It's how during the Human/Romulan war of the 22nd century no Romulan ships and their crews were ever captured. If defeated and on the verge of being boarded by Starfleet the Romulan Commander would simply collapse his/her ships core self destruction. There would be nothing to recover. Hence why nobody knew what Romulans looked like until the mid 23rd century.
@@DrewLSsix Then how do you explain for the whole war no bodies recovered no technology recovered? Tbh the whole concept of this war from a story perspective is just flawed. This part of canon needs retcons for it to make any sense by the 23rd century.
@@paulgrattan3885 yeah, the storyline from Balance of Terror has some issues, but any ship capable of interstellar travel is well capable of entirely reducing its organic crew to nothing remotely identifiable. If you assume the Romulans had a no surrender no information doctrine it's not hard to believe that they made sure each ship and crew was prepared to accomplish this. As for retcons, those have been made a couple times already, Enterprise did away with the idea that they didnt have visual communication capabilities and the whole nuclear weapons thing. They also did away with the assumption that BoT was the very first time they had experienced cloaking technology.
@@paulgrattan3885 I disagree with this. I do not think that the romulans had artificial black hole tech at that time. One of the reasons Earth was able to win as I understand it was they had mastered mater-antimatter power on their ships, which meant more power which gave them an advantage over romulan fusion reactor powered ships.
I have as well. Just like cold fusion, I can't figure out how they could form one, stabilize it, and get an energy surplus. I would think almost all the energy would have to be used for containment.
@@retluoc in a Schwartzfield kugolblitz, by definition it will always output more energy in Hawking radiation than it does through tidal force, so there will always be a surplus of energy coming from the singularity. In fact as the singularity approaches zero mass, the output of surplus energy approaches 100%. You would start with a black hole composed of photons with a mass of a couple of million tons, but the energy needed to contain it would always be less than the total energy it can output. By the way it also doesn’t matter if you bring it close to another object. If the containment were breached, it would simply convert itself to energy faster and evaporate. Because it would be radiating more energy than gravity at this point, the singularity cannot grow. It can only shrink. Since the actual size of the event horizon is so small (ie: 1x10^-15m) there is no way to introduce more mass into the black hole without the black hole pushing that mass away with Hawking radiation. You could place the black hole in a block of solid lead, but it wouldn’t matter because the gravity pulling the container in is less powerful than the radiation pushing it away. Sort of counterintuitive, but basically at a certain size, a black hole can only shrink and never grow.
The singularity lends itself to the Romulans' sneaky ways. If the core goes critical, the ship gets sucked into the black hole. Should the ship be destroyed during a covert mission, there's no physical evidence!
@@Freddie1980 the microsingularities used by the Romulans are too small to be sustainable without consuming enough mass to grow. Even a dozen ships wouldn't be enough, so it would fade away as well. There would be no trace of anything, aside from perhaps some radiation and ripples in spacetime. I'm not sure how easy those would be to detect.
Assuming Artificial Quantum Singularity is a more verbose term for Kugelblitz the Romulans have traded one explosive situation for another. They no longer have to deal with antimatter explosions as at the correct size a Kugelblitz would only need about a Kilogram of matter added per year to continue generating power just from Hawking Radiation. This also implies a very unpleasant means of executing traitors by using them as fuel. The downside to a Kugelblitz is that they do act like black holes meaning that the smaller in mass they are the more energy they put out from Hawking Radiation, including explosive results as the mass melts away by way of the Radiation. This makes the shows explosions for destroyed Romulan ships accurate and STO's implosion inaccurate. Unless the means of destruction in STO happens to add mass to the Kugelblitz to the point of becoming self-sustaining. Then again those implosions could be the result of the Commander setting the self-destruct to leave no evidence that the ship was really there. Edit: Source for those interested Isaac Arthur's videos on Kugelblitzes.
I mean, in STO the black hole rapidly expands, implodes and then explodes again. Perhaps the cores use a regular black hole, but infused with chronitrons for higher energy production rates
I'm not sure. An alien species did mistake a Romulan singularity core for a normal black hole at one point and decided to incubate their young their to...ill results. I'd guess it was a standard black hole instead of a radiation black hole.
