Isaac Arthur
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 9 months, 2018–2023
36:06 · 934K views · Jul 15, 2016
An Isaac Arthur episode on civilizations in the dark, post-stellar universe, including black hole farming, accretion disks and the Penrose process as energy sources.
HN points to it for black hole energy and colonization ideas and recommends the whole channel.
9 comments from Hacker News
Some other uses of black holes: - space propulsion [LINK] - colonization and energy source this video - weapons [LINK] I highly recommend the whole channel.
My go-to entry point for exploring those kinds of questions was Isaac Arthur. He goes into the Kardashev scale [1], dying Earth [2], dying stars [3], farming black holes [4], and going past iron stars [5]. A Boltzmann Brain's description bears remarkable similarity to the Judeo-Christian concept of God before time begins, and has been fertile ground for ruminations [6], though none with any verifiable claims backing them in our current knowledge of physics [7]. Now if we could only restructure our implementation of capitalism to be pinned to advancements towards resolving physics questions to survive those kinds of timescales and challenges instead of locked down to a single planet's worth of baryonic matter and cognitive capacity... [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK] [4] this video [5] [LINK] [6] [LINK] [7] [LINK]
Mandatory Isaar Arthur links: - Civilizations at the End of Time: Iron Stars [1] - Civilizations at the End of Time: Black Hole Farming [2] - Boltzman Brains and the Anthropic Principle [3] [4] [1]: [LINK] [2]: this video [3]: [LINK] [4]: [LINK]
I'm pretty sure you're referencing this video: this video But on the off-chance you're not - and for everyone else who's intrigued by this comment's concepts - I can recommend watching it.
A lot of thought has gone into far-future uses of black holes: - Black hole starships [1] - Weaponizing black holes [2] - Colonizing black holes [3][4] - Black hole computers [5] Black holes may be the most efficient forms of batteries and power generators yet conceived. If our model of the Universe is mostly correct then the Univese will have an era of stars that will ultimately burn through all the fuel and we'll just be left in the dark with black holes that will evaporate over an extraordinarily long period of time, many orders of magnitude than the stellar era. For propulsion, this ultimately comes down to photons have momentum. We can use them to move things. This is the idea behind the solar sail. Black hole propulsion revolves around how you use the momentum from an evaporating black hole into motion for a ship. There are a bunch of factors to balance out here. Too small and the black holes dies too quick (and is too energetic). Too large and it's too hard to move and has a lower output and so on. Turns out there's a sweet spot for all this of about a million tons, which is in the realm of what we call Kugelblitz black holes. I personally think using stellar output to accelerate and decelerate ships it he most likely outcome for a spacefaring species. If fusion ever becomes viable this may be an alternative for when you're not near a star. Ultimately black holes may replace that but there are significant theoretical and engineering challenges to that like how you'd ev