimatter. Oh, I see what you're saying. It doesn't have anything like dangerous that could get out. I mean, as long as you don't slip and fall into the black hole, you're pretty safe, right? That seems kind of dangerous. We'll just put up a sign.

You know, I'm sure we'll put up a sign. People will sign a waiver. They'll be fine. One of those yellow cones or prop up things, which is like a stick figure falling into a black hole. That would be the warning. Watch out. We'll let you draw the sign. Yeah, exactly.

Wear a helmet. And the basic problem that you're trying to solve by using a black hole, is efficient conversion of fuel into thrust because a lot of the other more common methods of accelerating a starship are just very inefficient like fusion or fission. They're wonderful, but they don't capture most of the mass in your fuel and turn it into energy. There's a very low efficiency there. And so you end up bringing a huge amount of fuel and then more fuel to carry that fuel and more fuel to carry that fuel. So you want a source of energy that's very, very efficient in converting its mass into your thrust.

And that's where black holes really can't be beat. Like literally, you can't beat them. There's nothing you can do. If you hit them with a stick, it just eats up the stick. That's right. And there's another really fascinating feature about black holes that makes them well suited to being the source of energy for a starship. There's a lot of details to get right to get your black hole to power your starship.

Well, let's get into that. And also a lot of these details about how you would make a black hole power your starship. But first, let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush. Parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal.

Apparently, the explosion. Actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is back.

In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly,

and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem,

but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know, each other, but I just want her gone. Now hold up, isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age. It's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK

Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers. The pilot is having an emergency and we need someone, anyone to land this plane. Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this, do this, pull that, turn this. It's just, I can do it my eyes close. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And on our new show, No. such thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert

on overconfidence. Those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the run right. I'm looking at this thing. Listen to No Such Thing on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're talking about the idea of using a black hole to power your starship to get to another galaxy or another star or maybe to another galaxy cluster even. And so, Daniel, the idea is that I would somehow bottle a black hole and then bring it with me. You're saying the first advantage is that it's really compact, meaning like I could keep it in my pocket even.

Yeah, the kind of black hole. we're talking about that would power a reasonable flight would have a radius less than 10 to the minus 18 meters. It would be really, really small. Oh, wow. It would be like a microscopic. Yeah, it would be microscopic. And you wouldn't even need to bottle it. Remember, black holes are their own bottles. So you don't really need to put it in anything. You could just have the raw black hole there. Well, I guess that's my first question about this idea is like, how would you even carry it around? Like, does it sit on something? Does it just let it float next to? you? How do you even like bring it with you? Well, you don't bring it with you. It brings you with

it, right? That's the idea. It's like you're hitching a ride. You're hitching a ride on a black hole, exactly. And so how do you turn a black hole into an engine? Well, remember that black holes radiate, right? They shoot off this hawking radiation. And this is theoretical still. Nobody's ever actually seen hawking radiation. But they shoot off hawking radiation. And the fascinating things that this happens more for small black holes, like really big black holes from stars or super massive black holes hardly radiate at all. But the theory is that as black holes get smaller, they radiate even more. Like how much more? Like it's shining? Like it's like small black hole would actually be bright? Yes, it would be bright. It would be dangerous. You would have to wear

protection. The kind of black hole we're talking about when it's like, you know, about a billion kilograms. This is like two times the mass of the Empire State building. This thing would radiate 160 petawatts of energy. That's 2,000 times the worldwide energy consumption every year. Okay, so let's walk through this scenario. So I take two Empire State buildings and I somehow compress them into a black hole, which would be about 10 to the minus 18 meters. I like how you're making this like an internet recipe. sugar cookies or black hole drives. I'm an engineer.

I got to know the instructions here. So I take the two Empire States building. I compress them into 10 to the minus meters and now have a black hole. But it's really tiny. It's like basically a pinpoint. It's basically a pinpoint. And we can talk later about more practical ways to actually make these black holes and involves enormous space lasers.

But that's basically the rest of we get that much amount of energy into that small or radius and you have a black hole. and black holes that are that small, that's very small for a black hole. You know, black holes out in the universe are measured in units of the mass of the sun. This is a tiny, tiny little black hole. And so it radiates a lot,

a lot more than any black hole that's out there sort of scattered around the universe. A synthetic black hole on a human scale would radiate a lot more than natural black holes. Wait, oh, I see. So a small black hole is actually not black. It's really shiny. Yeah.

The smaller the black hole, hole, the more it radiates. Because the amount things radiate depend on their temperature. And this is something that Stephen Hawking discovered that black holes have a temperature. And everything in the universe that has a temperature gives off radiation. It's called black body radiation. Everything glows, even black holes because they have a temperature. And the temperature of the black hole is connected to its mass.