Astrophysicist here, was going to comment that a black hole so small as we're shown would explode, then looked and saw yours :) so the force field is keeping it from exploding, allowing them to siphon away Harking radiation just as other species handle antimatter plasma. In my mind, that's how it is, anyway :D
TNG didn't even have a consistent name for this Romulan power core. "Forced quantum singularity", "artificial singularity", "quantum anomaly", "confined gravitational singularity", etc. It was implied to be far more powerful than Federation matter-antimatter-dilithium counterparts. It was shown to propel Romulan warbirds just as fast as a Galaxy-D but only for short durations because (in their own words) this somehow "depleted" or "burnt out" the power source.
What I love about the idea about this idea is that the hawking radiation given for matter inserted into the black hole would be exactly equivalent to an antimatter-matter annihilation reactor, but without the need for antimatter. So even though this setup is probably more difficult to engineer, the operation time of a Romulan vessel should be basically unlimited, as you can just dump regular matter into the black hole to keep it topped up.
It's a kugelblitz power plant. You can make one using lasers concentrated on a tiny spot. At the mass of the empire state building and slightly larger than a proton it would actually be far safer than antimatter. Black holes "evaporate" faster the smaller they are but also release more radiation when smaller. So you'd want one that tiny so it be just big enough to maintain by perfectly lining up protons to feed it. Because at that size it wouldn't capture particles on it's own. It's gravity would just slingshot them around and away.
It'd be nice if the majority of Romulan technology was gravity manipulation based. Gravity Rail Guns (Accelerating a bullet to near light speed), Quantum Singularity Bombs (Implosion on detonation), Gravity Mass Drivers (Throwing asteroids or other large pieces of matter), Space Time Shielding (A form of warp like shielding, incoming damage warped around the ship).
I think that if you allow a kugelblitz (artificial micro black hole) to deplete itself, the Hawking radiation being inversely proportional to its event horizon size you would expect an immense explosion rather than a gravitational implosion. The effect would be similar to an antimatter explosion.
@@chrismc410 Surely even a Klingon would agree that a black hole is at least good for a large scale garbage disposal. I can just imagine a Klingon captain commenting such as he watches an enemy ship fall into a black hole.
The first time we ever heard about the artificial quantum singularity cores of Romulan ships was in that episode where aliens were using one as a nest and shattered the space/time continuum when the Enterprise came to assist with a power transfer and both crews had to work together to stop it and after the crew of the Warbird was successfully beamed aboard the Enterprise and the beam between both ships was severed the Enterprise then headed to the Romulan Neutral Zone to take the crew home.
"sometimes when I sit in my bunk in the quiet I can hear the screams of our ancestors on Vulcan" "Have you been looking into the engine core again?" "Yes,why?"
The Voyager episode Hunters features a relay station powered by a contained artificial singularity. The crew acts like it's never been done before, like this is the first time it's been discovered, yet here tare the Romulan's doing it everyday. Maybe I'm missing something here.
Romulans are the best. Their ships and tech are so cool. One theory about why they use forced singularity technology rather than standard Matter/Antimatter is that the standard reactor may not be enough to power their cloaks, which are more advanced then the Klingon versions.
they do use that tech to power all their weapons and technology, but it is also out of their arrogance and desire to stand out. This is why the Vulcans do not use this technology. The Romulans are also a major Beta rather than Alpha Quadrant power so some other races there might also use the tech as standard.
@@jamie210690, because more power. I remember reading that the singularity must be carefully calibrated while the cloak is active to avoid emitting tachyons.
Vulcans suffer from their logic and the lack of risk taking. If something deemed as the most logic way, they won't go against this and follow it. Vulcans took over a century to go from warp 1 to warp 2.
On Star Trek Online the singularity drive is a massive moving sphere that has many moving parts. The Romulans have unlimited energy at least in terms of human lifespans
Interesting comment. Because Romulans are usually described as somehow being resource-poor. They're driven by efficiency, maximizing use and usefulness from scarcity, they're used to sacrifice and deprivation. In TNG, they're fixated on the idea of obtaining an "ultimate" energy source (compare vs Klingon fixation on an "ultimate" weapon, Federation fixation on an "ultimate" knowledge archive, etc). It all seems a bit redundant if they already have unlimited energy at their disposal.
