Matter-Antimatter Drives vs Singularity Drives

[Lord MJ]

TNG established that Romulan Warbirds use Quantum Singularity Drives as opposed to the Federation's matter-antimatter drives.

What would be the advantage of using singularity drives vs M/AM reactions?

Wouldn't the ability to create a miniature artificial black hole require significantly more advanced technology than the capability to generate anti-matter in a way that is a net energy positive?

[Captain Seafort]

What would be the advantage of using singularity drives vs M/AM reactions?

They don't have to lug antimatter around with them.

[Borgholio]

The idea is that a miniature black hole can provide endless energy due to gravitational waves and radiation given off by feeding it matter. Practically endless power, but impossible to simply shut off if there's a problem.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Well for one thing the singularity power core could be a lot less fragile than a typical Starfleet warp core.

For instance, the one we see in Timescape is actually sealed inside an armoured hatch, rather than just open and glowing for all to see. Plus, the singularity core won't have two fucking great tubes containing god knows how much high energy plasma direct to the nacelles which again, means it's almost certainly safer.

As for not being able to turn it off, well there's a real-world analgoue to that: molten salt reactors used in some Soviet submarines, they couldn't be turned off or the coolant would solidify. They had problems, sure, but they were clearly worth using or, try and follow me on this, they wouldn't have been used beyond a few prototypes.

My apologies if I sound more like an asshole than usual, I'm halfway through watching Chuck's Transformers 2 review, and the mindset does tend to rub off on you.

[Lord Revan]

IIRC there's a minium size a blackhole can be (in terms of mass that is since it has no dimensions) and if the mass of a blackhole drops under the limit it selfdestructs causing a gamma radiation burst (basically the remaining mass transforms into EM-radiation), so it would be possible to "turn off" a singularity core.

[Borgholio]

Depending on the size of the explosion, it might not leave the ship intact...

[Ted C]

Drawing power from a quantum singularity will certainly save you the trouble of hauling extremely hazardous anti-matter fuel around.

I'm not sure how you would vary the power output of a singularity core. Obviously you just change the fuel flow rate of an anti-matter core to vary the power output, but I'm not sure of the physics of a miniature black hole. Can you get it to release more power just by throwing matter into it faster?

Surely the singularity has its own hazards. It will consume any matter it contacts, so if it moves out of place and touches the reactor wall, it will presumably eat that and then start pulling in the rest of the ship. It presumably has a significant mass that your ship has to propel, which might affect overall performance. It presumably requires a lot of active anti-gravity systems to neutralize its own pull on the ship; lose those and you might have an implosion (as opposed to the explosion you get when a M-AM core fails).

[Eternal_Freedom]

I knew that the smaller a black hole was the faster is died due to Hawking radiation, I hadn't realise there was a hard limit where it went poof. Still, since the singularity we saw in Timscape fitted into a roughly 1 cubic metre box it must be a comparatively large one, since a Moon-mass black hole would have an event horizon diameter of about a tenth of a millimetre.

Given how big it would appear to be, the event horizon is probably ~50 cm across, so a little maths tells me that the mass is about 0.08 solar masses. Which begs the question of how the hell does the Warbird move something the size of a dwarf star around?

Incidentally, even if we shrink the notional event horizon to only 5 cm across, that still gives a singularity mass of 0.008 solar masses.

[Borgholio]

Well just because the box is 1 cubic meter doesn't mean the black hole HAS to fill that space. It could be a micro-black hole with the mass of another starship or two.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Like I said, I was pulling a very rough estimate and working from there.

At any rate, let's see what power output the Hawking radiation would provide for a very small black hole. I'm using the equation that wikipedia gives us here.

So, let's say the black hole in that engine has a mass of a billion tonnes, or 10^12 kilograms for ease of use. The power given off by Hawking radiation would be:

1.415 E 69 Watts. Yep. or 3.679 E 42 solar luminosities, or 1.415 E 32 times the luminosity of fucking Andromeda. Which also means that it will go evaporate totally in a tiny fraction of a second (EDIT: actually it would take 6E-40 seconds). So either the Romulans use much heavier singularities (and somehow move around dwarf-star levels of mass) or they have some way of magically stopping a micro black hole from evaporating, in which case they don't really need starships since they can mold physics to their whim.

[Ted C]

Well just because the box is 1 cubic meter doesn't mean the black hole HAS to fill that space. It could be a micro-black hole with the mass of another starship or two.

True, but it has to be kept from moving relative to that box, otherwise the wall will move into contact with the singularity when the ship accelerates.

[Ted C]

Like I said, I was pulling a very rough estimate and working from there.

At any rate, let's see what power output the Hawking radiation would provide for a very small black hole. I'm using the equation that wikipedia gives us here.