And as its mass gets smaller, its temperature goes up. And there's some complicated arguments there about entropy and quantum mechanics that we shouldn't get into, but smaller black holes have higher temperatures and so they radiate more. Wow. And so it's a sort of a runaway process. Like it radiates more per like surface area or like total. Like it's hard to imagine that a, you know, like the super massive black hole in the middle of the galaxy would be radiating less than a little tiny Empire State building black hole. It's definitely more per mass, like per unit mass of the black hole. But I think it's also in absolute levels more. I mean, these little black holes, they radiate more, and then they lose mass because they have radiated that mass away, and then they radiate even more. So it becomes a runaway effect.

And the last few moments of the life of one of these black holes, they're extraordinarily bright. Wow. All right. So it has something to do with, I don't know, some sort of weird relationship inside of the black hole that the less mass you have, the more it radiates? Yes, precisely. And that's why this works, because you don't have to build a black hole the size of the sun. You can build one that's pretty small and it will be pretty bright. So it's a great way to store that energy and then have that energy be released over time.

All right. So I just compressed two Empire State buildings. I created a black hole and I guess I did it in space or did I do it here on Earth? Better do that in space, please, sir. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, okay. Don't do this in your backyard. So now I have this in space and what does it do?

Does it get attracted to the Earth? Wouldn't it also kind of like act as if I had two Empire? state buildings out in orbit? Yeah, it would. And so you could have it in orbit around the Earth, right? You can have anything in orbit around the Earth, a black hole, anything else. It has a strong gravity to it, but it's not like actively sucking in the Earth. So it can be in a stable orbit around the Earth.

And then you build your spaceship around the black hole. But I think I have to keep feeding it, right? Because it's radiating and so it's shrinking at the same time. You don't have to keep feeding it, though that's an option. You can just sort of build your spaceship around it and then use it up and by the time you get to your destination, it will have evaporated into nothing. Oh, I see. So it takes years and years for it to evaporate.

That's right. A two empire state building black hole will evaporate in about three or four years. Oh, all right. I guess my question is, like, how do you hold it? Or, like, how do you move it or how do you nudge it? Because wouldn't anything that it touches get sucked into the black hole? Well, remember that black holes have strong gravity, but they're not like actively sucking stuff, right? you can be in a stable configuration near a black hole, as long as the tidal forces are not

too great. So the way you take a black hole, which is just shooting energy out in every direction, and turn that into a spaceship is actually the same way that we talked about for turning a star into a spaceship, is that you capture half of the radiation, like all the radiation on one side, you capture it in some sort of parabolic mirror and focus at the other direction. so that effectively it's only radiating in one direction. And if it's only radiating in one direction, that's basically thrust. It's like it's shooting particles out one side, and that's how an engine works. It pushes something away, gives off mass and energy in one direction.

And so by conservation momentum, it will go the other direction. So that's the second critical piece. You need the black hole shooting off energy. Then you need this reflector, which turns the black hole into an engine. Like you put a mirror to one side of it, and then some of it gets reflected. it into the black hole? You put a mirror to one side of the black hole near the black hole, not in it, right? You don't want your engine to get into the black hole.

If you put a parabolic reflector around the black hole, then all of its radiation will get reflected to be in parallel lines and all shooting out in one direction. Right, but to the black hole, it's just radiating out in all directions. So what would cause it to move? Well, it's reading out in all directions, but now you have this reflector and the reflector is gravitationally bound to the black hole, right? It's being held in place by the black hole's gravity. So you can think of them like as a system.

The black hole plus this reflector are now like one gravitational system. And the two together are only shooting out radiation in one direction. So they have to move in the other direction. Oh, I see. So you kind of have to put the black hole behind you almost, right? Yes. The black hole is in the back and the reflector is in the front. And then you end up moving in the direction of the reflector.

Like it's pushing you, the black hole is pushing you away, but you're also pulling the black hole with your own gravity. Yes, that's a good way to think about it. Exactly. So you're right, the black hole, all it knows is that it's just shooting off radiation in every direction. But because you've built it into this system with a reflector, the combined system has to move, you know, in whatever direction you were pointing in order to balance the momentum that's coming out the back of the ship. Right. But isn't that a really tricky balance? Like, how do you know the black hole is going to follow you?

Do you have to be as big as to Empire State buildings to? You have to build a pretty big ship, but you want to build a pretty big ship anyway, because if you're going for three and a half or four years, you need a lot of room for canned soup and people, and you have to build a lot of shielding to protect yourself from radiation. So you want to build a really big ship, but yes, it is not an easy engineering problem, so I do not envy the engineers who have to work on that.