I have a Romulan as my main, and I have the Valkis Temporal Heavy Dreadnought as my flagship. That puppy is powered by a literal black hole the size of a Walmart 😮. When I got it, whoo did I fangirl all over the place🤣.
I bet my Kholhr could sit right behind your big bastard and blow it to pieces xD I ran big ships until I learned what pilot roll (invincibility until finished), running into the shields, and blasting with 4 sets of heavy cannons and torps annihilate them from the back where they usually use phasers or 360 degree cannons and stay out of the front where they keep the heavy hitters and just out turn them until they die. Running a beam boat? Even easier lol
@@slewone4905 Eh, that's more Hirogen. Klingons are the Drama Club.
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Romulans are my favourite Star Trek species as well. My main in Star Trek Online is also a Romulan. It’s cool that some warbirds in STO, such as the Surhuelh class have such a large singularity, they are visible from the outside.
If by "dissipates" you mean a nuclear explosion of unparalleled proportion, then yes there would be an explosion, instead of collapsing inward towards the reactor.
Mini blackholes have a limit to what they can eat.theory is matter is fed into said blackhole and converts into rotational energy.the gravity plaiting then blead that energy ie harvesting it into a energy wave which is used for warp narcelles and energy output.This explains limits to the warbird spead and energy output.A breach or the singualarity takes matter in to fast will result in a unblaced rotation spin witch will tear the the ship apart by conerting it into erergy or a very big bang.This in star trek will look like a ship sucked into a point which flashes into a plasma ball of energy (booom big booooooooooom) or the ship twisted lug a wet rung cloth before said bang(boooooooom).
But we saw in Voyager a contained micro black hole pull into itself an entire space array and three vessels so I don't believe size of the singularity is a factor (in Star Trek anyway). I'm sure Chakotay says the singularity inside the Hirogen array is only a few centimetres across.
@@paulgrattan3885 that's because star trek does and always has had an abusive relationship with science. it says it loves science, gets science all liquored up while showering it with compliments. Then when science is unable to think clearly or act in self defense Star trek shoves it into the back of its windowless van and spends the rest of the night thinking up creative and perverse ways of violating science.
I get a feeling the singularities are much smaller than 1cm, but not so small to instantly evaporate. A few thoughts though. Star trek online portrays Rom ships as simply being crushed by there own black hole. Not sure thatd actually happen, given the singularity itself explodes. More likely it'd explode halfway during the ships collapse. Not sure why the romulans wouldnt make a black home that evaporated faster.
For anybody interested in the actual physics background behind this idea, google "Kugelblitz drive". And it does not implode if containment fails. I don't think the Star Trek authors really understood how it would work or what the limitations are. The smaller the black hole of the Kugelblitz drive, the more energy it will lose as Hawking radiation. Imagine a very small star that gets brighter exponentially and explodes quite violently before it vanishes completely. And this would not happen "if containment fails" but if you don't feed it enough. It's a kind of black hole that doesn't "suck in" matter. The challenge would actually be to get enough matter per time into the micro black hole to keep it stable and generate energy. Then there is the inertia of the mass of the black hole you need to overcome but I guess you can "magic" that problem away with "inertial dampeners". I'll stop now before I get a headache... =)
Great Video!! Perhaps another reason the Romulans use a Forced Quantum Singularity is because it's relatively cheaper then the Matter-Antimatter Reactors and it helps maintain the status quo. It is likely that their ships don't need Dilithium, as they could already be bending space-time. Which helps bolster the Romulan ideals of Superiority and Self Reliance. Just a point to ponder. Keep up the good work sir!!!😁
You know as somebody who watches Star Trek discovery in season 3 after "The Burn" was explained my very first thought was "the Romulans must love this. Also, they did it."
The canon rational was always that Romulans dont have access to significant amounts of dilithium. So they used power cells in TOS and this artificial black hole tech in TNG and later.
@@michaelgreenwood3413 that may not be entirely the case now, as Prodigy introduces a very similar system in the Protocore, which contains a small protostar inside a containment system. the ship requires two high end M/AM warp cores to power the containment systems to keep the contents of the protocore from consuming the ship with its gravity, in addition to powering the ships nromal warp drive and systems. as a micro black hole is an even more potent object than a star, it seems likely that romulan singularity cores do require M/AM warp cores of some kind to power the containment systems. however since the romulans are not trying to power a superfast warp drive like the protocore is, they could probably get by with much less powerful warp cores used mainly to power the containment and act as backup power, which would make the singularity core system much more efficient in terms of antimatter and dilithium use.
