History Main / PoweredByABlackHole

[[folder:Fan Works]]
* ''Fanfic/RocketshipVoyager''. On finding themselves on the other side of the galaxy, the crew of Voyager locate an alien space station orbiting a 'black star'. B'Elanna Torres is the only one among the crew to realise that they must have traveled through a PortalNetwork.
-->"Let's suppose there was an alien race... they would have to be advanced far beyond us... suppose they had the technology to fold Space, using the most powerful gravitational force in the Universe to create a passageway between two disparate points in space-time thousands of light-years apart! In tri-dimensional space the entrance of the passageway would appear as a sphere, like a black star!"
[[/folder]]

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'': [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/grant-request-for-the-construction-of-an-interstellar-scienc Prometheus Labs proposes building a spacecraft like this,]] using a microscopic black hole's Hawking radiation to accelerate and power the ship.

* ''WebSite/AtomicRockets'' has [[http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/power.php#id--Power_Generation--Exotic_power_sources--Primordial_Black_Holes black hole reactors]] as an exotic powerplant type. By using a relatively small black hole (with mass "insignificant" next to the 10^14th KG-about one million billion kilograms-weight of the engine) spherical graphene absorber to soak up the singularity's radiation and re-radiate it as heat for a blackbody-radiation engine, the whole mess should be powerful enough to fly a ship the size of a good-sized space station, even if it was all habitation module, and wouldn't need to be refueled for several million years. The big problem is actually making a black hole (and getting ten billion tons of graphene), as most concepts involve near-lightspeed acceleration (in which case, you already have a viable engine so why bother?) or Gamma-Ray lasers (which we can't make until we find something that can focus/reflect Gamma-Rays). It would be more easy to ''find'' natural black holes and make them suitable for our uses. A later (that is, lower down on the same page) article deals with methods of electrically charging (so it can be held in place with magnets) and spinning up a singularity for use.

** In Season 4 of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', the crew come across a LostTechnology relay network that spans a large part of the galaxy, enabling them to finally communicate with Starfleet. Unfortunately to destroy a Hirogen hunting party Captain Janeway destabilizes the micro-black hole powering the relay station, accidentally crashing the entire network.

* The ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration [[UniverseBible Writers' Technical Manual]]'' states that the Romulan ''D'Deridex''-class warbird is believed to be powered by x-ray emissions from a captured microsingularity, rather than fusion and matter/antimatter reactors like most other ships. ''Franchise/StarTrek'' canon has usually adhered to this since then, DependingOnTheWriter.

Even black holes themselves give off their own energy known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation Hawking Radiation]], which, in layman's terms, is the result of black holes slowly evaporating over [[TimeAbyss inconceivably-long time scales]] of over 10^64 (that's 64 zeros) years on average due to quantum effects near the event horizon. A future space civilization is likely to take advantage of black holes around the tail end of the dying universe when there's no more stars to use.

** In "Beachhead" the Ori use a force field projected through a stargate to forcibly collapse the planet in question below its Schwartzchild radius, creating a micro-black hole that is used to power a "super-gate" big enough to send the Oris' invasion fleet through. That attempt is foiled. Their next, in the season finale, is not.

* ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'': Most Romulan ships use a singularity core consisting of a confined microsingularity, instead of a matter-antimatter warp core. Playable Romulan ships are additionally able to manipulate the singularity for various {{technobabble}} effects. The "ship destruction" animation for Romulan ships has the ship collapse into its own drive singularity rather than merely exploding as with ships of other factions. [[MadeOfExplodium Then it explodes.]][[note]]This is probably to justify warbirds still causing damage to surrounding ships when they're destroyed (other ships go into a "warp core breach"), but [[AccidentallyAccurate black holes release their mass as energy when they evaporate]].[[/note]]

* The physicist Roger Penrose has thought on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_process ways]] to extract energy from (rotating!) black holes. The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blandford-Znajek_process way]] quasars and the like are thought to be powered works on similar principles.

* ''WebSite/AtomicRockets'' has [[http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/power.php#id--Power_Generation--Exotic_power_sources--Primordial_Black_Holes black hole reactors]] as an exotic powerplant type. By using a relatively small black hole (with mass "insignificant" next to the 10^14th KG-about one million billion kilograms-weight of the engine) spherical graphene absorber to soak up the singularity's radiation and re-radiate it as a heat for a blackbody-radiation (heat) engine, the whole mess should be powerful enough to fly a ship the size of a good-sized space station, even if it was all habitation module, and wouldn't need to be refueled for several million years. The big problem is actually making a black hole (and getting ten billion tons of graphene), as most concepts involve near-lightspeed acceleration (in which case, you already have a viable engine so why bother?) or Gamma-Ray lasers (which we can't make until we find something that can focus/reflect Gamma-Rays). It would be more easy to ''find'' natural black holes and make them suitable for our uses. A later (that is, lower down on the same page) article deals with methods of electrically charging (so it can be held in place with magnets) and spinning up a singularity for use.

