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Author Topic: Is a timed black hole possible?
JBSkaggs
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Is it at all plausible to have a timed black hole? I do not mean at today's technology, but sometime in the future.

For example to have a weapon that fires a tiny black hole into a enemy person or structure, then function for say 60 seconds then cease to exist. Or at least cease to have a gravitational pull.

Maybe the core could be a tiny nano mechanism held in a gravity nullified pocket generating this black hole, then at a certain time this machine would generate a a 2nd gravity shield encapsulating the black hole nullifying it's effects on the surrounding environment. But containing the accumalated mass in a managable device.

Of course if the devices failed there would be a massive explosion or implosion depending on the type of failure.


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ChrisOwens
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Under current thinking, assuming that one could generate a black hole, it would have to be very tiny for it to have a short-live lifespan. It would give off much Hawking radition the duration of its existance.

I'm not an expert, I'll just throw out what I see in my minds eye: the circumference of the event horizon would be smaller than an atom.

Of course it's fiction. If you can make up any credible-sounding mechanism, it might make a good story.

I wonder if such a weapon would do more damage from the radation then from gravition.

[This message has been edited by ChrisOwens (edited January 21, 2005).]


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Robyn_Hood
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I don't know about the science, but like ChrisOwens said, if you make it sound believable, it could work. Remember, you get to have one completely outlandish idea per story. Right?

Out of curiousity, what is the desired effect you are looking for? Perhaps there is something else that might work better.

[This message has been edited by Robyn_Hood (edited January 21, 2005).]


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ArCHeR
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Well, there is a calculatable possibility that any ammount of matter can instantly transport to anywhere else for absolutely no reason. The odds are extremely thin, but it is possible. So if scientists discovered a way to increase that probablility for a specific ammount of matter for a specific destination, then a black hole weapon would be possible.

And with Hawking's recent discovery, it could be timed as blackholes aren't permanent as scientists once thought.


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JBSkaggs
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The idea is to effectively destroy the stability and structure of an object. Such as compressing or eliminating say a third of a planet in a near instantaneous collapse.

On a smaller scale the idea of having a destructive device that could literally eat through any matter is my main idea.

Such as guiding a black hole the size of an electron through a fortressed defense or whatever then allowing it to grow and consume everything within a predetermined radius for a predetermined time. One could also leave it as a lethal booby trap against another force.


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Netstorm2k
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quote:
Such as guiding a black hole the size of an electron through a fortressed defense or whatever then allowing it to grow and consume everything within a predetermined radius for a predetermined time. One could also leave it as a lethal booby trap against another force.

Yoink!


[This message has been edited by Netstorm2k (edited January 21, 2005).]


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Jeraliey
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http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~dmw/ast102/index.html

This is the home page for a class I took last semester, entitled Black Holes & Time Warps (after Kip Thorne's book). If you follow the link "online lecture notes and schedule", you'll find a series of powerpoint presentations detailing just about everything you might want to know about structures of the large-scale universe. It was a phenomenal class, and the lecture notes could probably answer any questions you may have. Kip Thorne's book is a good one to read, too.

Have fun!


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EricJamesStone
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It sounds like you want a black hole weapon which can be moved around at will.

A black hole can have a charge, which would allow you to control its position magnetically. So, you could theoretically have a delivery mechanism (missile, robot, whatever) that magnetically held a small black hole in front of it to swallow things. (In fact, assuming a natural microscopic black hole were captured magnetically, this might be technologically feasible today.)

It might even be possible to control it magnetically from a distance.

However, if magnetism is how the black hole weapon is controlled, the target could probably defend itself magnetically. And a delivery vehicle would remain vulnerable.

So a better approach might be some sort of gravitational control. It would require a much more sophisticated technology. It would allow you to force the black hole to evaporate when it is no longer needed.

A delivery mechanism would still be vulnerable, though, while remote gravitational control of the movement of the black hole could presumably be overriden if the target has similar technology.

If being able to control the movement of a preexisting black hole is not important, and all you need is for a black hole of a certain size to appear and then disappear in a certain place, then you might try something involving gravity wave harmonics to produce a black hole at a specific remote location.


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Lord Darkstorm
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I would think that if you had the technology to create a black hole, you would have the technology to destroy one as well. Of course...if you failed to turn it off it would keep growing.
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rickfisher
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The problem with a black hole tiny enough to evaporate in a reasonable amount of time is that it won't grow very fast. In fact it would probably evaporate from the Hawking radiation before it did any damage. I'm not sure about the exact figures for that; but even one that would last for long enough to do damage would simply fall through whatever you'd shot it into, down to the center of the earth or whatever massive body you're on, possibly eating up a few atoms that got in its way in the process, and then it would orbit there for a long while. You might, as EJS says, use a charged one, but then you'd have to continue to control its position for a good long while. If you're looking for near-instantaneous collapse, you'd probabaly need a black hole that was far more massive than you would be able to control.

