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Old January 28th, 2004, 04:57 PM
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Default Re: Why is Space a Vacuum

Quote:
Nebula's are basically gasses being held in place by a gravitational force or other. These nebula can be pretty much any gas combination. So to turn this toward an SEIV topic, would it be possible to make a component that could use the inherent gasses of a nebula and convert them into energy for a ship or say stationary Starbase where a Q-reactor was not present?
Also known as ramscoops.

The element mix you'll find is essentially pure hydrogen with a tad of helium mixed in. Fly through at high speed, and scoop up those 10,000 molecules per cm^3
You'll have to sweep 3x10^17 cubic meters before you've got 1 gram of hydrogen though, so you need a big scoop.

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And the densities of nebulae are so very low, only "none" races could consider it breathable.
Plus, there are no convenient ways to move around, since the material is so very thin, and there aren't even any stars around to sail by.

Black holes are a bad idea to mine for matter.
Jupiter would be uneconomical to pull material up from.
Stars are much worse, and hotter too. Solar wind is too thin to bother with.
Neutron stars, well your digging equipment would be compacted into neutronium and join the star, and the gravity is much worse.
Black holes are insanely bad.

They do evaporate, though, and emit radiation like a blackbody. As they get smaller, their effective temperature goes up and they emit more, and shrink faster until boom.

In the Last second of its existence, according to theory IIRC, it will lose 1000 tons of mass as energy. Enough to sterilize the entire solar system from anywhere nearby.

Any decent sized hole has an effective temperature lower than the surrounding universe, and will just pull in photons and stray atoms to grow.
Eventually, as space expands, the surroundings will approach emptyness, and the huge hole will begin to evaporate.

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The scale of time you are talking about is many millions of years.
If the race is waiting for nebulae to form randomly, they'd be an incredibly ancient race.

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PS:
Fun trumps all! If it would be fun to play, go ahead and do it!
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