Black Holes: How do black holes collect energy? How does it suck you in? How can we use the Black hole as an energy source?

Written by: Ryan L. Edited by: Shannon Y.

INTRODUCTION

Black holes are a collection of massive amounts of violent energy in the universe. If something gets close to the black hole, it will devour it, adding your energy to the black hole’s collection. So how are black holes created? It all happens when a massive star or sun dies. Its core will collapse on its own gravity making a black hole. 

How do Black holes collect energy?

To understand how Black holes collect energy, it takes a very complex idea. But we can summarize it down, so you can easily understand. Basically, black holes collect energy when stars are spinning, and also when other things that are spinning don’t want to stop spinning. This is called angular momentum and this angular momentum can’t go away. When a big thing gets smaller, it spins faster. So as the core of the sun collapses, it spins faster. Yes, the black hole is actually spinning. Now how does it suck things? Just imagine a black hole as a tornado. When spinning, it sucks your energy in. 

Understanding of Black Holes

But this explanation is not quite correct, because some black holes do not spin. So what makes a spinning black hole so special? Spinning black holes have singularity at their core, where all their mass is concentrated. The singularity is a single infinite point with no surface area, but the point can’t be rotated so it is called a ringularity. A singularity has a thickness of zero and spins very extremely fast, containing the mass of a spinning black hole. The black hole is spinning so fast that it morphs space and time. It drags space with it and it’s power. This creates a new and odd region of space and time which is called the Ergosphere, which envelopes the black hole. 

You can enter and leave it but it is not a great experience since time is slightly broken. If you were to go inside the Ergosphere, it would be like spiraling down a deadly drain. The black hole transfers it’s very own kinetic energy,(energy caused by movement), in a rotation to everything that enters the Ergosphere. Also not to mention, the ringularity makes you move whether you want to or not. You have to move at the speed of light to stand still, which is impossible, for even the fastest man on Earth cannot move as fast as light. 

Cheat code for civilization

We may not be able to see anything but darkness in the sky, but once all the stars in the universe die, there will be no energy for us to use. Luckily, there’s a solution. We can take energy from the black hole and power our civilization for trillions of years. Wondering how?

 When we want energy from the black hole, we can drop something in it. The ringularity forces energy on us once we enter it’s ergosphere. In summary, the blackhole forces out energy for us to use when something is dropped inside it. Usually when we fire a rocket, we trade chemical energy for kinetic energy. It’s like pushing yourself in a swimming pool. But when you fire a rocket inside the Ergosphere, it’s like pushing yourself forward in a wave pool. The boost of the ergosphere is so big, that you’ll leave the ergosphere with more power than before. We can also make a bomb out of a black hole. Read the next paragraph to see how. 

Creating the black hole bomb or making a endless power source

The black hole bomb is easy to make. Creating it may be a frivolous idea but let’s inspect that happens when we create it and make it explode. When our civilization gets to the point where we can easily harvest asteroids from space, we can use the resources that we have harvested to make a giant mirror. If we make the mirror 10 centimeter thick, a large asteroid would have enough materials for a black hole in the size of the sun. 

Now, we just have to open a window and shoot electromagnetic waves at the black hole. 

When the wave hits, a small proportion of the wave falls past the event horizon to disappear forever, but a much larger amount sloshes through the ergosphere where the black hole forces some of its rotational energy, and amplifies them. Now, the waves are bouncing around the black hole and the mirror and getting stronger which scientists call radiant scattering. By opening some windows, we can extract the energy from the wave as fast as they grow, which in theory, an endless source of energy for trillions of years. Another possibility would be waiting and blowing it up. If the waves are not released, the black hole will get stronger and stronger until it shatters, making an explosion as strong as a supernova. 

Conclusion

This may seem like science fiction but this may be the only way to survive our dying universe. After the Red dwarf and stars die, there may be a possibility of scarce light and energy sources on our planet.