Extracting Energy from Accretion into a Kerr Black Hole
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 16, 2026

Emission Spectroscopic Boundary Layer Investigation during Ablative Material Testing in Plasmatron
Published on: June 9, 2016
Abstract:
The highest efficiency of converting rest mass into energy by accreting matter into a Kerr black hole is approximately 31% (Thorne 1974). We propose a new process in which periods of accretion from a thin disk, and the associated spin-up of the black hole, alternate with the periods of no accretion and magnetic transfer of energy from the black hole to the disk. These cycles can repeat indefinitely, at least in principle, with the black hole mass increasing by approximately 66% per cycle and up to approximately 43% of accreted rest mass radiated away by the disk.
Related Concept Videos
Detection of Black Holes
Their closest cousins are neutron stars, which are composed almost entirely of neutrons packed against each other, making them extremely dense. A neutron star has the same mass as the Sun but its diameter is only a few kilometers. Therefore, the escape velocity from their surface is close to the speed of light.
Not until the 1960s, when the first neutron...
Schwarzschild Radius and Event Horizon
The minimum speed required to launch a projectile from the surface of an object to which it is gravitationally bound so that it eventually escapes the object’s gravitational field is called the escape velocity. The escape velocity is independent of the mass of the object. Merging the idea of escape velocity with the...
Conservation of Angular Momentum: Application
Energy Diagrams - I
Take the example of a skater on a parabolic ramp. The potential energy at different points along the ramp will be proportional to the height of the ramp, which varies quadratically with the horizontal position on the ramp. As the skater moves down the ramp from the highest position,...
Escape Velocity
To calculate the escape velocity, it is assumed that no energy is lost to any frictional forces. In practice, a satellite launched from...
Radiation: Applications
The average...

