Nothing can escape from black holes… However, researchers have been investigating different ways to obtain energy from these entities for decades. Some of this happens naturally, and some of the energy can be stolen in clever ways. Now researchers have developed new approaches to using black holes as power sources and suggest they could be used as batteries or nuclear reactors.
This new study assumes a Schwarzschild black hole as an example, which has no electric charge or angular momentum. So these black holes are neutral and do not rotate. Black holes can be made to have a static electric field by dropping charged particles onto them, and thus you can obtain the structure of a battery.
The team imagines a black hole in space where electrical charge could be inserted and removed slowly, controllably, and with impressive efficiency, and this theoretical black hole battery could convert 25 percent of its mass into electrical energy.
When it comes to batteries, this system can be described as compact. These black holes they think would weigh, at most, close to the entire atmosphere of our planet (1,000 trillion tons) and would not be much larger than an atom. So, if you have the ability to lift something the weight of an asteroid, it can easily fit into your mobile phone.
The team showed that it is possible to fully charge and fully discharge such a battery without violating any black hole laws, but that it is not an infinite system. As the black hole expands after each cycle, it will eventually reach the size of the void containing it and the battery will become unusable.
However, turning it into a battery is not the only way to produce energy from a black hole with high efficiency. The team realized that electricity could also be produced by sending alpha (α) radiation into a black hole. It is a helium nucleus and is a fairly common product of radioactive decay.
The team says that if this radiation is aimed at a black hole, it may be possible to convert 25 percent of the mass of alpha radiation into kinetic energy from the positron, the antimatter version of the electron. “This process can increase the kinetic energy of α-decay by up to hundreds of times,” the research paper states. “Interestingly, the optimal mass of such a black hole reactor lies just inside the window of dark matter of primordial black hole origin.”
The existence of such black holes has not yet been proven and we do not know how to control them, but if we manage to find and control them, highly efficient electricity production can be achieved.
The paper reporting the team’s findings was published in the journal Physical Review D.
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