“In space no one can hear you scream; and in a black hole, no one can see you disappear.”
― Stephen Hawking.
So what is a kugelblitz? Well first to understand we must understand black holes, more specifically how they are formed and their mechanics.
Black Holes
Black holes is a region in spacetime, where gravity is just so powerful it can suck in everything including light. Light can’t escape only when it’s within the grasp of the schwarzschild radius. At first glance these objects may seem like it’s impossible to escape from, but in fact if we were to take a black hole with the same mass as our sun orbital paths would not change.
The Dissection of a Black Hole
To further understand black holes we need to bisect it and know which part does what.
The Singularity: This is a point in space time where matter is compressed down to at a point with zero volume, this makes it have infinite density and propagates a gravitational force proportional to it mass. This point is unviewable as it is covered by an event horizon, however if loop quantum gravity is true a naked singularity could be viewed.
Source
The Event Horizon: This is the region in space time that could be described best as the point of no return. Any object, including light, cannot escape it. The escape velocity is higher than the speed of light, therefore the name black hole. To find the region of event horizon (radius from singularity to the event horizon), it can be found by the equation of
.
Precursor to Kugelblitz
Under Newtonian Gravity which is most commonly taught in schools, describes that all matter with mass is affected by gravity and propagates it also. But we all know better that is not true, due to the fact that light is affected by it. This massive hole within Newton’s proposal of how gravity works was solved by Einstein by the theory that we know as General Relativity. Einstein has also described how matter and energy are the two same sides of 1 coin, with the iconic equation of (drumroll please)
.Kugelblitz
Now with the basics out of the way, I can finally explain what a kugelblitz is. A kugelblitz is a black hole created from concentrated radiation in a singular spot within spacetime, which is contrary on how normal black holes are created (collapse of stars, other theories for primal black holes exist). The equations I prescribed earlier will be important in demonstrating what it will take to create an artificially made black hole.
To put the energy scale in perspective to create a black hole, I’ve done some maths. For a penny sized black hole it would required 3.865×10^33 joules to create a kugelblitz of that tiny proportion. That is 118 days worth of the energy that the sun produces. But there are problems with creating a kugelblitz, cramming so much radiation into such a tiny spot would create such high temperatures that it surpases the planck temperature, which is the temperature of the universe just 5.4x10^-44 seconds after the big bang. At this point the physics as we know it don’t work, and it’s quite possible that a black hole may not form as it is also limit of gravity. It has also been postulated that a spacecraft engine may be created, that takes a vantage of the hawking-radiation of a kugelblitz around the size of a proton.
Personal Comments
Since last week, I’ve made new friends in the community. Which I would like to thank for being so nice and welcoming. Second of all I wish to thank the new followers that I’ve received all 28 of you, I was even surprised I was gonna make it past 10. I would like to ask a question for all dear readers, would any of you be interested in hypothetical more mathsy posts such as “What would it take to blow up a planet/power a death star” etc. Now I’ll leave on the final note of thank you reading to this very last part of the post.
Sources
https://www.space.com/24306-interstellar-flight-black-hole-power.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kugelblitz_(astrophysics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole
http://minerva.union.edu/vianil/web_stuff2/Structure_of_Black_Holes.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/S/Schwarzschild+Radius
http://minerva.union.edu/vianil/web_stuff2/Structure_of_Black_Holes.htm
http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_blackholes_singularities.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_horizon
http://www.eram.k12.ny.us/education/components/faq/faq.php?sectiondetailid=64024
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(United_States_coin)
https://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html
http://www.learnastronomyhq.com/articles/how-much-energy-does-the-sun-produce.html
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-a-black-hole-58.html
Sources for masses etc, https://www.wolframalpha.com/