When you say:

quote:
Is it at all plausible to have a timed black hole? I do not mean at today's technology
I'm not sure whether you mean is it possible by today's theories? or are today's theories sufficiently incomplete that you could plausibly make something up? In the former case: No. In the latter case: well, you can certainly make plausible things up. I'm not sure whether you could manage something that would serve your purposes.

If you can manipulate gravity in the way you suggest, however ("a gravity nullified pocket"), I should think you could do away with the black hole and just manipulate gravity to collapse someone or something.


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Survivor
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Yeah, a black hole that would evaporate in a matter of minutes would be too small to do very much damage (and if it did much damage, it would end up too large to evaporate as quickly).

I think the relevent point has been made by EJS, if this weapon were deliverable, it wouldn't be as unstoppable as you want it to be.

On the other hand, I can imagine that you could create a device that would generate something like a black hole and would last until it destroyed itself (and anything nearby). A kind of gravetic-imploder bomb, if you will. Because it would actually be distorting the local fabric of space, it could be very destructive even against unconventional materials (the kind that would shrug off little things like conversion bombs and anti-proton beams).

So I guess it depends on exactly why you want to have something like this.


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HSO
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Just a thought...

How about a weapon that could launch a device capable of disseminating a controlled qty of antimatter? Not too much, because it wouldn't take much to wipe out a large area, but the tiniest atom would likely be sufficient to cut a swath through anything it touched.

Dan Brown's Angels and Demons discussed containing antimatter in a stable magnetic field (I think). I'm sure it's been covered in plenty of stories, too.


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Jefficus
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Quantum mechanics (as I understand it) posits a phenomenon in which particles are constantly spontaneously created and destroyed 'everywhere' and 'all the time'. I've forgotten the name given to this process.

Add to that the idea of quantum entanglement and you get a very cool idea for a weapon. If you could entangle the particles within a structure with one of these spontaneously formed particles, just as it appeared, would all these particles vanish with it when it goes?

I have no idea. But I'll bet it would pass muster as a plausible enough idea with readers and I would probably call such a device an entanglement bomb. (Which seems like a cool weapon name to me.)

Jefficus


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ChrisOwens
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<a phenomenon in which particles are constantly spontaneously created and destroyed>

Related to the uncertainty principle. The uncertainty of mass-energy and time.


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EricJamesStone
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OK, here's an idea for a temporary black-hole weapon. It would require a technology operating in at least a fourth spatial dimension.

To explain how it works, it will probably be best to use the old rubber-sheet analogy.

Think of our three-dimesional space as being represented by a two-dimensional, infinitely stretchable rubber sheet. Objects in space that have mass distort the rubber sheet by indenting it, as if weights were being placed on the rubber sheet. The larger and denser the mass, the more the sheet is indented.

It's important to note that the objects themselves exist in the two dimensions of the rubber sheet. Their mass indents the rubber sheet as if there were something in the third dimension pressing down on the rubber sheet, but there is not actually something there.

A black hole makes a very deep indentation in the rubber sheet. At the black hole's event horizon, the rubber sheet is stretched to the point that it's almost perpendicular to the normal plane of the sheet. The more massive the black hole, the wider the event horizon.

Somewhere on the rubber sheet is your target. Let's sat it's an enemy fortress on a planet, so it's a spot a little ways down the side of a planet-sized indentation.

The fortress is surrounded by all sorts of defenses. But remember, all of this is in two dimensions on the rubber sheet.

Above the sheet, in the third dimension, is something analogous to a big gun that fires something analogous to a high-velocity bullet at the spot on the rubber sheet that represents the target.

The bullet indents our infinitely stretchable rubber sheet. In fact, it stretches part of the sheet at the target so much that the sides of the indentation become almost perpendicular to the sheet.

As far as a two-dimensional observer near the fortress is concerned, a black hole suddenly appeared in the middle of the fortress. Everything near the event horizon is sucked into the black hole and crushed together by the tremendous gravity. Things farther away are pulled toward the black hole and fracture under tidal stresses.

