Gamma Telescopes Could Track Black Hole Powered Spaceships

If there are advanced civilizations that use powerful gamma lasers to create artificial black holes that power their spaceships, maybe we could find them using our gamma telescopes. Or maybe we even already found them.

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We would like to know very much if we are alone in the universe. Sadly, so far it seems that we are, as even though we are trying really hard to find extraterrestrial life we haven’t found anything. But there is a good chance that if alien civilizations exist, they are likely older than us and more technologically advanced. So, to find them looking for signs of advanced technologies could be a good option.

One of the most advanced possible technologies would be black hole powered spaceships. Though, whether they can work depends on whether quantum gravity is a thing and we still don’t know that for sure. Either way, if they do work the gamma radiation produced by creation might be a clue to the existence of extraterrestrial life. Louis Crane from the Kansas State University recently wrote a study about how we could use our gamma telescopes to track the black hole powered ship. It may sound crazy, but why not at least try.

You may not be surprised that black hole powered spaceships are an idea that comes from science fiction. The first time it appeared was in a novel by Arthur C. Clark named Imperial Earth. In both cases, advanced civilizations harvested the energy from rotating black holes. The idea is actually great. If we had a microscopic black hole that we fed with matter, it would then transform it into energy making it the ultimate engine to move spaceships at relativistic speeds.

Obviously, constructing such an engine is way out of our reach for the moment. From what we know you need to fire a beam of a really extreme gamma laser into the area of a single atom. If what we know about physics is correct. A civilization that completely uses its planetary system could do it though. Such a civilization is number 2 on the Kardashev scale.

If a civilization that uses black holes to power their spaceships is in our vicinity and uses these gamma lasers we might discover them with “spillovers”. These are unexpected side effects of activities. Searching for spillovers is something we could actually do by looking for spillovers of the gamma lasers. Our telescopes could maybe detected at a distance of between 100 to 1000 light years. And we could even figure out if they are of artificial origin based on their physical properties.

The most interesting this is, we may have already discovered some. We do know of several gamma ray sources that defy all attempts at explaining their origin.

Sources:

• https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.09985
• https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/03/06/black-hole-propulsion-as-technosignature/

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