Black Hole as power source? NO WAY!

[Aer'ki]

This is one of those things that you just want to beat the writers' heads in for.

A black hole is simply a super-massive gravity well. Nothing special there, except you can't see it, which leads to all kinds of crazy speculation.

In order to get power from a black hole you would have to either tap the gravity field itself or the partical stream eminating from the poles.

If you could tap gravity, you could power other things on Earth or any planet, star, or moon. It would be lesser power, but still some. You can't get power from gravity, it's absurd.

As for the partical stream...I just threw that out as a possibility. Not sure if all black holes even have partical streams or not. If they did you'd have to be close to them to soak up the radiation or whatever else would provide power...maybe the inertial of the particles could be used.

A gate sitting near a black hole can not get any power from it.

Also, a planet cannot be collapsed into a black hole...there's simply not enough matter there to generate the necessary gravity. The gravity is exactly the same no matter how much you condense the particles. The gravity effect close to the surface would increase simply by bringing each atom's pull in closer proximity to each other, but the material would spring back out as soon as the collapsing field disappeared.

You cannot create or destroy gravity...it is directly proportional to the number of atoms present. Black holes have to have a lot of mass in order to be black holes. A planet is nowhere close to massive enough.

[Melak]

So basically you can't deal with black holes as a power source yet you can deal with:

Stone Rings that can create stable wormholes
Spaceships that can travel in subspace (hyperspace)
Guns that can questionably completely destroy matter upon 3 shots.
the possibility that the human form can potentially turn into pure energy while retaining consciousness

Given the fact that you (or anyone) knows how naquadah works, and therefore don't know how the stargate itself works, we can't begin to tell how the two would interact.

I would also venture that we do not know all there is to know about black holes. Less then a thousand years ago on this planet it was common fact that Earth was the centre of the universe and that getting power from the atom was absurd. Given that, are we as a people vain enough to believe that we know everything there is to know about everything?

[Aer'ki]

So basically you can't deal with black holes as a power source yet you can deal with:

Stone Rings that can create stable wormholes They're not actually stone.


Spaceships that can travel in subspace (hyperspace)
Explainable

Guns that can questionably completely destroy matter upon 3 shots.
I don't agree with this one. It's ludicrous.
the possibility that the human form can potentially turn into pure energy while retaining consciousness
Possible in scifi, and explainable

Given the fact that you (or anyone) knows how naquadah works, and therefore don't know how the stargate itself works, we can't begin to tell how the two would interact.

I would also venture that we do not know all there is to know about black holes. Less then a thousand years ago on this planet it was common fact that Earth was the centre of the universe and that getting power from the atom was absurd. Given that, are we as a people vain enough to believe that we know everything there is to know about everything?
The gates weren't put on a black hole they were put in orbit. We know about orbit. And as far as what black holes can or can't do, carter and the eggheads in the SGC know as much as we do, it's supposed to be present day.

Don't throw out the we're ignorant arguement to explain away anything inconvenient.

[Sealurk]

Actually, black holes are viable power sources in real life...well, they will be once we get close to one.

Matter falling into a black hole releases energy as it is pulled apart by severe tidal forces, and just before passing beyond the event horizon, it can be radiating colossal amounts of radiation, which could be tapped by enclosing the black hole in what essentially amounts to solar panels.

Admittedly, it's dealt with differently in Stargate - the writers most likely heard of the concept but got it ass-backward as usual - but the science just about works.

If you want to consider rotating black holes with magnetic fields, it becomes even better apparently. It's been a while since I read up on it, so I may have some of the details wrong, but there are a handful of sites that explain it better.

[Aer'ki]

Actually, black holes are viable power sources in real life...well, they will be once we get close to one.

Matter falling into a black hole releases energy as it is pulled apart by severe tidal forces, and just before passing beyond the event horizon, it can be radiating colossal amounts of radiation, which could be tapped by enclosing the black hole in what essentially amounts to solar panels.

Admittedly, it's dealt with differently in Stargate - the writers most likely heard of the concept but got it ass-backward as usual - but the science just about works.

