Fifth Report from the Vulcan Institute of Very Advanced Logic, Applied Science, and Various Endeavors of Generally Advanced Studies (VIVA LAS VEGAS)
 

It has come to our attention that many otherwise educated beings do not have a proper understanding of the technology used aboard starships. The following is intended to serve as a primer on the artificial singularity, known to be used as a power source by the Romulans.


Typical primordial (quantum) singularity (QS) facts:
(The symbol in the angle brackets <~> is shorthand for "approximately".)

Event horizon diameter: about the size of a proton.
Mass: 1 billion tons (equivalent to 1 cubic kilometer of water)
Energy output from evaporation: ~6,000 megawatts (continuous)
Approximate life span: ~10 billion years.
Strength of gravity field:
 At 50 meters: ~1 gee
 At 1 meter: ~4,000 gees

Energy released by final stages of evaporation resembles a massive explosion. Minimum energy released by this final decay is equivalent to a one million megaton nuclear blast (depends on the total types of particles which can exist). For comparison, Earth's Sun releases this much energy in a tenth of a second.

Some thoughts:

  1. Could a starship easily maneuver with an object (however small) that massed 1 billion tons (1,000,000,000,000 kg) aboard?

  2. How would you construct such an object and have it be "real". By this, I mean, you would have to create a gravity field at least as intense as the smallest QS, and pump in about 1 billion tons of matter (it makes no difference what kind. It would be torn into atomic particles and photons before it reached the event horizon).

  3. Would you want something as dangerous as this to be permanent?

We propose that there may be more than one way to create an artificial quantum singularity (the terminology used below was "coined" by our colleagues from Earth. We have agreed to use this terminology in honor of the human scholar who deduced a great deal of what we know about the workings uf the universe, Stephen Hawking).

  1. "Normal" AQS. This AQS is identical to a "real" QS, except it is created by artificial means. It has about 1 billion tons of mass and will be with us for a very, very long time. Don't get in it's way.

  2. AQS "light": The AQS is created as above, but a smaller amount of matter is added to the singularity to make it "real". When the sustaining fields are shut down, it evaporates within a few minutes (unless it ingests a huge amount of matter in the meantime) and releases as much energy as a real QS when it evaporates. (Vital statistics for this type of AQS are given below).

  3. Virtual AQS: The AQS is created by intense convergent subspace fields. Although it has no mass, it has a strong gravitic field and thus, "virtual mass". It acts as a singularity as long as the fields remain in place, but "evaporates" with a much lower yield than a "real" QS when the fields are shut off.

Statistics for AQS "light":

Event horizon diameter: somewhat smaller than a proton.
Mass: 1 million tons (equivalent to the mass of a cube of water 100 meters on a side)
Energy output from evaporation: more than ~6,000 gigawatts
Approximate life span: (substantially) less than 10 billion years.
Strength of gravity field:

 At 2 meters: ~1 gee
 At 1 meter: ~4 gees
Advantages of AQS "light" over "normal" AQS: It won't hang around for 10 billion years. You don't have to pump it full of nearly as much "stuff" before you can use it. It releases more energy than the bigger one. Why? Because virtual particles forming near it have a better chance to escape, due to the lower mass and smaller surface area.

Advantages of "virtual" AQS over other types: Possibility of adjusting field strength to match output to power requirements. Probably doesn't make the ship disappear in an impressive radioactive fireball if something seriously goes wrong. You can turn it off if you want to (say, for maintenance). You can turn it back on when you want to (as long as there's nothing wrong with the mechanism and you have power to "jump-start" it).

How do you extract power from an AQS? There are at least three ways which require no technology more advanced than ours:

  1. If the AQS has spin, it will generate a rotating magnetic field. This rotating field will act as a rotor in a dynamo and will induce current in any wire placed in proximity to the AQS. It need not be very close, since a magnetic field is only slightly affected by the strong gravity field of the AQS. Induction coils can be integrated within the structure of the containment field generation equipment.

  2. Plasma can be produced by injecting matter at high velocity into the AQS chamber on a tangent to the event horizon (so it won't vanish into the AQS's event horizon). The distance from the singularity at which tidal forces turn matter into plasma is significantly greater than the radius of the event horizon. The plasma, already at a high velocity, may be removed with magnetic fields and run through a Magneto-Hydro-Dynamic (MHD) generator.

  3. The less massive a singularity is, the greater the amount of radiation it emits. Introduce a stream of matter well clear of the event horizon and the strong tidal zone and the radiation itself will heat the matter to a plasma state so it can be used in an MHD as in example 2.

How could an AQS be used as a weapon?

  1. A "normal" AQS has a (relatively) large area of effect. Even if you grazed your target, it would suffer catastrophic effects. If it was detected before it came so close that the target vessel was unable to accelerate away from it, it might be severely damaged by tidal forces even if it did escape. If it was detected before it came too close, the target vessel might be able to muster enough gees of acceleration to get away. Whether you hit or you missed, you'd certainly have to remember where it went so you wouldn't run into it later.

  2. The AQS "light" could be used in one of two ways. The first way would be to collide it with the target. Once it was in contact with the target, it would just "suck it up", just like the heavier version. The other way would be to time things so that just as the AQS arrived at the target, it evaporated (with 1 million megatons' worth of energy. Even the Borg don't have shielding that good, one would imagine). A Borg cube masses well over one billion tons or more. It might be better to throw a barrage of AQSs at one with sufficient velocity so only a fraction of the total mass is carried off by any one AQS. This ensures that they will decay within a reasonable time.

  3. A "virtual" AQS would be used much like either of the above, but might be configured to collapse its sustaining fields before it ingested enough matter to form a permanent singularity. Actually, that would be very interesting. You'd have the initial effect of a regular QS, followed by the same sort of energy released by a real QS because it would have ingested enough mass before the sustainer field collapsed to be a real QS.


Go to VLV6

Click Here to return to VIVA LAS VEGAS main menu

Return to Top Menu 


Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1