What’s be super cool is discovering a! asteroid mass primordial black hole in our solar system. No epic interstellar flight needed.
It would be super hard to detect though. We’d have to spot it by gravitational effects or get very lucky and notice lensing. It would emit nothing unless it happened to be nomming on some matter, and even then it’d be so small that the signal would be weak.
noam_k•1h ago
That would be cool.
I read somewhere that a black hole with the mass of the moon will absorb about as much cosmic radiation as it emits Hawking radiation. This is a fine line between "the black hole disappears before we can examine it" and "oops, we got eaten by a black hole".
MomsAVoxell•19m ago
Hey, its not like an analog of "Yeah, lets just throw some more mass at the newly-forming black hole in our neighbourhood", said every human that has ever thrown things into the fire, forever ..
Such a fantastic overview. And here we are, instead of building the infrastructure for accelerating solar sails, we're investing the money in AI-pornbots instead :/
einrealist•1h ago
At least the AI-pornbots will operate from space. /s
radu_floricica•1h ago
Considering AI-pornbots are increasing the derivate of the function, they might actually be the right move.
Mistletoe•1h ago
How do you stop if your solar sail has you going near light speed? Or does it strand you halfway between stars in the doldrums where the force on both sides of your sail equals out from two stars?
hvb2•1h ago
You would fold the sail?
voidUpdate•1h ago
That only stops you accelerating, it doesn't put the brakes on
jordanb•24m ago
Deceleration is the same as acceleration. You use the light of the star you're approaching to slow down.
hansmayer•1h ago
That would not stop the probe from continuing to glide further. He's making a good point here.
ceejayoz•47m ago
Gliding is fine. We whizzed past Pluto with New Horizons. Never stopped, just a photo flyby.
SiempreViernes•1h ago
You don't stop this type of craft, it's strictly accelerate and coast type of thing.
Also note that "solar sail" is a bit misleading, the (now apparently dead) Breakthrough Starshot design was a big reflector "sail" in space and very many lasers on Earth to power it, it's not actually driven by a stellar wind directly.
api•1h ago
It would be super hard to detect though. We’d have to spot it by gravitational effects or get very lucky and notice lensing. It would emit nothing unless it happened to be nomming on some matter, and even then it’d be so small that the signal would be weak.
noam_k•1h ago
I read somewhere that a black hole with the mass of the moon will absorb about as much cosmic radiation as it emits Hawking radiation. This is a fine line between "the black hole disappears before we can examine it" and "oops, we got eaten by a black hole".
MomsAVoxell•19m ago
the8472•12m ago