But the bullet is being slowed down and eventually stopped by the rubber sheet. And there is not enough mass in the two-dimensional rubber sheet universe to keep the sheet stretched out like that. So what happens? The rubber sheet starts to revert to its normal shape, which it does by flinging the bullet away from itself like a slingshot.

Our two-dimensional observer thinks the black hole has vanished as quickly as it appeared. But the damage done to the fortress by the extreme gravity remains.

So, all you have to do is scale this up a dimension, so that you have a bullet being fired through four-dimensional space at a three-dimensional target.

[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited January 22, 2005).]


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Survivor
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Doesn't this run into the same basic problem? If you could put a gun somewhere off the "plane" like that, couldn't the superfortress put some defenses up there too?

Anyway, it wouldn't work. There is no reason that what we think of as the "normal" plane of existence would "stop" the "bullet" anymore than the infinite number of planes between our plane and the "gun" would have "stopped" the "bullet". The "plane" isn't a physical object, it is a mathmatical construct that describes a region shared by everything in the plane. There is nothing special about it that would cause it to stop something from moving through orthagonal to its parametric dimensions.

The described entanglement bomb wouldn't work well on a macro scale. It would be simpler to use something conventional...like antimatter


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EricJamesStone
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quote:
Doesn't this run into the same basic problem? If you could put a gun somewhere off the "plane" like that, couldn't the superfortress put some defenses up there too?

First of all, don't take the gun/bullet analogy too literally. I was trying to provide an image to allow people to visualize the basic principles involved.

While of course it is possible to postulate fourth-dimensional defenses against this sort of attack, the problem of defending against this is of a different kind that the problems in defending against a conventional black hole being guided remotely by magnetic or gravitic technologies.

Assume that the attacker and the defender have access to precisely the same technology and level of power in projecting magnetic or gravitic forces to control a black hole. Since the strength of such forces is dependent on the distance at which they are operating, the defender will be able to take over control when the black hole is closer to the target than to the attacker. Thus, the only way for the attacker to maintain control is for the control to emanate from a delivery vehicle that accompanies the black hole. But that delivery vehicle is subject to attack by other means.

Now, if we assume that both attacker and defender have access to my proposed weapon system, that does not mean the defender can stop the attack, any more than the fact that two people both have access to the same kind of gun means that if one of them shoots a bullet, the other can hit that bullet with a bullet.

quote:
Anyway, it wouldn't work.

Would too!

Given sufficiently advanced technology, that is.

quote:
There is no reason that what we think of as the "normal" plane of existence would "stop" the "bullet" anymore than the infinite number of planes between our plane and the "gun" would have "stopped" the "bullet".

Again, I don't want people to take the specifics of the analogy too literally, but this objection is easily overcome. I used the single rubber sheet analogy because people are generally familiar with it and it is simple. But instead of a rubber sheet, you can consider the universe as a plane inside a block of rubber.

So it is not just "our" plane that is slowing the bullet, it is all the planes the bullet is stretching before it encounters our plane, and all the ones it stretches after ours, until the bullet has expended its energy.


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Jeraliey
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<Quantum mechanics (as I understand it) posits a phenomenon in which particles are constantly spontaneously created and destroyed 'everywhere' and 'all the time'. I've forgotten the name given to this process.>

They're called vacuum fluctuations, and they're freaking amazing. They give all kinds of problems to the nature of causality. I love that kind of stuff!


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ArCHeR
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Why are you all saying small black hole? They're all the same size! That's why they're black holes. You can have varrying densities, but they're all going to be singularities...

Which brings us to another problem: You can't have a black hole that takes out a tactical target. It's either powerful enough to suck in light, or it's not a black hole. If it's powerful to suck in light, you might as well just use a nuke to get a more tactical area of destruction.


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EricJamesStone
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quote:
Why are you all saying small black hole? They're all the same size! That's why they're black holes. You can have varrying densities, but they're all going to be singularities...

When people compare sizes of black holes, they are obviously referring to either the mass or the size of the event horizon, not the singularity.

And you mean varying masses, not varying densities.

A singularity has zero volume. Since the formula for density is mass divided by volume, the result is undefined for a singularity.

quote:
Which brings us to another problem: You can't have a black hole that takes out a tactical target. It's either powerful enough to suck in light, or it's not a black hole. If it's powerful to suck in light, you might as well just use a nuke to get a more tactical area of destruction.

Can't? I think it's fairly obvious that a black hole of sufficient but not excessive mass can take out a tactical target. It may not be the most practical weapon, and there are potential vulnerabilities that might allow a target to defend itself, but given the technology to manipulate the position of black holes, it is definitely possible to use one to destroy a tactical target.

