29.5M views · Apr 22, 2018 · 8:08 · 2 HN recommenders · 4 mentions · discussed 2018–2021
Kurzgesagt explains the black hole bomb and how far-future civilizations might extract energy from spinning black holes, including Dyson-sphere-style ideas.
Why Hacker News points people here: Linked as a nice summary of how civilizations could harvest black hole energy.
“I also watched this in the past, which has some fun ideas”HN comment, 2021
“Kurzgesagt had some nice summaries of”
Kurzgesagt on black holes as homes for civilizations.
Kurzgesagt had some nice summaries of: 1) Why white dwarves might be the last home for life in the universe - link 2) ...or maybe it will be black holes - this video
“I also watched this in the past, which has some fun ideas”
Fun ideas about harvesting black hole energy with mirrors.
There's also the Penrose process which is theoretically useful on spinning black holes. I also watched this in the past, which has some fun ideas (that are probably a little fanciful?) this video tl;dw: put a mirror around it and shine light in, get back lots of energy and/or blow up your whole solar system. I'm not sure if any of that would apply to a ~planet mass black hole spinning with ~planet sized angular momentum, or how solid the physics even is, but it sounds cool anyway.
Extracting energy from black holes.
I used to play with an idea of a science fiction novel, where the united Earth's currency is essentially kcal/kJ. The problem is that if you have a flammable and radioactive material, do you count the energy you get from it by burning it, or the energy from throwing it into a nuclear fission reactor, or the energy of throwing it into a black hole in a particular angle[1]? [1]: this video
“Kurtzgesagt made a video explaining some possibilities.”
Steal rotational energy from spinning black holes.
Kurtzgesagt made a video explaining some possibilities. In short, you can throw mass or radiation at a spinning black hole and "steal" rotational energy from it. this video
