From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Jun 07 2001 - 09:16:56 MDT
torsdagen den 7 juni 2001 15:28 Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> Now, what is interesting is the case where instead of a white
> dwarf, the companion to the larger star is a neutron star or
> even a black hole. Siblings with this structure form an
> entity that has been dubbed a microquasar. These show up
> as powerful sources of hard X-rays and gamma-rays and there
> appear to be several *hundred* of them in our galaxy. These
> entities periodically erupt releasing large jets of ionized plasma.
> For example GRS 1915+105 erupts approximately every *half hour*
> throwing off *100 trillion tons* of material at nearly the
> speed of light. Each cycle requires the energy equivalent
> of approximately 6 trillion times the *annual* U.S. energy
> consumption.
>
> Superintelligence or not, you do *not* want to be flying through
> one of these eruptions on the way to the party!
Yummy! Just what I need to power my alife universes.
I wonder if this is a viable method of star lifting? Create a small black
hole, allow it to orbit through the outer atmosphere growing fat, and then
catch the jets. Although I guess the magnetic method is less wasteful.
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