[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited January 23, 2005).]


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Jeraliey
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It would also be relatively untraceable, if it's small enough to disintigrate into Hawking radiation after it does the damage. There would be no residual other than the matter ripped apart by tidal forces.
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Survivor
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If you're bending the entire "block", rather than just the one "sheet", then you can't get by with a vectored energy discharge. You end up using enough mass/energy to count as a regular black hole.

But the point about the delivery vehicle is well taken. If we think about this differently, the delivery vehicle would be made out of matter that had it's higher dimensional characteristics altered so that it wouldn't interact directly with most "normal" matter. In effect, it would be a specially engineered form of dark matter. The only way to sense it or attack it would be through its mass signature. So you could still detect the black hole it carried, but you would need some kind of even more advanced gravity weapon to destroy the delivery vehicle.

That said, gravity manipulation is a lot easier than higher dimensional engineering. When you shift the higher dimensional characteristics of normal matter, it drastically changes the atomic/chemical/electrical/just-about-everythingical characteristics of everything.

In fact, the easiest way to build something artifical out of dark matter is to simply use advanced gravitic manipulation to build it out of existing dark matter. You might need to do some tweaking to get the necessary interactions (and how you're even going to know whether the thing is working unless it can produce modulated gravity is beyond me), but it could work.

But if something like this can be built, then the best use would be straight stealth. If you saw a black hole being moved around by an invisible actor, all you'd need to do is aim gravitic lances around the general vicinity until you hit it.


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ArCHeR
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You're not getting it. In order to be a black hole, there must be a certain mass. You can't have a weak black hole. If you can stop light, you're going to destroy the entire planet, no matter how short of a time it's there.

And if you have the power to move a black hole, you have the power to move any matter. So just move the target to the black hole, not the other way around.


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Christine
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I almost made the first response to this thread. I almost responded ten times in the interim. Now, finally, I feel certain enough of what I have to say to venture a post.

I would not buy the premise of a timed black hole. I am no expert on black holes, but since most of your readers probably have the avgue notions I do I am probably a good source. As Archer has been trying to say, a black hole is always small, but the compressed mass is incredibly powerful. Something cannot be a black hole until the gravitational force behind it is so powerful that it cannot be undone. Nothing can escape. Nothing can get near enough to nullify it.

That's not to say you can't use a black hole as a weapon. I'm sure there are ways to do that, but you can't control it. Once formed, you'd better not need the section of space that succumbs to its pull.

Anyway, I just wanted to profer this viewpoint, since you asked. It's not to say that science hasn't proven the primitive (and we are primite to our future race) ideas wrong before and certainly will again, but now, in the early 21st century, given what we do know about black holes, I simply don't buy it.


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punahougirl84
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Knock, knock.
"Hey, Suzie, what's up?"
"I need to borrow a cup of dark matter..."
"Sure, no prob - hey, kids, if I've told you once, I've told you a billion times, get OFF daddy's antimatter replicator!"

I admit to loving the concept (envisioning mini black hole Trojan Horse), and even before you transport it, am wondering how you create it in the first place such that you can manipulate it. And using a black hole as a weapon - well - seems like you'd be taking on something REALLY BIG to destroy - like a solar system or galaxy. How quickly would it act, anyway? Would it work too slowly for your desired effects?

Why a black hole, other than the "coolness" concept? Would nothing else work?


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EricJamesStone
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Archer, you seem to be completely unfamiliar with the concept of micro black holes. (You might also look at primordial black holes.) That's what we're talking about here, not black holes with stellar masses.

You'll notice that the article about micro black holes talks about a Planck mass black hole, which would have a mass about 0.00002 of a gram and an event horizon radius of far, far, far, far less than a nanometer. If something happens to venture within 1.6x10^-35 meters, it will never escape, but on the whole I'd say that's a pretty weak black hole.


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Netstorm2k
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Is that 10 to the -35 meters, or 10 tt +35 meters? Makes a BIG difference.
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ArCHeR
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Ah, but you see the event horizon is not the limit of the object's effect. It is the point at which light cannot excape. The gravity would still reach far beyond that, and would increase the mass of the black hole, increasing its effect. So for a micro black hole to work as a weapon, it would have to appear inside the center of the target then disapear and reapear somewhere else in a very short ammount of time.

I'm not saying it's impossible, it's just highly improbable. And micro black holes are hypothetical anyway. I think it's highly improbable for an event horizon to be that small and still be an event horizon.

In other words, I just don't buy it.


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EricJamesStone
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That's a minus, Netstorm.



