How does the Ori black hole drive work

[wolram]

One of the enemies of SGI is the Ori, how does their black hole drive work?

 

[phinds]

One of the enemies of SGI is the Ori, how does their black hole drive work?

Exactly the same as any sci-fic thing works. Magic.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Since it's a black hole, black magic.

 

[phinds]

Since it's a black hole, black magic.

Oh. Right. Good point.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Exactly the same as any sci-fic thing works. Magic.

Since it's a black hole, black magic.

I've seen you two post sentiments to this effect over and over again in this subforum. It's the science fiction subforum, whilst we do get the odd misguided member trying to find out how an SF device would work from a real world perspective most are looking to explore the in-universe ramifications. If you can't post in this subforum without being disparaging or sarcastic perhaps you should reconsider posting in this section at all.

And if you think an OP's question is poorly formed or their thread is not suitable for this subforum please report it so it can simply be removed.

 

[russ_watters]

I'm not familiar with that show/universe, but in the Star Trek universe, Romulan warbirds are powered by black holes. A manageably sized black hole of a couple of skyscrapers in mass would radiate a huge amount of energy:
http://www.space.com/24306-interstellar-flight-black-hole-power.html

How you turn that into propoulsion is a separate matter, but there are a number of options...

 

[Drakkith]

One of the enemies of SGI is the Ori, how does their black hole drive work?

I don't think it's ever explained in-show. I suppose they could continuously drop a bunch of matter into the black hole and capture the radiated energy.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Black holes have come up in the show for other reasons; opening a gate near one causes the gravitational time dilation to effect the other side of the gate. In another episode by linking a gate between a sun and a large black hole they damaged the star to the extent that it went supernova. I guess that could make sense, if enough material in the core of the star disappeared you could end up with something like a core collapse.

In any case the Ori used it to keep a stargate open indefinitely somehow:
http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Black_hole

 

[Vanadium 50]

<foghorn leghorn>
That's a joke, I say that's a joke son. I keep pitchin' 'em and you keep missin' 'em.
</foghorn leghorn>

More seriously, why is phind's "magic" a worse answer than "by reversing the polarity of the chronotron frazzleblaster"? And now I have a cheese I need to get to sickbay.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

More seriously, why is phind's "magic" a worse answer than "by reversing the polarity of the chronotron frazzleblaster"? And now I have a cheese I need to get to sickbay.

A few reasons;

1) It's not true. Most good works of speculative fiction have some worldbuilding as their foundation. Rarely are things made up as they go along, particularly in literary science fiction an fantasy. Answering "magic" to a question ignores the mechanics of the setting.

2) It's unhelpful. If someone is looking for an interesting discussion on a fictional setting, or simply to clarify a plot point they are confused about, replying with "it's magic/made up" does nothing to help.

3) It's rude and dismissive. When a member posts a thread on PF in this section so long as it's in the rules they should be afforded respect. By answering with "it's made up/magic" more often than not you're implying they weren't smart enough to figure out the obvious point that fiction is fictional.

There are obviously times when such a response is appropriate. For instance; if the answer literally is magic. Other times it's more useful to say "that was never clarified in the lore". Finally if someone is asking if X could be possible in real life one could answer by saying "no, X relies on fictional magic that does not exist".

 

[OCR]

One of the enemies of SGI is the Ori, how does their black hole drive work?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_starships_in_Stargate#Ori_starships use an intergalactic hyperdrive... but, the power source is of unknown design.

 

[OCR]

...but in the Star Trek universe, Romulan warbirds are powered by black holes.

Or, more correctly, an artificial quantum singularity... as in "Timescape"....

The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_Stargate#Ori_technology also used a quantum singularity for it's power source...

 

[hsdrop]

Well if I had the tech to hold a black hole in side something with gravitational shielding, there are 2 ways that i can see it working..

1. Hold the black hole in a box or container with gravitational shielding that has one end open. now the pull from it would only come from the open side of the box. point the open end to the front of the ship or in the direction you want to go. you would use the pull of the hole to pull thing and places to you.

2. Put the hole in a close box or container with gravitational shielding. Then use the gravitational pull to set particles in orbit around the singularity. You could gather energy from the orbit of what ever around the hole for the ship

 

[jackwhirl]

Well if I had the tech to hold a black hole in side something with gravitational shielding, there are 2 ways that i can see it working..

As long as you've got gravitational shielding, you can leave the black hole and just let the gravitational attraction of one half of the universe pull you wherever you want to go, as in Robert Buettner's Orphanage.

 

[DHF]

Phind's Answer of Magic honestly wasn't far off, and the Ori, I think would appreciate it as they were a race so advanced that they wanted the inhabitants of their galaxy to worship them as Gods. Some of the only Ori tech explained in any degree was their genetic engineering of the Priors. Most of the Ship and weapon tech was so far advanced that it defies much of our current understanding of physics. Many of the feats we see them perform are clearly impossible to us. This was part of the Writer's intention, they spent the previous 6 or 7 years of the show detailing how Earth had become an interstellar species as a result of a war with a more advanced race (the Gou'ould). Over the years of the show they had stolen and reverse engineered much of their enemy's Technology.
The Introduction of the Ori was to intimidate the viewer, to show that for as advanced as the Humans had become, The Ori were so far ahead of them that they could barely understand how the technology worked much less how to counter it.

I don't remember hearing about the Ori ships being powered by Black holes per se, the only reference to black holes was regarding the "super gate" and that was explained as using the time dilation of the black hole to keep it open. The ships themselves looked like they were constructed around normal star gates and my wife and I often speculated that the gates were open to the center of stars, using the influx of energy to power the ships. How any of this works however was intentionally designed to be unexplainable.
In the end after all we were exploring a race that was millions of years old in the show.