From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sat Dec 07 2002 - 14:20:07 MST
On Sat, 7 Dec 2002, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> Assume a superconducting motor, operating in a vacuum, fed as much
> power as it can handle indefinitely, bound by buckyfiber. At what point
> does it's velocity rise so high that it's mass/energy quotient causes
> it to implode into a black hole? Is this within the bounds of the
> strength of buckyfiber to hold it together to this point?
Mike, you are going to have to define what you mean by "superconducting
motor" to a greater degree. I strongly suspect that the limit isn't
the buckyfiber. I'm fairly sure that superconductors all cease to be
superconducting at some specific magnetic field level. This is fairly
low in the HTSC but may be higher in more traditional SC. So if you
keep pumping energy into the motor the field strengths are going to
go up until the point where the superconductor fails. My impression
of what happens when this occurs is enough to make me want to be
several states away. I think a fair amount of work may have been
done in these areas with high velocity flywheels back in the '70s
and '80s when we were looking for energy storage alternatives.
The typical figure used for diamondoid is something like 50 times
the strength-to-weight ratio of steel. So buckytubes might buy
you great flywheel energy storage but I don't think they are
going to buy you black hole containment.
Now an interesting question would be what one can do with neutronium
and black holes. But that is an Anders level question so I'm not
even going to touch it.
Robert
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