So, let's say the black hole in that engine has a mass of a billion tonnes, or 10^12 kilograms for ease of use. The power given off by Hawking radiation would be:

1.415 E 69 Watts. Yep. or 3.679 E 42 solar luminosities, or 1.415 E 32 times the luminosity of fucking Andromeda. Which also means that it will go evaporate totally in a tiny fraction of a second (EDIT: actually it would take 6E-40 seconds). So either the Romulans use much heavier singularities (and somehow move around dwarf-star levels of mass) or they have some way of magically stopping a micro black hole from evaporating, in which case they don't really need starships since they can mold physics to their whim.

Surely a billion tons of engine is going to have a crippling effect on acceleration. Can't a black hole exist with less? Can it decay slower?

To generate the "terawatt range" power that Geordi describes for the Enterprise's warp core, you need to annihilate less than 1 gram of matter (or matter and anti-matter) per second, if the efficiency is decent (about 56 mg/s at 20% efficiency).

[Eternal_Freedom]

Nope, the smaller the black hole is the faster it evaporates. The Hawking radiation given off by a one-solar-mass black hole is a measly 9 E -24 Watts, but as mass falls the power emission shoots up. I shall try and reproduce the equation here:

Power = (H-bar * c^6)/(15360 * pi * G^2 * M^2)

Now that doesn't look too bad until you realise that M is in solar masses, so the smaller the mass in kilograms becomes, the smaller and smaller the value M becomes (sicne M=(mass in kg/1.99E30kg)). And when you are dividing a colossal fucking number like c^6 by a very small fraction (as in, 10^-19 with the numbers I used) you get a very big answer. This would be why Lord Revan pointed out that there's a minimum mass for a black hole before it explodes.

[Borgholio]

Did they ever refer to it in-universe as a black hole or did they just call it a quantum singularity? It's a running thing in ST where they give new labels to existing materials (Duranium = Uranium, for instance).

Although we instantly think "black hole" when we talk about singularities, what if it's not an actual black hole and something else? I seem to recall in the episode that they talked about some kind of life form living on the surface of the object...and I don't think black holes have surfaces.

[Ted C]

Did they ever refer to it in-universe as a black hole or did they just call it a quantum singularity? It's a running thing in ST where they give new labels to existing materials (Duranium = Uranium, for instance).

Although we instantly think "black hole" when we talk about singularities, what if it's not an actual black hole and something else? I seem to recall in the episode that they talked about some kind of life form living on the surface of the object...and I don't think black holes have surfaces.

I believe they called it an "artificial quantum singularity", so it might have some properties that differ from a proper black hole.

[Darmalus]

I always assumed it wasn't an actual black hole, but using gravity control to "fake" a black hole (blah blah sub space something something) and get a "total conversion" reactor without antimatter. Throw random matter in, get hawking radiation out.

The advantage would be that this is a net positive energy source and could presumably be run on any space junk you run across. A M/AM system is really just a very compact energy storage system, since you have to make the AM first unless they found an AM planet somewhere to mine. This assumes any random matter works, since it's an atrifical quantum singularity, it's entirely plausible it can only take a specific type of matter as input to maintain whatever delicate effect they have going.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The trouble with that idea is the small matter of "extremely low mass black holes explode violently via Hawking radiation" part.

[Lord Revan]

Well it depends if that happens due to lack of gravity or simply due to lack of mass, which honestly I can't remember atm and my sources on that matter are elsewhere atm so I can't check them.

[Darmalus]

The trouble with that idea is the small matter of "extremely low mass black holes explode violently via Hawking radiation" part.

Well, how big would the explosion of a zero mass black hole be? Since artificial gravity already shows they can have gravitational effects completely disconnected from mass, the only matter in the singularity chamber might be the fuel, which you are planning on exploding into pure energy anyway.

[Batman]

Um-a zero mass black hole would not only not exist, but release zero energy because there's zero mass for that energy to come from?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Well the power output via Hawking radiation increases as mass decreases, and the time taken to evaporate completely also decreases with mass, so a zero-mass black hole (apart form being an absurd idea) would, according to the equations, explode infinitely. Naturally that's impossible, but if we're talking about throwing matter in to get energy out, then as soon as that matter crosses the event horizon it won't be a zero-mass black hole anymore, and will evaporate rapidly. By rapidly I mean "fuckign explode." Now that would give you a burst of energy as if the matter had been annihilated, and you would get nearly 100% of the energy out, but it would effectively be an antimatter reactor where you have to set up your artificial black hole everytime you want a pulse of power...which isn't how it's seen. And it's unnecessarily complicated.

[Darmalus]

Um-a zero mass black hole would not only not exist, but release zero energy because there's zero mass for that energy to come from?

Which is what I was trying to get at. A ship the size of the Enterprise can't generate 1g of gravity, but they do because of technology. Mass and gravity aren't really connected anymore in Star Trek, so why not an artificially maintained zero mass black hole? It would certainly have a safer failure state than a chamber full of antimatter.