And the episode where Picard Troi and Data can try to reverse a warp corp breech and those aliens just wanted to save their babies in the fake singularity
My theory is that the Romulans use the forced quantum singularity just so that they are not reliant on Dilithium for their engines. Unlike their Alpha quadrant adversaries. Not having that weakness is an advantage. If and when Romulus went to war with the rest of the Alpha quadrant, they could just destroy all sources of Dilithium and destroy the ability for anyone else besides them to travel at FTL speeds.
Oh, but it is now! "Let's go HYPERSPACE SKIPPING, kids! It's suddenly _not_ completely suicidal, because J.J. Abrams has to hide his terrible writing by making everything go at breakneck speed with no stopping whatsoever! WHEEEEE!"
I dont think star wars ship can turn on a dime either. They only have rear thrust unless landing so they gotta come about and cant just turn around instantly like trek ships. Its more fantasy tech, but I like it
Yep, although both are purley fantasy, Star Trek uses a more "realistic" technology than Star Wars. Hyperdrive is much much faster than warp, but it involves...bah, I won't geek out here but both FTL theories are online. But for us humans, we'll probably invent warp before hyperdrive.
@@retluoc Hyperdrive has very little on screen science behind it considering Star Wars has been mostly war focused, beyond the fact that fuel reserves do deplete and are hard to obtain (thanks Disney for making a movie each about these). Star Trek being a much more exploratory, and in such science based franchise, has put real scientific theories into it's made up formula.
I want to invent warp drive. You know why? Dollar signs, so I can retire on an island full of...naked ladies.😀. I don't even like to fly -- I take trains. (Now I want to see that movie again). James Cromwell did a great job.
We also never saw Romulan ships imploding in DS9 either, you can bet the Dominion were able to learn the secrets of romulan tech. And we know the Borg have assimilated romulan ships, yet they never found a use for that tech? Or cloaking devices? I guess the borg just never considered stealth a relevant tactic. I remember talking to my GCSE physics teacher back when i was about 16 or so, and i was talking to him about this topic, and he was like "What are you talking about?" and he called himself a trekkie. *shakes head*
Fun fact the idea of using balckholes for power is a realistic proposal. The irl version is called a kugelblitz, the can gain power from hawkin radiation or the penrose process. And its rather safe as tiny black holes die of in tiny fractions of a second.
A Romulan ship would be perfect for *long range exploration* - no fuel needed and can cloak whenever there are hostiles. If one had been pulled into the Delta Quadrant it would've had an easier time than any Starfleet ship. The only issue is the crew just couldn't get along with any other species since they are well… arrogant backstabbing pricks. And any telepaths or super races wouldn't tolerate them. But a Romulan ship could well be on its way back from the Delta Quadrant (slowly) and having no real drama as they avoid any hostile force. And the journey is within the Romulan lifespan. Of course they would have less _adventures._ [And if they managed to make a deal on that weapons planet that Seven of Nine and the Doctor stuffed up … … ] In fact there is a *exploration version of the D'deridex Warbird* in a official supplement on the Romulans for (I think) a RPG. But the exploration branch never got much attention, their job was to discover new civilizations and work out how to subvert them, not pure exploration. As for the Quantum singularly, the same supplement said that they were created in large space stations with a massive energy surplus, and were forced into being already inside a containment field. The whole setup was then moved into the Warbird. And the stations were situated away from anything else in case of "oops". There were plans for a TV series, drawn up post Nemesis (but when that flopped…) that was to be set in the year 3000 with a tired Federation that was slowly falling apart. In it the new Enterprise was supposed to have a *quantum singularity drive* - and quantum Slipstream and a cloak (quantum status unknown). Vulcan and Romulus having been reunified centuries before. But instead they went the prequel route with _Enterprise._
Would've been a mistake. I don't think most fans want a series set after Voyager that's a century or more ahead. Give us a couple of years later, or a decade, or 20 years. But still same era. Then again, if it's a good enough story they could probably get away with any bad choices in other areas (maybe not bad casting for the entire crew).
