Name: You could generate power by dangling crap into a black hole
Brand: futurism.com
SKU: futurism-com-28
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

You could generate power by dangling crap into a black hole

preview

Navigate In 1969, the physicist Roger Penrose theorized that spacefaring civilizations could generate power by dangling objects into a black hole. For decades, the idea was impossible to test because we have no way of traveling to a — or even surviving the journey. But now a team from the University of Glasgow say they’ve verified the theory with a few modifications, published Monday in the journal Nature Physics. It won’t help us generate power here on Earth, but it’s a fascinating illustration of a long-thought-impossible theory. An object dipped into the outer reaches of a black hole’s event horizon would essentially charge negative energy, a . By cutting the object loose, some of that energy could be harvested as recoil. In 1971, physicist Yakov Zel’dovich suggested testing the idea by bouncing twisted light waves off of a cylinder rotating 1 billion times per second. That’s too fast to be possible — so instead, the the researchers instead measured the doppler effect of twisted sound waves bouncing off a spinning disk. As they altered the pitch of the sound waves, it also increased the amplitude of the sound, meaning the sound waves were borrowing energy from the disk just like the dangling object would from a black hole’s gravity. It’s not free electricity — the team still needs to power the spinning disk — but it’s long-overdue validation for a controversial theory. READ MORE: [University of Glasgow] More on black holes:

Navigate In 1969, the physicist Roger Penrose theorized that spacefaring civilizations could generate power by dangling objects into a black hole. For decades, the idea was impossible to test because we have no way of traveling to a — or even surviving the journey. But now a team from the University of Glasgow say they’ve verified the theory with a few modifications, published Monday in the journal Nature Physics. It won’t help us generate power here on Earth, but it’s a fascinating illustration of a long-thought-impossible theory. An object dipped into the outer reaches of a black hole’s...

public

danrobitzski

Cutting-edge journalism and analysis on the latest emergent science, technology and medicine news changing the world. These are the stories of tomorrow, today.

futurism.com

Credible

Speculation

Anecdotal Evidence

Generalization

Stacking the Deck

Appeal to Authority

Straw Man

Slippery Slope

Emotional Appeal

Red Herring

False Dilemma

Illogical

Moral Equivalency

Ad Hominem

Correlation w/o Causation

Semantics

Begging the Question

Faulty Analogy

Non Sequitur

Bandwagon

Dogmatism

Failing Occam's Razor

Biased

Pure Opinion

Hit Piece

Racial Bias

National Bias

Religious Bias

Financial Incentive

Political Agenda

Gender Bias

Misused Image/Video

Study Misinterpreted

Mistake

Misused Term

Science Misrepresented

Factual Error

Satire

Surface Level

Lack of Reliable Sources

Sensational

Not Credible

Investigative

Balanced

Well Sourced

Great Context

sports

entertainment

U.S.

international

business

technology

science

culture

politics

media

health

You could generate power by dangling crap into a black hole

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS