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The Black Hole Bomb and Black Hole Civilizations

50 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this explainer2 months2018–2021 score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Linked as a nice summary of how civilizations could harvest black hole energy.

Kurzgesagt explains the black hole bomb and how far-future civilizations might extract energy from spinning black holes, including Dyson-sphere-style ideas.

“I also watched this in the past, which has some fun ideas” (HN, 2021)

2 recommendations · 2 citations · Explainers

4 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@kadoban Aug 2021 Recommends
on HN thread What if Planet 9 is a Primordial Black Hole? (2019)
There's also the Penrose process which is theoretically useful on spinning black holes. I also watched this in the past, which has some fun ideas (that are probably a little fanciful?) [this video] tl;dw: put a mirror around it and shine light in, get back lots of energy and/or blow up your whole solar system. I'm not sure if any of that would apply to a ~planet mass black hole spinning with ~planet sized angular momentum, or how solid the physics even is, but it sounds cool anyway.
Fun ideas about harvesting black hole energy with mirrors.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@ainar-g Apr 2019 Cites it
on HN thread Saudi Arabia threatens to ditch dollar oil trades to stop 'NOPEC'
I used to play with an idea of a science fiction novel, where the united Earth's currency is essentially kcal/kJ. The problem is that if you have a flammable and radioactive material, do you count the energy you get from it by burning it, or the energy from throwing it into a nuclear fission reactor, or the energy of throwing it into a black hole in a particular angle[1]? [1]: [this video]
Extracting energy from black holes.
@Qub3d Aug 2021 Cites it
on HN thread A Dyson sphere around a black hole
Kurtzgesagt made a video explaining some possibilities. In short, you can throw mass or radiation at a spinning black hole and "steal" rotational energy from it. [this video]
Steal rotational energy from spinning black holes.

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