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rickfisher
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Tiny black holes can exist, and would not have any noticeable effect past a certain short distance. Keep in mind that the gravitational force decreases with the square of the distance. So if you move out, say, a million times as far from the center of the black hole as the event horizon, the gravitational field will only be one-trillionth as strong. If the event horizon is at a distance of 1.6x10^-35 meters, then you only have to go to 1.6x10^-29 meters to have such a weakened gravitational field. If you get as far as .16 millimeters away, which is barely visible, the gravitational field would only be 1/100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times as strong as at the event horizon.
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Survivor
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That goes back to what ArCH and Christine were saying, in a way.

EJS and I already made the point that a black hole small enough to evaporate within hours isn't going to be very impressive as a weapon. It would maybe eat a few atoms on it's way through the target, but it wouldn't be very noticible. The best thing to hope for is that the Hawking radiation could do some damage, which would mean timing your black hole to evaporate just as it hit the target (if you pulled that off, you'd actually get a lot of damage, but black holes can be rather fickle in practice).

But the damage mode of such a black hole would be largely conventional (blowing the crap out of the target with lots of radiation rather than gravitically imploding it), easier to achieve with non-exotic methods. And the low mass combined with the enhanced signature of an evaporating black hole would make it deflectable using the same means applicable to most other high energy weapons. Also, you can't readily control the yield without resorting to exotic (read that as meaning "made up") physics.

See, it isn't really a "black hole" in any sensible definition of the term at that point. It is a singularity with an event horizon, but it doens't have super mass with attendant super gravity and super sucking-things-to-oblivion-ness, nor is it anything that could be called "black" (actually, it is still black, you just can't see the blackness because of all the radiation).

That's why we were trying to leave the concept of using short lived black holes per se as weapons behind.


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rickfisher
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Yeah, you're right. I started obsessing on whether they were possible rather than on whether they'd make a good weapon, which I've already agreed they would not.
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Survivor
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Yeah, getting hung up on technicalities can make you lose sight of what's really important

quote:
He'd always wanted to die fighting, and while technically he died burning, he went out like he always hoped he would--in a blaze of glory.

italics may be mine



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HuntGod
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Whether it is plausible or not, this is in the realm of "magic" science and a race or society with the capacity and technology to do this would hopefully have moved beyond the need to do this.

That aside, the tech that would enable something like this would also open several other avenues of approach, you could just as easilly open a wormhole into the heart of a star, or any number of equally destructive options that would be easier to work with.


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ArCHeR
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Just because thier society has moved beyond the "need" for weapons, doesn't mean that other societies have. Hippies can still get shot...
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Netstorm2k
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remember people.. It's 'Fiction'.

Also, consider the Jules Verne stories.
What do you think people said when they sat around after reading his stuff. "Well, I can see getting something, oh, maybe a a couple hundred feet off the ground, but a mile?.... you could build it out of that new steel, ah reckon..the moon's made of cheese, dummy, you couldn't land on it..no, no, in the future they'll have railways that take you up to the moon...if you went back in time and married your ma, you'd be inbred, just like Billy over there..."

Yah get my drift?


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Netstorm2k
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I believe the original question was:
quote:
Is it at all plausible to have a timed black hole? I do not mean at today's technology, but sometime in the future.

The answer is yes.
Infinite future, infinite possibilities.


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JBSkaggs
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I lived in Oregon for eight years and there are a lot of hippies there. Most of the earth loving pot smoking hippies I met owned guns. What they did with them I don't know.
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HuntGod
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Probably shot evil meat eating tree choppers :-)

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Survivor
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You quote the question without seeming to have really read it. The key term is "plausible". JB didn't ask if it was possible, in a future of infinite possibility. He asked whether it was plausible to most SF readers.

And the answer was no.

By the way, looking at that first post, JB also posits a tiny nano mechanism held in a gravity nullified pocked etc. I wasn't actually thinking of this at the time, but logically any gravitational technology advanced enough to nullify the local effect of a black hole would provide almost perfect defense against this kind of weapon, don't you think?

One key element of a useful weapon at any level of technology is that the perfect defense isn't cheaper than the weapon itself. This posited weapon contains three elements. First, a powerful black hole. Second, a device that shields that black hole and makes it harmless. Third, a control mechanism that functions near or inside of the black hole. Only one of these is needed for a perfect defense against such a weapon. Therefore the weapon is (far) more expensive than the perfect defense.

Given that usually a perfect defense against a weapon is many times more expensive than the weapon itself, it makes very little sense to invent a weapon like this.


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