But isn't it a little bit dangerous? Like how far away would you have to build this reflector? And like if something knocks the ship, wouldn't it potentially knock it into the black hole and then it would destroy your ship? Yeah, it's not necessarily a stable configuration. You're right. And if something gets too close to the black hole, then the whole thing could just get sucked in. Right. So, yeah, there are definitely problems to solve.

But, you know, my department is, is this theoretically possible? And then, you know, I put my stamp on it and then we send it off to, you know, safety and configuration and engineering to make it actually work. So there's definitely some challenges there. You just said a worrisome word, which is unstable. Like, is this an unstable configuration? What did you mean my dad? Like, I can put the black hole behind me, but it's very precarious?

Yeah, some things in equilibrium are stable so that if you perturb them, they'll naturally go back to the original configuration, right? But some things are unstable. And in this case, if the mirror gets too close to the black hole, then it will eventually fall into the event horizon in the black hole. or it'd be very difficult to take too much energy to, like, move it away. So it's pretty tricky. It's like if you're in orbit around the Earth and something knocks you out of

orbit, then you're not going to fall back into orbit. You're going to fall into Earth, right? And the same problem happens here. So basically you're saying, on this trip, nobody can move on the ship. It's like, all right, three and a half years, nobody move, or else we're going to fall into this black hole that we made and aren't bringing with us. Yeah, you know, maybe don't have a salsa party right next to the black hole. Yeah, no aerobics classes on this cruise.

No jumping up and down. It might be a boring trip, but hey, it means it's a shorter trip because a black hole could get you up to a significant fraction of the speed of light. Really? If you build this ship and you can use the black hole that we talked about like two masses of the Empire State Building, it can give off enough radiation to accelerate a large ship to 10% of the, the speed of light in just 20 days. Wow. And is that a lot? 10%? What is that 30,000 meters per second? It's a lot of meters per second. And at that speed, you could get to the nearby star in like 40 years instead of 500 years or 5,000 years. And you also could do it without depleting the energy

resources of the entire planet. All right. Well, I still think it's a crazy idea, Daniel. Well, let's get into whether it could actually work and if we could actually build one. But first, let's take another quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed.

There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop.

Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with. with his young professor a lot.

He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now hold up, isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age.

And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers. The pilot is having an emergency and we need someone, anyone, to land this plane. Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this, until this. Pull that, turn this. It's just...

I can do it my eyes close. I'm Mani. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And on our new show, No Such Thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence. Those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then, as we try the whole thing out for real.

Wait, what? Oh, that's the run right. I'm looking at this thing. See? Listen to No Such thing. IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Daniel, you found something useful to do with black holes, and that is to power your starship to a nearby star or galaxy.

And theoretically, it sounds like it could work, but it feels kind of practically dangerous. Like, you know, you can put it in the bag and it's pushing you, but if something happens, it could also destroy. That's a pretty good summary. And, you know, I'm not asking you to invest or to buy a ticket on the Black Hole Starship. I'm just asking you to examine with me whether or not this is theoretically possible

because things that seem to... I thought you were pro-Black Hole. I'm pro-Black Hole, which is why we're talking about this. But I totally recognize that a lot of problems to solve. But, you know, today's impossible problem is tomorrow's app written by a middle schooler. So let's leave these open problems out there and maybe one of our listeners will be inspired

and think of a solution. Right, right. Okay, so you're saying it can maybe accelerate a large ship up to 10% of the speed of light in 20 days, which means we would get to the nearest star, you said, in 40 years? Yeah, the nearest stars are like four light years away. And so if you go at 10% of the speed of light,

you could get there in 40 years, which means you could step on this ship and you could actually step off of it. You could visit those stars and not just your kids or your grandkids, your great-great-grandkids who are mad at you for having. relegated them to being born in space, but you could actually get there yourself.

But you said the black hole itself would only last three and a half years. Yes, the black hole itself would last three and a half years, but it only needs to last long enough to accelerate you and then you're up to the right speed. You know, there are other questions about like deceleration. And how do you stop? Yes. Well, I guess maybe this is one, one thing I'm curious about is can you feed the black hole? Like, can you, supply with more energy as you're going. No, you certainly can. Two solutions there.

One is start with a bigger black hole. And then halfway through the trip, flip the reflector around if you think that's a safe procedure, so that now the black hole is decelerating you. So that by the time you get to your destination, you're at a reasonable speed. You don't fly through the system at a zillion miles an hour. And the other thing you can do is, as you say,

you can feed the black hole. You can gather interstellar gas and micrometeorites and all that stuff and just sort of like direct it into the black hole because the cool thing is everything is fuel for a black hole.