Well the power output via Hawking radiation increases as mass decreases, and the time taken to evaporate completely also decreases with mass, so a zero-mass black hole (apart form being an absurd idea) would, according to the equations, explode infinitely. Naturally that's impossible, but if we're talking about throwing matter in to get energy out, then as soon as that matter crosses the event horizon it won't be a zero-mass black hole anymore, and will evaporate rapidly. By rapidly I mean "fuckign explode." Now that would give you a burst of energy as if the matter had been annihilated, and you would get nearly 100% of the energy out, but it would effectively be an antimatter reactor where you have to set up your artificial black hole everytime you want a pulse of power...which isn't how it's seen. And it's unnecessarily complicated.

What I was imagining was a singularity spot, maybe only a few hundred or thousand tons, maintained by artificial gravity manipulation to prevent it from instantly exploding. Feed matter in and manipulate the gravity control to get the desired energy out. As long as energy output is greater than gravity control consumes it's a plausible power system. Complicated? Yes, but so is FTL travel. It might be more compact, efficient, durable, low maintenance or have desirable secondary qualities, possibly related to cloaking technology.

Do we know if Romulan ships deal with battle damage better than UFP ships? Fail safe and the like?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Um, how are mass and gravity no longer connected in Star Trek? Planets till orbit stars, people still feel 1g when standing on Earth, ships still orbit planets and stars still collapse into black holes naturally. So yeah, mass and gravity are still linked in Trek. So what if they simulate it? We could do that now with a rotating section on a space station, and that's using technology, it doesn't make the laws of physics change.

And since a black hole is pretty much defined by it's mass (along with electric charge and rotation, mass is one of 3 discernable propertiesa black hole has) so a zero-mass black hole simply doesn't work. Because if it has zero mass, then it's Schwarzchild radius is zero so it isn't a black hole.

And you "100 tonne artificial black hole" runs into the same problem I described in my earlier post, once you start adding matter, it's no longer a zero-mass black hole and will near-instantly evaporate. An event which will liberate close to all the mass energy of the singularity. So you'd have a fucking huge explosion going off in your engine room every time you added fuel, and by "fucking huge" I mean millions of megatons (for your 1000 tonne singularity) and no ST ships can survive that.

Also, how would manipulating the gravity stop it from evaporating? Incrasing the gravity won't help, it's already a singularity so making it even stronger will do nothing. reducing the gravity won't do much either, since unless you futz with the gravitational constant the black hole equations won't change. And if you outright turn off the gravity withint he event horizon (good luck with that) you'll still have a big explosion as all the matter inside will suddenly have no immense gravity to counterattack the repelling electrostatic and/or strong nuclear forces.

So no, futzing with the gravity will not stop a black hole from evaporating and/or exploding.

[Darmalus]

Um, how are mass and gravity no longer connected in Star Trek? Planets till orbit stars, people still feel 1g when standing on Earth, ships still orbit planets and stars still collapse into black holes naturally. So yeah, mass and gravity are still linked in Trek. So what if they simulate it? We could do that now with a rotating section on a space station, and that's using technology, it doesn't make the laws of physics change.

We aren't talking about creating the illusion of gravity with centrifugal acceleration, we're talking about Treknology that, to my understanding, generates actual gravity. A megaton ship generating gravity like it's a yottaton planet, no spinny parts needed, in any arbitrary direction desired. That's what I mean by mass and gravity aren't connected, thought I suppose there would be better way to phrase it. Hmm, they aren't shackled together?

And since a black hole is pretty much defined by it's mass (along with electric charge and rotation, mass is one of 3 discernable propertiesa black hole has) so a zero-mass black hole simply doesn't work. Because if it has zero mass, then it's Schwarzchild radius is zero so it isn't a black hole.

And you "100 tonne artificial black hole" runs into the same problem I described in my earlier post, once you start adding matter, it's no longer a zero-mass black hole and will near-instantly evaporate. An event which will liberate close to all the mass energy of the singularity. So you'd have a fucking huge explosion going off in your engine room every time you added fuel, and by "fucking huge" I mean millions of megatons (for your 1000 tonne singularity) and no ST ships can survive that.

Also, how would manipulating the gravity stop it from evaporating? Incrasing the gravity won't help, it's already a singularity so making it even stronger will do nothing. reducing the gravity won't do much either, since unless you futz with the gravitational constant the black hole equations won't change. And if you outright turn off the gravity withint he event horizon (good luck with that) you'll still have a big explosion as all the matter inside will suddenly have no immense gravity to counterattack the repelling electrostatic and/or strong nuclear forces.

So no, futzing with the gravity will not stop a black hole from evaporating and/or exploding.

Alrighty then. I'll just go back to the gravity based total conversion reactor turning the fuel into an instantly exploding black hole. "My ship is powered by exploding black holes." sounds cooler anyway.

[Eternal_Freedom]

It sounds dumber. Especially since you'd get a fraction of a second of massive power and then nothing while you reset it. You'd have a pulse-drive, with no way of having varied power outputs and unless you have fucking awesome batteries and capacitors, no way or storing that energy in any useful way. And you still have fucking great explosions going off in your engine room.

And also, just because Star Trek has technology to simulate 1g doesn't automatically mean they can simulate black holes. There's a massive fucking difference between the two. It's a very pretty no-limits fallacy though, congratulations.