If you want to consider rotating black holes with magnetic fields, it becomes even better apparently. It's been a while since I read up on it, so I may have some of the details wrong, but there are a handful of sites that explain it better.

Actually that's plain wrong. Radiation eminating from a black hole would mean it wasn't 'black'. No EM gets out so there's no signiture to detect. The spouts that come out the poles won't be seen unless they're pointing straight at you.
And I suspect those only occur because magnetism is stronger than gravitational forces.
We don't know much about black holes, but the fact that they suck in everything, including light, suggests you aren't going to get anything out of them, especially power.
There are a lot of crazy 'scientists' that make up all kinds of theories about what happens in and around a black hole...don't listen to any of them. They are operating on zero evidence. No data can be gathered because no EM gets out for us to measure. And at these distances, EM is all we have to study the universe.

[Sealurk]

Actually that's plain wrong. Radiation eminating from a black hole would mean it wasn't 'black'. No EM gets out so there's no signiture to detect. The spouts that come out the poles won't be seen unless they're pointing straight at you.
And I suspect those only occur because magnetism is stronger than gravitational forces.
We don't know much about black holes, but the fact that they suck in everything, including light, suggests you aren't going to get anything out of them, especially power.
There are a lot of crazy 'scientists' that make up all kinds of theories about what happens in and around a black hole...don't listen to any of them. They are operating on zero evidence. No data can be gathered because no EM gets out for us to measure. And at these distances, EM is all we have to study the universe.

The radiation is not coming from the black hole, since it is being emitted outside of the event horizon - and since the event horizon is simply a mathematical boundary dictating that the escape velocity needed to get away from the Black Hole has just exceeded the speed of light, outside the EH, if you are travelling at light speed - which radiation does - it can still escape.

Besides, the radiation is not emitted by the black hole itself, it is emitted by matter in its accretion disc as it undergoes 'spaghettification' - tidal forces stress and stretch the matter so much it begins emitting energy.

Black holes only suck stuff in that is close enough. A black hole can be orbited, just like any object generating gravity. If the sun were to be replaced by a black hole of the exact same mass at the exact same point, the planets would continue to orbit in the exact same way - they would not suddenly get pulled into a jet black sphere.

[Aer'ki]

The radiation is not coming from the black hole, since it is being emitted outside of the event horizon - and since the event horizon is simply a mathematical boundary dictating that the escape velocity needed to get away from the Black Hole has just exceeded the speed of light, outside the EH, if you are travelling at light speed - which radiation does - it can still escape.

Besides, the radiation is not emitted by the black hole itself, it is emitted by matter in its accretion disc as it undergoes 'spaghettification' - tidal forces stress and stretch the matter so much it begins emitting energy.

Black holes only suck stuff in that is close enough. A black hole can be orbited, just like any object generating gravity. If the sun were to be replaced by a black hole of the exact same mass at the exact same point, the planets would continue to orbit in the exact same way - they would not suddenly get pulled into a jet black sphere.

I'm aware of the ecretion disc. Carter specifically said the power came from the black hole, these are two separate things.

Also, if you condense a planet into a black hole(impossible anyway) there's no matter left to form an ecretion disc.

[Sealurk]

Admittedly, it's dealt with differently in Stargate - the writers most likely heard of the concept but got it ass-backward as usual - but the science just about works.

The theory of using a black hole as a power source is sound, providing you have the technology to extract the right kind of energy. I'd bet the writers had heard of the idea of a black hole actually being the biggest energy producers known to man - look up Quasar and Sagittarius A* - and maybe even had heard of the concept of artificially tapping the energy that a black hole can put out, but they didn't do their research and simply, idly mentioned that a Supergate is powered by a black hole.

Second point: the planet was artificially collapsed, so of course it could become a black hole. Any mass can become a black hole, just not naturally. It needs a push. It needs to be condensed artificially.

