Theradactan Method of Singularity Creation

[Acewing13]

Submission Type: Infrastructure
Submission URL: https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=wip:black_hole_creation

Faction:
FM Approved Yet? Yes
Faction requires art? No

For Reviewers:
Contains Unapproved Sub-Articles? Yes, the Atargatis star system.
Contains New art? No
Previously Submitted? No

Notes: Mostly just formalizing the stuff in the background of the Black Hole Power Plant. Probably need to go back through the articles and pick singularity vs black hole as well.

 

[Wes]

@Zack You seem to know a lot about physics, what's your opinion on this?

 

[Zack]

This strikes me as needlessly sci-fi. There are certain things we want to hand-wave away and power generation is certainly one of those things but I still like Hyperspace Taps, Aether, and Fusion more than this. With those three the energy comes out from a more reasonable place: With Hyperspace taps I'm burning higher-dimensional space and turning it into regular space. With Aether I'm siphoning off energy from another universe. With Fusion I'm burning smaller elements by turning them into larger elements. Each of these try and invoke as little extra-stuff as possible in order to work.


The first problem is an in character one. Why would you use photons to make a singularity when you can just crush regular stuff? The setting already has gravity-control technology so I don't see a need to have this singularity made in this particular way. While I don't normally call for there to be less-writing here, these types of things are certainly what qualifies for less is more.


The next is how we get to the black hole. Anti-matter is already a very efficient power storage medium. The first part of this article already gives you a great basis for where your civilization gets its energy: Collect fusion from stars -> Convert to Anti-Matter -> Done. You're going to need a massive amount of anti-matter to create a black hole that lasts for any amount of time. You're also going to lose a lot of energy in the process. This is a lot like charging up your flash lights so you can use a solar-powered car at night, you'd be better off just using the batteries directly.


Then we're growing the black hole by feeding it matter. So in the above example you've wasted a lot of energy to make this black hole, and you aren't going to get any more energy out of it unless you feed it something. In this case you're cashing in gravitational potential energy by dropping stuff into a black hole. You don't have to worry about the black hole evaporating, again the setting has gravity control technology so I can buy that you've got a way to keep that from happening. You can also get energy off the mass you feed into the black hole. However this means your black hole is going to get very heavy, and the more you feed into it the harder it is going to be to move that black hole. This may be more reasonable for use on a starbase or someplace that doesn't (or can't) move but a starship is going to find this to be an unreasonable amount of mass to carry around with it. While I'm sure some of our ships could tow asteroids or planets around with them I don't think they would be able to do that without serious penalties to speed and acceleration.


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While I could see this as being a sort of long-term mining operation to convert star-systems into black holes that'll power a space station for generations to come, I don't see it as being anything a starship could take with it.

 

[ArsenicJohn]

It's my understanding that the Black Hole Power Plant was approved already. This just describes how they make the black holes, so it's just fluff, right?

 

[Acewing13]

First off, I found where I said I would make this wiki page:

Question, where are these black holes that they are harvesting? Black holes are a very rare event, and last time I checked there wasn't a field of them waiting for harvesting. Perhaps it would be better that they use artificially created black holes and harvest the energy from them.

Yes, they're artificial and the main use for the Graveyards is to help with the energy generation to make the black holes. I'll have to write a wiki page about the process one of these days...

So, as I said in the notes, this is just formalizing the process, or as ArsenicJohn said, making the fluff so I had the process detailed. Also, forgot to mention that the singularities were used in the Singularity Drive as well. The masses of the black holes involved in both the Singularity Drive and the Black Hole Powerplant are listed in tables at the bottom of both wiki pages, after a list of the usual sizes for the ships I'm either currently making or planning to make.

Second, yes, it is true that at the end of the day, I could have gone for an antimatter powered engine or something similar and 'normal'. And the main reason I didn't was because I wanted to use a cool type of engine that I had just learned about. The justification for doing so is something I explained a year ago:

My idea behind it was for it to be the equivalent of a nuclear submarine, being able to patrol independently for months (or years, since space opera) without the need for a dedicated fuel tender following the fleet around. Besides that, its heavy (though I can't find easy comparisons for most engines), unstealthy, and slowly gets closer to overwhelming the internal shields of the drive and tearing the ship apart from the inside every day. I have to admit, that's my favorite part.

Essentially, its putting the inefficiencies that you pointed out back at home instead of on the ship, making it possible to go around for an extended amount of time without having to worry about getting a supply of antimatter. As the author of these wiki pages and the creator of the NPC faction that will use them, I thought that any inefficiencies in the process were worth it ICly to get the OOC rule of cool going.

 

[Zack]

You still have to carry around the anti-matter, you've just decided to put it in a black hole which makes it excessively difficult to use.

I would also say that those drives wouldn't be able to go that fast, but SARP's speeds are handwaved a bit so I think that is fine to gloss over. You also wouldn't be able to turn the ship, since to get a gamma ray blast out of a black hole you not only need a massive black hole, you also need to spin it which gives it a ton of inertia. Trying to turn the ship would just result in rotating the ship around the black hole which just continues to spew stuff in one direction. Physics-wise, its like trying to power your sail boat with a battery operated fan.

Having hard numbers for this also doesn't help. Since that puts you in a position where we can point, do the math, and then clearly say that things don't work out.

ICly, we already have gravity manipulation technology. I think it would be far easier to say that you're using that to create an artifical singularity, then let that eat matter and produce radiation for power. It'd basically be using the same whatevers we use for FTL, and would solve a few of your physics problems like mass of the black hole ie: since you're just using gravity-beams or whatever to make an area of high gravity it wouldn't be so massive.

 

[Ira]

Pretty much what Zack said. You can do this, just simplify it.

 

[Doshii Jun]

Is it helpful, or even necessary, to modify the always approved submission to make this one work post-edit?

 

[Zack]

I think it is a great idea to be going back and improving on previous articles. I already do it all the time and I would recommend everyone else occupationally look back over their old articles and add to them / improve them. This is even more the case for core articles like power sources or fundamental things like shields and drives where new players will be going back to look at these articles before making their own submissions.


Also, I'm not staff and this is just my view on things from a physics perspective. This isn't something I would use, and it falls outside of my comfort zone in terms of stuff I'd approve if I were a mod, but it isn't so outrageously wrong as to be unusable. We do fudge some things on SARP and I could see this fitting within that fudge.


I also think less is more here, and this is certainly one of the technologies that would benefit from less explanation rather than more. For example I think it would be better to flesh out how the containment apparatus works and looks like so that characters can interact with it. I think it is less useful to explain the physics behind it (especially when you're including hard numbers as to the output and size of the black hole). While I think it is fantastic to do that math before hand to get an idea of how big your black hole would need to be, I also feel like including it in the article is just asking for someone to come in and debunk it. I may not be doing a great job of explaining my point here, but in this case I think the article could be improved by leaving some things a bit more open.

 

[Acewing13]

So, just leave well enough alone and retract this wiki page?

 

[Zack]

It might work better if it were folded into a history or setting article regarding a singularity creation plant or star system.

 

[Acewing13]

Ok, that I can do. NTSE mods, I retract this submission, so if you can put it in the rejected sub-forum, that'd be great.

 

[Doshii Jun]

Submission moved to rejected at submitter request.