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  1. - Top - End - #31
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    Kobold

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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by gomipile View Post
    _Cool stuff_
    Do gravitational waves have energy? And if so, do they affect spacetime (beyond waving)?

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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rydiro View Post
    Do gravitational waves have energy? And if so, do they affect spacetime (beyond waving)?
    They take energy to produce, and impart energy to matter and energy concentrations they pass through.

    They affect the temporary shape of spacetime while they pass, yes.

    Both of these are what allow us to detect them at all with instruments like the LIGO detectors.
    Quote Originally Posted by Harnel View Post
    where is the atropal? and does it have a listed LA?

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    biggrin Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by gomipile View Post
    They take energy to produce, and impart energy to matter and energy concentrations they pass through.

    They affect the temporary shape of spacetime while they pass, yes.

    Both of these are what allow us to detect them at all with instruments like the LIGO detectors.
    So, could you make a stable black hole out of gravity waves? Just asking for a friend.

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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Please clarify what you mean by "Stable Black Hole".
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  5. - Top - End - #35
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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rydiro View Post
    So, could you make a stable black hole out of gravity waves? Just asking for a friend.
    In theory anything with enough energy could form an event horizon, so yes.

    In practice, even an arbitrarily advanced society would have much more effective ways of making a black hole if they wanted one. Even in a sci-fi setting, I can't see why anybody would do this unless you're just looking to spruce up your technobabble and don't care overmuch about the real-world meanings.

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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rydiro View Post
    So, could you make a stable black hole out of gravity waves? Just asking for a friend.
    In theory you could get enough energy density of gravity waves to create a black hole. Getting sufficient density of light is ridiculously hard, and light is probably the easiest of the fundamental force carriers to control. Gravity is significantly harder and we do not currently have any means to direct it, so you would have to figure out how to handle the 1/r^2 losses. With light you can set things up so that the energy density increases with distance away from from your source (thanks to lasers).
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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Unless I'm really missing something, the energy density of a laser still decreases with distance, because the photons spread apart as a function of the wavelength.
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  8. - Top - End - #38
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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by warty goblin View Post
    Unless I'm really missing something, the energy density of a laser still decreases with distance, because the photons spread apart as a function of the wavelength.
    I think what was meant is that with a laser, one can set up a situation where the intensity of a beam increases with distance up to a chosen focal point, after which it starts spreading normally. Yes, the maximum possible intensity at the focal point will be less the further away the focal point is set up to be. That's restricted by the spread you're thinking about, of the beam produced by the laser hardware itself.

    However, in practice the intensity of the entire beam will still be increasing up until that point.


    What one would do is take a collimated beam, put it through diverging optics, collimate it again at the desired minimum initial intensity for a short distance, then pass it through focusing optics with the desired focal point. The maximum intensity at the focal point will be limited by the laser hardware and the total distance traveled, including within the mentioned optics.
    Quote Originally Posted by Harnel View Post
    where is the atropal? and does it have a listed LA?

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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rockphed View Post
    Getting sufficient density of light is ridiculously hard, and light is probably the easiest of the fundamental force carriers to control. Gravity is significantly harder and we do not currently have any means to direct it...
    Since gravity waves travel through spacetime itself, I'm sure that there's some way to assemble galaxies such that gravity waves from multiple sources all get lensed and focused at a single point. (Which might require some elements of some paths to require exotic matter, at which point our best hope of acquiring that is through magic.)

    Which does get back to the question of why a society able to manipulate entire galaxies and to cause other black holes to collide at exactly the right places and exactly the right times would bother to do that, since as you mentioned it'd be much easier to just make a black hole by cramming together a bunch of mass and/or light where you want in the first place.

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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by warty goblin View Post
    Unless I'm really missing something, the energy density of a laser still decreases with distance, because the photons spread apart as a function of the wavelength.
    Fun fact: lasers are weird. The field intensity of a laser looks the same whether the laser is focusing (getting smaller) or diffusing (getting bigger). How tight the laser can be focused is a function of both frequency and how quickly it is being focused (with farther focal lengths having tighter focusing). If I have a laser that at its output has an energy density of 5 W/m^2 and a 1 m^2 aperture, I can focus it down to a much smaller area, still have almost 5 watts, but an energy density in the hundreds or thousands of watts per square meter. If I align several lasers so their focuses are in the same spot, I can add together their energy densities (because electromagnetism is, to the best of our knowledge, linear in a vacuum). I don't remember the theoretical amount of energy density you need to make a black-hole with UV light, but I do remember that it was something absurd.
    Quote Originally Posted by Wardog View Post
    Rockphed said it well.
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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Torath View Post
    Please clarify what you mean by "Stable Black Hole".
    It still being there a few days after waves stop transfering energy into it.
    You know, long enough to destroy a star system with a spacetime Eddy.