Third point: the Prior generated a field that encompassed the planet and squashed it to the point that it became a black hole. Maybe, just maybe, those wacky sci-fi writers decided that the field (which can absorb many different types of energy, as evidence in the episode I think you're referring to) stayed around the now collapsed planet, and converted Hawking radiation, gravity, tidal forces, a magnetic field if it had one, or perhaps some weird quantum sci-fi energy that we technologically inferior beings aren't aware of yet into a useable form for the Supergate.

Even Carter can be wrong sometimes.

[Melak]

or perhaps some weird quantum sci-fi energy that we technologically inferior beings aren't aware of yet into a useable form for the Supergate.

Even Carter can be wrong sometimes.

Be careful, you're bordering on the ignorant argument and apparently that valid argument isn't acceptable to Aer'ki.

[Sealurk]

Be careful, you're bordering on the ignorant argument and apparently that valid argument isn't acceptable to Aer'ki.

Advice heeded - I'm just trying to point out that, if you really, really, really want to examine the science of Stargate, at some point you have to accept it is science fiction, and the writers can make up anything they want. Like interstellar traversable wormholes, and alien parasites that have a conveniently human-compatible biochemistry.

I like examining the science behind Stargate too, but there are things that have to be taken into consideration:
1. The writers can get it wrong
2. Carter can get it wrong
3. Stargate emphasises entertainment and adventure, not education
4. The Ori are thousands, if not millions of years older than us. If they want to collapse a planet into a black hole and extract energy from it, they probably can.

If the fictional science contradicts itself within the show, fair enough, the writers really screwed up - if the fictional science contradicts real, known physics...let it go. Enjoy the visuals, if nothing else.

[thefunkyone]

Theoretically Black holes emit hawking Radiation. Its probable that the stargates can absorb this radiation as a power source since they can use many different forms of power/energy sources !

Problem solved.....

Its pointless arguing with steven hawking, hes far smarter than all of us combined !

[Semmer]

This is one of those things that you just want to beat the writers' heads in for.

A black hole is simply a super-massive gravity well. Nothing special there, except you can't see it, which leads to all kinds of crazy speculation.

In order to get power from a black hole you would have to either tap the gravity field itself or the partical stream eminating from the poles.

If you could tap gravity, you could power other things on Earth or any planet, star, or moon. It would be lesser power, but still some. You can't get power from gravity, it's absurd.

As for the partical stream...I just threw that out as a possibility. Not sure if all black holes even have partical streams or not. If they did you'd have to be close to them to soak up the radiation or whatever else would provide power...maybe the inertial of the particles could be used.

A gate sitting near a black hole can not get any power from it.

Also, a planet cannot be collapsed into a black hole...there's simply not enough matter there to generate the necessary gravity. The gravity is exactly the same no matter how much you condense the particles. The gravity effect close to the surface would increase simply by bringing each atom's pull in closer proximity to each other, but the material would spring back out as soon as the collapsing field disappeared.

You cannot create or destroy gravity...it is directly proportional to the number of atoms present. Black holes have to have a lot of mass in order to be black holes. A planet is nowhere close to massive enough.

You keep leaning to scientific basis that is to yet exist. We know squat about black holes and their space-time effects, and even less about the real nature of gravity.

This is again another pointless IMHO-threads, when there's no concrete argument to one way or the other.

[thekillman]

blackholes emit radiation. naquahdah absorbs many types of radiation. tadaa, stargate powered. imagine how far we could dial if the central black hole emmitted a radiation stream

[Character]

Rather than pointles, i'd say its another pointed out writers mistake. Obviously, there are many sci fi ideas and effects in stargate, but some stuff is plain contradictory. I agree that a gate couldnt, or to be more accurate, shouldnt be able to draw power from a black hole, we've seen that a gate that draws to much power, explodes, then if gates would draw power from gravity, why dont all the gates on planets not blow up in thousands or more years, for that matte, why dont the gates near black holes blow up?
the black hole-power source idea was obviously for the wow/cool factor for the lightly educated.

[thekillman]

two black holes cause double dialation effects, so a 10 minute wormhole = 1 minute. so less power needed, so we dont need to draw that much power. besides, the supergate was massive, thus handles more power