For those who follow space technology, we are living in an amazing time. Flights into space are becoming routine, research on the moon and Mars are happening constantly, and advanced telescopes are allowing us to see further into space than ever before.

The biggest obstacle that the industry faces, however, remains in place. Traveling beyond our own solar system (or even to the edges of it) is nearly impossible due to the extreme distances involved.

Even if we were able to create a starship that was capable of housing people and traveling at the same speed as the fastest man made object ever (635,266 kilometers/394,736 miles per hour) it would still take about 7700 years just to reach the closest star to us (not including the sun, of course).

Scientists are constantly working on figuring out ways to travel at faster speeds, but for the most part, they are just theories at this point. One idea that has been around since 2009, however, suggests that we may be able to create artificial black holes that are small enough to be contained within a starship, yet emit enough energy to power the ship to incredible speeds.

In the paper, the team wrote:

“We find that a black hole with a radius of a few attometers at least roughly meets the list of criteria. Such BHs would have mass of the order of 1,000,000 tonnes, and lifetimes ranging from decades to centuries. A high-efficiency square solar panel a few hundred km on each side, in a circular orbit about the sun at a distance of 1,000,000 km, would absorb enough energy in a year to produce one such BH.”

Of course, all of that energy would need to be stored up, then directed to a single point very quickly, in order to create the black hole. In theory, however, all of these things are possible using the physics we understand today.

Once the artificial black hole is created, however, there needs to be a ship with an ‘engine’ in place that can take the energy from that black hole and use it as propulsion. The team researching this option has a method to make that work as well.

The paper continues:

“We could add a thick layer of matter which would absorb the gamma rays, reradiate in optical frequencies, and focus the resulting light rays. An absorber which stops only gamma rays heading towards the front of the ship and allows the rest to escape out the back causes gamma rays to radiate from the ship asymmetrically. In this way, even the escaping non-absorbed gamma rays contribute some thrust.”

While all of this would be extremely difficult, at least this idea has the possibility of working using today’s level of physics and technology. Many things that we see around us today would have seemed almost as impossible to people living just a couple generations ago.

Finding technological solutions that use things that are possible today is an important step.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a quantum computer simulation that has “reversed time” and physics may never be the same.