Thanks Rick sir, as I always enjoy these videos; in facts, I have found great enjoyment with all the videos on your channel, since I have been subscribed to you.
One advantage of a Quantum Singularity Power Core rather than Matter/Antimatter Annihilation Power Core is that Dilithium isn't needed to focus/control the reaction. Other races need access to Dilithium in order to generate the power required for more practical warp speeds via Matter/Antimatter Annihilation. Fusion and other power generation commonly referenced in Trek can generally only sustain low warp speeds at least for ships of larger sizes where more warping of space-time would be required. Obviously warp nacelles etc have become more energy efficient as the Star Trek universe has progressed but they still require extreme amounts of power.
Don't be so sure about that. Remember the planet Remus is one giant dilithium mine. I feel like Dilithium is integral for more than just tuning a M/AM plasma stream.
I assumed the Romulans came to use singularity cores in their ships - in place of the Vulcan style matter/antimatter power as they presumably used at first - after coming across one of the communication relays in the grid that extended from the beta to delta quadrants (as claimed by the Hirogen & used to send the Voyager EMH to the Prometheus) & adapted that technology to their own uses.
I actually had no idea there already was a black hole fueled warp drive. I literally just wrote thirty pages on my own hypothetical. Unfortunately, the whole imploding ship thing from a black hole on board doesn’t add up. The most efficient singularities for power output on star trek ships would be microsingularities. These would have a mass of around a couple skyscrapers. This would be comparable to the ship itself, meaning that that mass would not pull the ship and resulting explosion in on itself. The power output would be in the petawatt range (think like millions of thermonuclear power plants) and I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure they have a lifetime of about 3-4 years before they evaporate - also as they get smaller and smaller, I’m pretty sure their power output increases. These singularities only have a significant pull on material within inches of them. This means that they really can’t consume much material at once. If one escaped containment, it would eat a tiny hole through everything it passed through, but not actually do any severe damage like eating a whole ship. The real danger would be the Hawking radiation - especially as it feeds, even on small amounts of matter - that would irradiate a ship with gamma and x-rays. Still this wouldn’t blow up a ship either.
I'd love to see a grudge match between klingons and vulcans or romulans where Vulcans go berserker mode and take them on. Oh and have it in a STEEL CAGE on a Sunday Sunday Sunday. Get your tix now or listen for your chance to win 2 free tix on the radio...
The "interstellar Extended" mod for KSP has something similar to this, a reactor powered by a tiny artificial black hole. It has a power output of 160 gigawatts and is about as big as a bus, so it has a pretty impressive power to weight ratio to put it mildly.
It’s a good job that none of these black holes went crazy with all the Warbirds we’ve seen get destroyed. I can see the Battles of Chin’Toka going very differently; “Sir, the Romulan flagship has been destroyed... and it’s taken two of the systems planets with it!”, “My God! Shields! Shields!!”
Would be nice they expanded on why they went with gravity wells instead of antimatter. Maybe something to do with historical deficiency in obtaining dilithium in their systems or something to that effect.
Just wanted to let you know that you have pulled me back in to Star Trek Online. Been loving your videos and every time I saw a scene from the game, I was impressed by how much it had changed from when I played year 2. Of course none of that would have happened if your video's weren't incredibly entertaining.
I'd expect they're creating a kugleblitz black hole! It doesn't use concentrated matter to form but concentrated energy. The science of using such things is very much within the realm of real physics. Or at least current models. In fact such black holes could power and provide gravity for artificial shell worlds even Birch Worlds.
There is also another way to generate energy from a singularity, but feeding it matter so that it forms an accretion disc, the matter in the disc becomes compressed, forming fusion reactions, releasing large amounts of energy. Some of the engery is swallowed by the singularity to keep it in existence, the rest is then used by the ship to power the warp nacelles. While not as effective as matter/ antimatter reactions, while it would require more fuel overall, one would not have to worry about having to contain any antimatter, and the resulting saving of space can be used for increased storage of fuel for the singularity.
For the Star Trek stories I'm writing, I was going to have Romulans travel back in time to influence a primitive Earth and lead to the creation of the Roman Empire and I was wracking my brain trying to find a way for the time travel to happen. With the insight of the Singularity drives on Warbirds that can cause temporal disruptions and black holes, that actually makes it easier.
