2023-12-14 11:06:24
Energy sources are endless and are sometimes found where you least expect them. In China, researchers from Tianjin University hypothesize that the power of black holes could be harnessed as a battery to provide energy, as reported in a study published on November 29, 2023 in the journal Physical Review D.
A black hole is created after the death of a very massive star. It is “a region of space whose gravitational field is so intense that it prevents any form of matter or radiation from escaping”describes thecanadian space agency on its website. According to the researchers, this power could serve as an energy source.
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Two scenarios considered
“We know that we can extract energy from black holes, and we also know that we can inject energy into them, which is almost like a battery”declared to Live Science the main author of the study, Zhan-Feng Mai, in an article published on December 12, 2023. Using the rotational and gravitational properties of black holes, the scientists thus considered possible energy extraction processes. They formulate two hypotheses.
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The first consists of “charger” the black hole by injecting massive electrically charged particles into it until the black hole repels them. When this electromagnetic repulsion is greater than the gravitational attraction, the black hole would then be “fully charged”. The available energy of the black hole would then be a combination of the injected electric charges and their mass. “The black hole battery transforms the energy of the mass of the particle into charging energy”describes Zhan-Feng Mai.
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Power 250 times greater than that of an atomic bomb
According to physicists, the efficiency of the process would be 25%, so black hole batteries could transform around a quarter of the mass introduced into available energy. This is equivalent to a power 250 times greater than that of an atomic bomb.
To extract energy, researchers would use superradiance consisting of “convert the rotational energy of the black hole, determined by its mass, into deflected waves”details SciencePost.
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The second hypothesis consists of extracting energy in the form of paired particles forming spontaneously in the presence of an electric field. According to the study, when working directly with a fully charged black hole, the electric field generated would be so strong that it would create an electron and a positron with a charge opposite that of the electron. With a positive charge, the positon would be projected out of the black hole and this particle could be collected as energy.
If, in theory, black holes could well be used as a source of energy, Zhan-Feng Mai admits: he does not know if we will ever see a battery of this type, and the answer is probably no.
On the same topic :
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