Right. Even bad punts. Even bananas. Even bananas. Now that would just slip on by. But I mean, is that, does the math work out? Like, can I bring another Empire State building with me or does that take away them

from the acceleration? The way that you build the synthetic black hole that you need to power this drive is not by bringing all that mass because we don't know how to take that mass and compact it. into a black hole-sized object. That's not something we know how to do.

Instead, the best idea is for how to build a synthetic black hole of the right size involved just essentially dumping energy into a point in space using massive lasers. All right. Now we're getting more exciting here. So step us through. How would we actually make a black hole? Like, can we make a black hole? I guess you make black holes at the Large Hadron Collider, but you don't keep them around.

Well, we don't know if we've made black holes at the Large Hadron Collider. We're trying to, we're hoping to see one. We've never spotted one before. But the idea is that to make a black hole, you don't just need a huge amount of mass. What you really need is high energy density. Any kind of energy will curve space. Einstein's general relativity told us that matter curve space, but also anything with energy in it. And so what you need to do is just pour a whole huge pile of energy into a small part of space.

And you can do that by focusing a bunch of lasers on. on the same place. Oh, I see. You can make a black hole with just pure energy. Just pure energy, yeah. And so you build a huge laser, a lot of huge laser,

and you focus them on the same place. And in principle, you pour enough energy into that dot. It will turn into a black hole. It will capture all that energy, store it gravitationally, and then gradually release it, which is what you need.

Wait, what do you mean? So you can make a black hole just by pointing lasers together? Yes. Nobody's ever done it. We haven't ever seen with this. But the math tells us, the theory tells us, general relativity says that you get enough energy density in one spot, it will turn into a black hole. And that includes laser light.

And lasers are actually great because photons have no problem being close to each other. Like the reason you can't take the Empire State Building and turn into a black hole is that that matter resists being squeezed down. There are chemical bonds there. But photons, they are the kind of particle we call bosons that are very happy to be. right on top of each other and all doing the same thing. And there's no photon photon repulsion. And so you can pile as many photons as you want, they will not resist. But then wouldn't it take a lot of energy to power your lasers?

Like could you, wouldn't that take up maybe all the energy on Earth just to make a mini black hole? It would take a lot of energy to make this black hole. But it's much more energy efficient than, for example, antimatter creation. Anti-matter is something we can make. And it's a good way to convert mass into energy. but making antimatter is very, very inefficient, whereas making a black hole is much more efficient because all the energy goes into the black hole.

So yes, it's a huge energy consumption. Anytime you want to accelerate something up to the speed of light that's very massive, it's going to take a lot of energy, but it's much more efficient to turn lasers into a black hole than to build antimatter, which is very difficult to do. And so the idea is that then you just point lasers like at a point or at each other or just the laser itself would create the black hole. You need a bunch of lasers altogether focused on a point. And people have done some

calculations to think like, well, how much would you need? How much energy would you need? And it's about like 0.1 second of all the energy coming out of the sun. Like the sun, you know, radiates a lot of energy. And you know, if you get like a tenth of a second of all the solar energy, that's about as much as you need to build this synthetic black hole we were talking about. And you can't capture the whole sun. But, you know, people did other calculations. If you build like a lot of solar panels, you know, something like a few hundred kilometer size solar panels in circular orbit around the sun, then it takes about a year to get enough energy to power these lasers to build this synthetic black hole.

Oh, I see. So you would have to store all that energy for a year and then release it at once. Yes, exactly. So big batteries from Tesla. Elon, get on that. No, don't get on that. Do it in space. Wait, wait until you have a space station.

Yeah. And there's lots of other practical problems with building a black hole starship that we sort of just, you know, waved our hands over. All right. Yes. What are those problems? Well, number one is that black holes don't just shoot off photons that can be easily reflected by like a nice mirror. We talked about how you have to redirect the radiation of half of the black hole the other direction. If you want to move anywhere, that works great if the black hole is giving off.

of photons because we know how to bounce those off a mirror. But black holes are very democratic. The reason hawking radiation exists is that you have random particles coming out of the vacuum. So those could be photons. They could be top quarks. They could be Higgs bosons. They could be electrons. Oh, they're spewing out all kinds of stuff. All kinds of stuff. Yeah. And some of those things are hard or impossible to reflect. Oh, so you didn't even know if you could reflect all of that energy. You're pretty sure you can't reflect all of it. And so there's some ideas that like you could reflect part of it and the rest of it you could try to absorb and then capture in terms of heat and use that somehow either funnel it back into the black hole or

use it to power, you know, an ion beam or something like that. But it gets pretty tricky because this is very intense radiation and anything you build nearby that can't reflect the radiation is going to absorb it and get really hot and probably melt. Can it spew out antimatter? It will. It will absolutely spew out equal amounts of matter and and anti-matter. Wow. So it might even destroy your ship just from what it's radiating. Yeah, that is a concern, actually.

