Harvard Professor Avi Loeb proposes a groundbreaking idea for an advanced civilization to harness the power of a black hole orbiting their home planet, providing an endless supply of clean and efficient energy.
The Penrose Process: How Rotating Black Holes Power the Universe
One was proposed in 1971 by the English mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, who won a Nobel prize. Centred around an accretion disk surrounding the black hole, known as the Penrose Process, allows for incoming matter to be accelerated up to near light speed – flashing off energy across multiple wavelengths.
Different researchers have investigated this possibility as well and proposed the idea that more advanced civilizations could be using this exact method to fuel their society, which is an interstellar technosignature we may be looking for. A prominent example of this is the Transcension Hypothesis by John M. Smart, who suggests that intelligent civilizations could eventually choose to move to areas surrounding black holes in order to use more energy.
The “Black Hole Moon” Solution: Clean Energy Forever
The newest addition to this body of research is an unconventional proposal from Avi Loeb, a professor at Harvard University, in his recent paper “Illumination of a Planet by a Black Hole Moon as the Technological Signature”. Loeb speculates that an advanced civilization could deploy a ‘Black Hole Moon’ to feed off power forever.
Loeb suggests you could do this by building a small black hole, weighing 100,000 tons and put it in orbit around the home planet of this civilization. The black hole would carry on emitting Hawking Radiation ad infinitum to keep power coming. Loeb elaborated, ‘This black hole system is the most efficient engine that I ever thought about. The fuel undergoes 100% efficient conversion into energy, because the mass pouring in is coming back out ultimately as Hawking radiation.
The power provided by Loeb’s black hole engine would be about 40 quadrillion (4·10^15) watts, which is orders of magnitude greater than the energy needs of a human civilization for all time (low terawatt range). And any matter could be used as fuel, even the waste a civilization produces — turning our greatest garbage problem into its easiest clean energy source.
Conclusion
Professor Avi Loeb is literally bringing the idea of energy generation and waste management to the stars, that represents light years in this field. By using a black hole as close to space to the planet we could generate an infinite amount of clean energy as well, they could use their waste for fuel and keep all land uses strictly for preservation. Not only will this allow a growing civilization to satisfy its energy requirements, but the very idea that man can use technology to solve the most pressing environmental problems is embodied in it. For all we know, science fiction such as a ‘Black Hole Moon’ could very well be the next best thing to a utopia for our future in science and technology.