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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rydiro View Post
    It still being there a few days after waves stop transfering energy into it.
    You know, long enough to destroy a star system with a spacetime Eddy.
    Black holes, once they exist, don't go away again until they evaporate via Hawking radiation, and that's a very slow process for even a relatively small black hole. Also, just creating a small black hole somewhere in a solar system wouldn't destroy it unless said black hole was of stellar mass--black holes are not the cosmic vacuum cleaners of legend, if you were to somehow convert our Sun into a black hole right now the planets would continue in their orbits as they have for millions of years. Everyone would die because no more sunlight means everything gets very cold very quickly, but they wouldn't get sucked into the black hole.

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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rydiro View Post
    It still being there a few days after waves stop transfering energy into it.
    You know, long enough to destroy a star system with a spacetime Eddy.
    To further clarify, do you mean using gravity waves to compact material tightly enough that it forms a black hole? In such a case, the black hole will be as stable as any other black hole of its size.

    Or focusing gravity waves so their pull is as strong as a black hole? In which case: see factotum's reply.
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  14. - Top - End - #44
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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Torath View Post
    To further clarify, do you mean using gravity waves to compact material tightly enough that it forms a black hole? In such a case, the black hole will be as stable as any other black hole of its size.

    Or focusing gravity waves so their pull is as strong as a black hole? In which case: see factotum's reply.
    The latter, i meant a gravitational wave kugelblitz. I wasn't sure if there were relevant differences between light and gravity waves which would result in different properties of the black hole. Anyway, i got factotums answer.

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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rydiro View Post
    I wasn't sure if there were relevant differences between light and gravity waves which would result in different properties of the black hole. Anyway, i got factotums answer.
    No-hair theorem. The only relevant traits of a black hole are mass, angular momentum, and charge. (Where sufficiently large amounts of energy in whatever form are treated as their mass equivalent.)

    Once the event horizon is up, you can't really tell if the black hole you're looking at is primordial, a stellar remnant, a kugelblitz, or came from God deciding to play Rube Goldberg with gravitational waves.

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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Anymage View Post
    God deciding to play Rube Goldberg with gravitational waves.
    That is perhaps the best description of what we are talking about. I want to sig your post, but I'm not sure the best place to cut off.
    Quote Originally Posted by Wardog View Post
    Rockphed said it well.
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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    I think the quickest answer to this question is "everybody dead". There is no energy conversion that is 100% efficient, so if you are inputting a near-unlimited amount of energy to run things, the losses and inefficiencies in that process will dump extra heat into the atmosphere and gradually raise the planet's temperature to the point where humans can't survive anymore.
    This should be negligible. It isn't significantly different from burning fossil fuels at a rate far higher than they are being created. However, it's *just* waste heat, and not adding an insulation effect the way greenhouse gasses do. So, it should represent a net improvement over the current status quo.

    Yeah, it might be marginally higher than no energy use, but it's certainly less warming than most commonly employed methods by a ludicrous factor.

    Furthermore, the earth isn't a closed energy system. Waste heat can and does escape. It's like having a hotter fire instead of building a house with insulation. There'll be some additional warmth, but it isn't going to stick around.

    So, at least at anything vaguely close to current population levels, it's not a problem at all.

    Now, what happens as a result of problem being sucked out of the big bang way back in time...no idea. Sky's the limit there.

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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    If you're somehow taking energy out of the Big Bang, you're probably responsible for starting that event, as you're disrupting the perfect balance that kept everything in a minimum-entropy singularity. Introducing it again much later in the past might be enough to close the universe again and eventually induce the Big Crunch.

    So, mazel tov! You're repsonsible for both the creation, and the destruction, of the entire universe! We hope you're happy.
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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Caledonian View Post
    If you're somehow taking energy out of the Big Bang, you're probably responsible for starting that event, as you're disrupting the perfect balance that kept everything in a minimum-entropy singularity. Introducing it again much later in the past might be enough to close the universe again and eventually induce the Big Crunch.

    So, mazel tov! You're repsonsible for both the creation, and the destruction, of the entire universe! We hope you're happy.
    I repeat, go and read the Asimov novel "The Gods Themselves", it covers this, despite having been written before current theories of the Big Bang.

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    Default Re: What happens when you have infinite energy?

    The Gods Themselves didn't involve shipping energy around, but something far more esoteric. And until some human scientists devoted themselves to understanding the phenomenon, and then responding to its basic flaw by actively compensating, the "infinite energy source" was going to make our sun, and then all the stars, go nova.
    Alignments are objective. Right and wrong are not.
    Good: Will act to prevent harm to others even at personal cost.
    Evil: Will seek personal benefit even if it causes harm to others.
    Law: General, universal, and consistent trump specific, local, and inconsistent.
    Chaos: Specific, local, and inconsistent trump general, universal, and consistent.

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