* ''WebSite/AtomicRockets'' has [[http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/power.php#id--Power_Generation--Exotic_power_sources--Primordial_Black_Holes black hole reactors]] as an exotic powerplant type. By using a relatively small black hole (with mass "insignificant" next to the 10^14th KG-about one million billion kilograms-weight of the engine) spherical graphene absorber to soak up the singularity's radiation and re-radiate it as a blackbody-radiation engine, the whole mess should be powerful enough to fly a ship the size of a good-sized space station, even if it was all habitation module, and wouldn't need to be refueled for several million years. The big problem is actually making a black hole (and getting ten billion tons of graphene), as most concepts involve near-lightspeed acceleration or Gamma-Ray lasers.

* ''WebSite/AtomicRockets'' has [[http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/power.php#id--Power_Generation--Exotic_power_sources--Primordial_Black_Holes black hole reactors]] as an exotic powerplant type. By using a relatively small hemispherical graphene absorber to soak up the singularity's radiation, the engine should be powerful enough to power a ship the size of a good-sized space station, even if it was all habitation module, and wouldn't need to be refueled for several million years. The big problem is actually making a black hole, as most concepts involve near-lightspeed acceleration or Gamma-Ray lasers.

* ''WebSite/AtomicRockets'' has [[http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/power.php#id--Power_Generation--Exotic_power_sources--Primordial_Black_Holes black hole reactors]] as an exotic powerplant type.

* {{VideoGame/Super Robot Wars}} provides two very different examples with it's OriginalGeneration lineup. The first is the Huckebein, a series of Gundam {{Expy}} mechs whose original prototypes were powered by a Black Hole Drive, allowing for use of Graviton weaponry. The other example is the Granzeon, a monster of a mech that jumps straight past "Super Robot" into "God-like Robot" territory with the ability to use it's three contained singularities to create weaponized black holes, wormholes, and a gravitational warp field that protects it from attacks.

--> '''Petey''' : ''Petawatts are chump change.''

Harder science fiction will typically rely on one or more of the following real-world theories (softer sci-fi tends to {{handwave}} it or cite {{technobabble}} such as ThePowerOfTheVoid):

** In ''Destiny Lost'', shenanigans involving an EarthShatteringKaboom result in a brown dwarf in the Bollam's World System being artificially compressed into a black hole. The brown dwarf had been artificially inflated with gravity fields to generate helium-3 for fusion fuel, but the protagonists remark that the Bollers could actually get ''more'' energy by harnessing the new black hole as a power source.

** {{Exploited}} in the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS03E17Visionary Visionary]]" when the crew are able to [[StealthInSpace locate a cloaked warbird]] by hunting for the mass signature of its drive singularity.

** The megastructures DLC uses them not for energy but for mining, with the Matter Decompressor that extracts from the mass the black hole has accumulated for millennia.

[[MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness Harder science fiction]] will typically rely on one or more of the following real-world theories (softer sci-fi tends to {{handwave}} it or cite {{technobabble}} such as ThePowerOfTheVoid):

* ''VideoGame/OuterWilds'': The [[{{Precursors}} Nomai]] manufactured black holes and corresponding white holes for teleportation, on a small level using one-way warp pads to transport people between locations, and in the large scale putting both together in a “warp core” that allowed their ships to jump vast distances in space instantly. However, their most important known utility comes from exploiting their [[spoiler:weird temporal properties to send information backwards in time. The Nomai, searching for a mysterious object beyond the solar system with an unknown location, used a warp core to create a time loop in which they’d fire a probe into deep space on a randomized trajectory, and the iteration that found it would retroactively transmit the coordinates back to base, so that the Nomai would have its location on the “first try”.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Overwatch}}'' alludes to this with the character Sigma, who received [[GravityMaster gravity-based superpowers]] after a FreakLabAccident exposed him to the raw force of a miniature black hole. Among his in-game abilities is "Accretion", a defensive ability where he creates [[UnrealisticBlackHole a small black hole in the palm of his hand]] that not only absorbs and nullifies enemy fire, but converts it into "shields" to keep him sturdy.