Musings and Mutterings

Black Hole Drive Could Power Future Starships | Universe Today

In an earlier post, I mentioned two physicists who had worked out the operating parameters of a black-hole power source. The article linked in this post provides more details, including how someone would propel a miniature black hole. They postulate that particle beams could be used to simultaneously feed the black hole and propel it in the desired direction. They also note that black holes would make highly efficient energy sources, turning any matter into energy. In fact, a black hole with a radius of 0.9 attometres would generate 160 petawatts of energy. The only problem? Creating a single black hole of up to a few attometres in diameter would be a massive undertaking.

A PDF document of the original research is also available.

Dark power: Grand designs for interstellar travel - space - 25 November 2009 - New Scientist


New Scientist presents two ideas for achieving interstellar travel within the human lifetime.

The first proposal is by physicist Jai Liu who sees a Bussard ramjet powered by dark matter. One theory of dark matter is that is composed of neutralinos, particles that  have no antiparticles except itself.  The limitation of the idea is that the ship would have to travel through areas rich in dark matter, but would only weigh 100 tonnes and need a collecting area of 100 square metres. Liu speculates that one reason we have never been visited by extraterrestrials is that our region is low, a problem that would hinder our ability to create a dark matter-powered spaceship.

The second proposal was by mathematicians Louis Crane and Shawn Wetmoreland involved using the Hawking radiation emitted by a million-tonne black hole the size of an atomic nucleus. Once constructed, the emissions by the black hole would be collimated by a parabolic mirror to form the exhaust of the ship for a journey of no more than 100 years (the lifetime of a black hole that size). Smaller black holes would generate more energy per unit mass but would have much shorter lifespans. As a side note, they suggest that one way to identify an advanced civilization would be to detect high-frequency gravitational waves generated by a black hole propulsion system. Current gravitational wave detectors, such as LIGO, only detect low-frequency waves.

Space hotel says it's on schedule to open in 2012 - Space- msnbc.com

Barcelona-base Galactic Suite Ltd. says that they expect to have a hotel in space by 2012. Each pod (see photo below) will hold 4 guests and 2 pilots. The cost of a 3-night stay? $4.4 million, which includes an 8-week training course on a tropical island.

SPACE.com -- Water Discovery Fuels Hope to Colonize the Moon

Some scientists, including the CEO of the X-prize Foundation, hope that the recent discovery of "significant" quantities of water detected in the LCROSS probe debris will drive a renewed interest in establishing a human presence on the moon.

Jupiter's Moon Europa Has Enough Oxygen For Life

Researchers theorize that if there is an ocean under Europa's ice then it is possible that it might have enough oxygen to support complex organisms.

Galileo's Jupiter Journey Began Two Decades Ago

October 18th is the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Galileo spacecraft.

Giant impact near India -- not Mexico -- may have doomed dinosaurs

A recent examination of the Shiva basin off the coast of India reveals that it may be a 65-million year-old impact crater, the result of a bolide as much as 40 kilometers in diameter. The impact would have vapourized the 30-mile thick crust, revealing the magma beneath. The team theorizes that this impact, not the one in the Yucatan Peninsula off the coast of Mexico, may have been the dinosaur killer.

Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: First extra-galactic planet spotted in Andromeda

Astronomers believe they may have detected the first planet outside our galaxy. Using gravitational microlensing, they were able to observe a star in the Andromeda galaxy for several days. Analysis of it's variability seem to indicate that it has a companion planet about 6 times the mass of Jupiter. Microlensing is a short-term effect so it can't be used to perform long-term observations of distant objects, but scientists believe it may be possible to detect extra-galactic Earth-mass planets using this technique.

Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Sustainability: The Clue That Could Solve Fermi's Paradox

The Fermi paradox states that, given the size and age of the universe, would should be able to find many advanced civilizations but not one has been found. Two Pennsylvania State University researchers have postulated that the flaw in the Fermi paradox is that it assumes exponential population spread outward from the home world, something that would require an exponential expansion in the amount of resources available. Instead, they suggest that sustainable growth is limited because materials and energy are finite resources, so any advanced civilizations that do exist are those that have managed to curb the tendency toward exponential expansion.