In my head canon the Romulus use a combination of Penrose effects and Hawking radiation to extract energy from the micro singularity. Both of these can eventually deplete the core (as Hawking radiation causes the mass of a black hole to gradually decline). While early singularity cores were simply “charged” with enough energy to last for decades of operation, later designs included the ability to “recharge” the core by adding mass and spin to it while relying on an external power source (like solar radiation). This would effectively give a Romulan craft unlimited range, though the breakdown of the physical components of the drive system is still and issue.
One other possibility for how the singularity cores generate power is the use of superradiant scattering - ie., the singularity is spun up as per the Penrose process version, but they then fire some form of electromagnetic radiation, possibly visible light, into the ergosphere of the singularity. This is then bounced off of mirrors on the interior of the core's shell, amplifying the radiation by sending it repeatedly through the ergosphere to collect energy from the rotating singularity, and the excess (ie. the excess compared to the energy initially put into the radiation beam/source) is collected by energy collectors integrated into the outer shell of the singularity core, likely with variable shutters to allow the rate of radiation buildup and collection to avoid causing damage to the collectors or depleting the radiation bouncing around the interior of the shell.
Singularity cores are basically near infinite sources of energy (about 15 to 20 years of fuel) that what the romulans use them for, basically instead of having to re fuel every few months like the Federation or the Klingons or having to go to a gas giant and getting the matter for the reaction they don't need to cause it there already, also in the diagram you showed the core should have been at the center of the ship so that it field could encompass the ship creating a constant gravity effect, it a lot easier to control that way, oh and btw that type of engine has been use in countless sci-fi novels as a source of both energy (which does very well) and as a propulsion system, they are call gravitic engines and they are considered the most advanced form of energy production at least in those novels.
It should be noted, the reason the warp core is called the warp core despite not being what creates the actual warp field, is because its power is predominantly used to run the warp engines. Nearly all other power needs are powered by traditional fusion reactors, and it should be noted, that with power directed correctly, most star ships can actually achieve warp 1 or 2 without a warp core entirely. During Star Trek Enterprise, we actually see the references being done more correctly, where instead of Warp Core, it's actually referred to as a Warp Reactor, and the Nacelles are actually referred to as the engines.
when they showed the engine core in 'Timescape', it had a door like a mailbox that Data just pops open & the singularity's right there... no alarms, shielding, etc. lol
The size of the singularity is probably why the ship in canon events only explode, as such a tiny singularity would just dissipate into hawking radiation, (CERN did a whole thing about micro-singularities to disuade people from thinking turning on the LHC would create world-ending black holes)
Well done! But the Star Empire ships wouldn't actually implode upon themselves; a "small" black hole dissipates in a runaway Gamma burst. There would be an explosion (much like a warp core) but higher in the EM band. You still would not want to be near it when it happened.
Despite popular misconceptions about black holes, the implosion method of destruction is not realistic in this case, unless the singularities they employed were at least the mass of a large planet. If it were the mass of a mountain or smaller, then the most notable effect would be the massive energy output of Hawking radiation.
There's also the convinient bonus of when it exploads it sucks up the whole ship and it disaperes preventing anybody from learning anything about romulan ships.
Assuming it's the Hawking Radiation they are tapping for the actual power, there's an interesting side effect. The smaller the black hole, the more radiation it will make, and the shorter it will last.
from what I've read our technology I paralleling Romulan tech now... Experiments in electromagnetic metamaterial cloaking,, and the theory of creating Mirco singularities via a culminated boson particle lasers and such, to name but two
The video is awesome, you really did your research but I have a issue with Romulan Black hole warp drive, without going in to detail about how it would spin and radiate itself out, but I'm going to make life easy and just believe that Q is manipulating forces on every Romulan ship 😅 🖖🏻
You could use the energy from the vacuum of the singularity itself. It's magnetic field would allow for only a small amount of "fuel" to be used and the output would be ridiculously efficient.
I think this is really making things more complicated than it needs to be. All the warp core does is use antimatter reaction to heat warp plasma. All Romulans do is use friction from it spinning around the miniblack hole (the accretion disk) to heat the warp plasma up. It takes a lot of energy to manufacture antimatter. It takes a lot of energy to contain an artificial black hole. If anything is driving the technology difference it is the scarcity of dilithium needed for the antimatter reaction.
