Mining Blackholes

[Hod K'el]

It just dawned on me that we are thinking with 21st century minds, but in the future, maybe someone has figured out how to mine a blackhole. Why? All the material that gets sucked into a black hole gets crushed by the tremendous gravity...and isn't that how you make a diamond? Carbon under tremendous pressure for thousands of years? So blackholes must have thousands of diamonds in them.

So, how do we get them out?

[DirkSJ]

Unfortunately what is in blackholes is lots and lots of subatomic particles mashed together. Not so much diamonds or anything usable. There are no actual elements it's...for lack of a better term...just "stuff".

Blackholes that are currently feeding shoot giant relativistic jets of plasma that could possibly be scooped for piles of energy. Also they distort time and space around them so much that they cause frame drag and could be used to go back in time. So there are uses.

[pinecone]

There is a theory that Black Holes Slowly (Very Slowly) release atoms of things they have swallowed. As a matter of Fact, I read a Sci-Fi book once when someone was sucked into a black hole, but they used a supercomputer to rescue him by collecting and reasembelling the atoms.

Even if there were diamonds in black holes, what good would they be? Could the Klingons build a starship out of Diamond? Maybe, but it really wouldn't be any more effective then the normal ships.

Why are diamonds so valueable anyway?

[Scoutdad]

Why are diamonds so valueable anyway?

Just wait til you're a little bit older.

It's 'cause women desire them...
And anything that women desire suddenly becomes valuable to the men who desire the women in an exponentially increasing rate.

[djdood]

Until the mid-1800's, diamond was pretty much just another gemstone, slightly more useful in industry for its hardness. They had value, but only slightly more than others (like emeralds, garnet, etc.).

Then the DeBeers company (one of the major diamond mining and distribution families) started marketing diamonds as "the" wedding stone. The whole "a diamond is forever" started with them. They've been at it now for over 150 years and long-since cornered the market they built up.

It's one of the most successful marketing campaigns in human history. Pretty much anyone in the "developed" world knows diamond rings are what women get as their engagement ring. That "knowing" is due to Bebeers and protecting that is their main concern.

It's kind of sad, considering the amount of blood a lot of diamonds get on them before reaching a consumer.

[wedge_hammersteel]

That reminds me...all BP has to do to stop the leaking oil well in the gulf is to fashion a large diamond wedding ring, slip it on the broken well pipe and it will stop putting out.

[Scoutdad]

That reminds me...all BP has to do to stop the leaking oil well in the gulf is to fashion a large diamond wedding ring, slip it on the broken well pipe and it will stop putting out.

Man... If only I had an agonizer booth. I'd drive to LA to use it on you for that one!

[malleman]

How about mining the outer rim of the black hole. I think that would be pretty cool. Miners on the outer rim of a BH and Orions attack causing the station to lose power and slip towards the black hole. The miners would then need to be rescued (or the station from an Orion point of view). Scoutdad could use his BH rules and make a scenerio. Maybe even a 3 player one? Klingon, Federation, Orion and the station would be controlled by game mechanics. Whatever empires are used dosen't really matter, a cool 3 player scenario is what I would like to see.

DeBeers uses shadows in their commercials, so that everyone is included. The shadows are representations of you (wheter you are old/young/or your skin color).

[Scoutdad]

hmmm....

[Dan Ibekwe]

The stuff about DeBeers was interesting. Mind you, the best places to find masses of diamond are the core of some white dwarf stellar embers - a bit tricky to get at - and deep inside gas giant planets, so I guess we've got that market sewn up.

What would anyone be mining in the 25th century? Mineral ores might come from asteroids or high-metallicity worlds, but they're likely to be so abundant that there won't be much competition for them.

A much richer prize might be exotic biological materials. Spider silk is stronger, weight for weight, than steel, and modern material science is still learning from anything from barnacle glue to butterfly wings. Life adapted to extreme enviroments - high or low pressure, temperature or gravity, toxic (to off-worlders) atmospheres, strong ionising radiation, for example, might evolve all sorts of substances and processes that advanced civilisations would find valuable. And each such ecosystem is probably unique. Think The Spice in Dune.

And then there's Unobtainium - dilithium crystals, magnetic monopoles, liftwood, whatever. This is just a plot device, so you can make it as rare as you like, and place it in any dangerous and inaccessible situation you want.

Possibly the most useful - and dangerous - thing about a Black Hole is the way it contorts spacetime around itself. You might be able to plot a course skimming just above the event horizon that lets you travel either backwards in time, or into a parallel reality, or both. A great way for a fugitive to escape... but any tiny deviation off course would lead to disaster. A bit dicey when a pursuing warship is shooting at you.

Edited to reach my own low standards.

[Bolo_MK_XL]

A great way for a fugitive to escape justice...

Depends on what you consider Justice, if you miss that turn point by a degree or more ---

[Dan Ibekwe]

Come to think of it, the term 'Event Horizon' - the distance at which the Black Hole's escape velocity equals the speed of light - is a bit meaningless for warp-capable FTL starships anyway.

The thing to avoid would be getting spaghettified by tidal forces as space becomes seriously curved closer to the singularity itself.

[Kang]

Man... If only I had an agonizer booth. I'd drive to LA to use it on you for that one!

I've got one. Wanna borrow it?

[storeylf]

There is a theory that Black Holes Slowly (Very Slowly) release atoms of things they have swallowed.

Define very slowly.


"Every half-hour, the black hole, in the constellation Aquila, throws off the mass equal to that of a 100 trillion ton asteroid at nearly the speed of light".


Maybe slow on the grand cosmic scheme of things, but I sure wouldn't want to get hit by that. If I've crossed off my zeroes properly, that is a planet earth amount of mass every couple of thousand years.

Should make mining easy, just set up a big net around the thing and wait.

[Dan Ibekwe]

There is a theory that Black Holes Slowly (Very Slowly) release atoms of things they have swallowed.

Define very slowly.


"Every half-hour, the black hole, in the constellation Aquila, throws off the mass equal to that of a 100 trillion ton asteroid at nearly the speed of light".


Maybe slow on the grand cosmic scheme of things, but I sure wouldn't want to get hit by that. If I've crossed off my zeroes properly, that is a planet earth amount of mass every couple of thousand years.

Should make mining easy, just set up a big net around the thing and wait.

Two different things, I think.

I believe Piney is talking about Hawking Radiation, a theoretical way for BHs to loose energy by quantum fluctuation effects. Think of it as the sound made by a single gnat.

Storeylf is refering to the accretion disk that surrounds all detected BHs. This is made up of matter - mostly gas, plus the occaisional solar system - swirling 'down' towards the event horizon, being heated by friction until it glows in x-rays. Some of it goes 'down the hole', but the rest is ejected in axial jets at relativistic speeds, possibly due to poorly understood magnetic effects.
Think of it as the sound made by a wing of F-15s taking off on full reheat.