A small concern is that it's spewing out antimatter, which would annihilate your spaceship? Yeah, I don't think this idea is, you know, consumer ready yet, but the bones of it are there, you know? Oh, man. Yeah. And so black holes spew out antimatter, huh? That's right, because the hawking radiation is random. It creates pairs of particles and antiparticles. And sometimes the particles fall into the black hole and sometimes the anti-particles do.

That's one of the really cool things about black holes is that they radiate all the particles. And so it's actually kind of a cool way to ask like, well, what particles are there? Well, just make a black hole and have it radiate everything that there is. It's sort of like the world's best particle collider. Wow. But I guess if it's spewing out antimatter, then, I mean, if some of that touches you, then you're dead. Yes. If some of that touches you, then, you know, I recommend you go immediately to the,

the meddeck or whatever it is on this ship. Wouldn't it explode on you or something? Well, if an individual particle of antimatter hits you, it's not a big deal. You know, like bananas emit antimatter. They're emitting positrons all the time. Oh, I see. But they don't hurt you, just a very small amount of energy. But they could cause cancer.

But we're talking about a black hole emitting a lot of radiation, a significant fraction of that would be radiation that you can't easily absorb and reflect like photons. And some of it would be antimatter. So, yeah, there are big technical issues there remaining and how to handle all this radiation. It's crazy. A black hole is too bright maybe to be a starship drive. Wow. Could you just use a smaller one?

Like, with a smaller one help? A smaller one would help, perhaps, but then it might not have enough power. So this sort of a sweet spot there, you need to be big enough to provide power to drive your ship and to last long enough. Because the smaller black hole is, the shorter its lifespan. Interesting. So there is actually like a literature on this idea. Like there are papers out there. Yeah, I've read some papers in the last few days about making black hole starships and whether it's reasonable.

Wow. And in addition to all the practical questions that you asked and all the reasonable concerns you have about whether this thing would survive, there are also fundamental physics questions about whether this would work. Because, you know, we're talking about hawking radiation that nobody's frankly ever seen in real life. And we're relying on a sort of semi-classical understanding of black holes because we don't have a good theory for what's going on inside black holes of quantum gravity. We can't really explain what's going on inside black holes and we can't really explain whether they're radiating and we've never validated Hawking's predictions about how much they're radiating. So a lot of

whether or not this is possible depends on a quantum understanding of gravity that we just don't have yet. Wow. All right. Well, it sounds like a good idea to use something we don't understand and may potentially kill us to power a starship. We'll just ask for volunteers. and we'll have a really long waiver. I'm sure a lot of people on the internet would sign up. I would think about it for a moment. I'd be like, wow, I get to see an alien world and I get to ride in a spaceship with a black hole.

That sounds pretty cool. You would sign up. You who would never want to leave your house. Well, I said I would think about it and I would entertain it for a moment. I probably wouldn't actually sign up, but, you know, I might post it on Twitter and encourage other people.

You might think about it for 0.1 seconds. Exactly. or energy. Exactly. All right. Well, it sounds like a pretty cool idea. And it's kind of interesting, I guess, to think about, you know, using something like a black hole, which I think in popular culture just has, you know, death and destruction associated with it to use it for actually something useful. Yeah.

And it shows you how we should be creative. We should think, oh, this thing, which seems crazy and dangerous, maybe we can put it to work. Although maybe not too creative. Well, let's just double check these calculations before we start selling. tickets. Maybe do it a little bit ways out into the solar system when you try it out. Yeah, and we'll try it with hamsters first. Or those monkeys you have in your lab. No comment. Well, we hope you enjoyed that and that it made you think a little bit about black holes and how maybe they could somehow get us out to see other black holes. And even if this isn't the idea which cracks

open this decades-long problem of how to get us to alien SARS, I have confidence the humans will one day figured this out. We'll come up with a crazy idea that even Jorge thinks sounds safe and it'll get us to those star systems. And we will learn the answers to these crazy questions we've been asking, basically since we've been asking questions. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. conversations with experts from across the healthcare community, WebMD reveals how today's health news will impact your life tomorrow. It's not that people don't know that exercise is healthy, it's just that people don't know why it's healthy, and we're struggling to try to help people

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