Scientists Might Know How To Power Off-Earth Colonies From Black Holes

A team of scientists from Columbia University has published a paper talking about how humanity could power a colony outside Earth by turning black holes into a power source. The paper hints that a spinning black hole emits a certain amount of energy and if it is enveloped with an external gravity source, it would force the singularity to produce negative energy.

Theoretically, this energy would replace the escaping positive energy, thus freeing it from the black hole's grasp and creating an opportunity to be used as a power source. In other words, the black hole would be turned into a perpetual battery.

If we manage to pull this off, it would prove to be very useful for future plans of living outside Earth on other planets or in a deep space station. As of now, there's no concrete method to keep things powered in space, so this could a ray of hope in the same direction.

The research paper states:

Spinning black holes store rotational energy that can be extracted. When a black hole is immersed in an externally supplied magnetic field, reconnection of magnetic field lines within the ergosphere can generate negative energy (relative to infinity) particles that fall into the black hole event horizon while the other accelerated particles escape stealing energy from the black hole. We show analytically that energy extraction via magnetic reconnection is possible when the black hole spin is high ... and the plasma is strongly magnetized.

While the idea sounds straight out of science fiction, there have been other stellar-based theories such as Dyson Spheres which is a promising method of perpetually powering off-Earth colonies. But the latest idea might be the easiest one to pull off. But still, it's all speculative as there's no blueprint of these machines.

Also, outsourcing power from a singularity could be a hassle. It goes without saying that current technology isn't ready for such tasks and quantum computing algorithms far more advanced would be required to handle that level of math. Well, by the time humans are able to reach close enough to a black hole, we will most likely have better machinery and AI to handle such complicated tasks.