Posted on 04/25/2006 11:59:58 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Scientists studying the energy output of black holes have discovered to their surprise that "the conversion of energy by matter falling toward a black hole is much more efficient than nuclear or fossil fuels" - so much so that "if a car was as fuel-efficient as these black holes, it could theoretically travel more than a billion miles on a gallon of gas".
That's according to boffins at the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, who studied the inner regions of nine elliptical galaxies with a view to determining the rate at which gas is being sucked towards said galaxies' supermassive black holes.
As the gas falls towards the event horizon, it releases energy in the form of high-energy particles which stream away in jets from a "magnetised gaseous disk" encompassing the black hole's core (see pic). These jets then form enormous "bubbles" far out into space.
The question for the Chandra team was how much energy would be required for the jets to produce these bubbles, in some cases thousands of light years across? The answer, according to Steve Allen of Stanford University, is a trillion trillion trillion watts.
The upshot of this fuel-efficient conversion rate, Reuters notes, is that big black holes theoretically have enough gas to keep firing for hundreds of billions of years, way beyond the current estimated age of the universe - a modest 13.7bn years.
A knock-on effect of the black holes' emissions, says Kim Weaver of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, is that the outpouring of energy heats up the gas surrounding the galactic centre, thereby preventing stars from forming from cooling gaseous matter.
Weaver said: "This is one way to keep the stars from forming and letting the galaxies grow bigger."
add this to the 'theoretical bs ping'
But "green hole" just doesn't have that spooky unknown mystery feel to it.
So when's my truck going to run on green holes?
Maybe for you--every time I see a Green hole open like this, MY skin crawls...
Yeah, but it would eventually suck everything within five hundred thousand miles of it into it, and spit them out ten million miles from where they wanted to go.
What good would that be?
exactly
If we are paying those "brains" to come up with this stuff, I want them to give me the MPG ratings for a Hummer worm hole.
Romulan spacecraft are powered by the creation of an artificial singularity.
The heating effect that keeps stars from forming means that a galaxy will last much longer than previously thought.
And you guys whining about the gas mileage and stuff are driving the wrong vehicle to start with. You need a Galaxy.
What's a "boffin"?...........
The ultimate RV/UAV. ;-)
But..it aint easy...being green.
This has been investigated and found to be largely impractical for personal transportation devices. True, the blackgreen hole is incredibly efficient, but with the equipment necessary to contain (via magnetic fields) and safeguard (wouldn't want a bunch of the green holes losing containment and end up cruisin through the earth, slowly devouring it) the aparatus, your car would be approximately 5 times bigger than a H1 Humvee. Roads would need to be widened somewhat to accomodate them.
Grants have been applied for investigation on the practicality of using these power sources in conjunction with new advances in matter transmitter technology.
I'll keep FR updated as we bring these systems on line.
And your personal expertise to back up that asinine statement is...?
Or, do you base your remark on a "stuck on stupid" misinterpretation of Genesis?
If in fact they are able to determine the efficiency of matter to energy transition... Could they not now be able to determine with some degree of accuracy what size the true elemental building block of matter truly is?
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