Exactly, and why not just break it down and reuse the components (something we already do - it’s called recycling)? Also, if we could really break it down into its smallest components, which would be atoms, there would be no point in throwing it out.
The only “waste” that I can think of that might deserve to be shot into a black hole or otherwise away from Earth is nuclear waste, and that could be taken care of (for the most part, especially the nasty long-lived stuff) if we developed advanced nuclear reactors (current reactors use less than 1 percent of the available energy from fission; we could get over 100 times more energy with proposed reactor designs - and reduce waste proportionally).
Actually, even nuclear waste (as we have today, since it will be a very useful fuel source when the reactors are built) would then be something we wouldn’t want to just throw out.
I’ve heard of various schemes like that. An artificial black hole of about a billion tonnes could be used to absorb unwanted garbage and generate power. This would be one of the most efficient ways of turning mass into energy possible, but there are a few problems to be overcome before it becomes reality.
Making artificial black holes would be really, really difficult.
A billion tonne black hole would be very small, about the size of an atom; it would be tricky to get garbage into it.
A billion tonne black hole would be very, very hot, and emot gamma rays as Hawking radiation. It would be a power generator that produced only highly dangerous radiation.
Even if these problems were overcome, there’s the question of the definition of garbage. A lot of things that are currently thrown waya might at some point in the future become valuable resources; radiactive waste, heavy metals, organic materials, metals, and so on. It would be a shame to throw stuff into a black hole which might at one point be useful in the future.
(Regarding the idea of launching trash into the Sun: )
Okay, here’s a new and bona fide question then: Is this what happens if we were to send various kinds of junk into the Sun? Would it be vaporized and plasmatized and thoroughly assimilated into the sun, or would it affect the composition of the sun in some way as to come back at us as solar radiation?
Being beyond infinitesimal compared to the size of the sun, it would become a molten slag as it ionizes and evenntually atomizes while becoming engulfed by the intense sun’s corona (in the range of 1,000,000 K to 2,000,000 K). And this is before it even reaches the relatively cooler surface of the sun (the photosphere, around 5,000 K).
From there, each atomic nuclei (according to their atomic number) and their stripped electrons are all pretty much identical, and perfectly sterile.
Not sure what the various elements would do at that point, as there’s some crazy levels of magnetism and convection roiling about.
The one I’ve read about uses a rotating black hole, and you get half the actual mass energy of the trash out of it. I can’t remember the details, but it involved a type of lever with the trash on one side, and the energy being gathered from the lever on the other side.
The Sun’s corona is very hot, but it doesn’t have very much heat. There’s a lot of energy per particle there (that’s basically what temperature is), but the particles are so sparse that it adds up to a very small amount of energy. You’ll get a lot more heat from radiation from the photosphere than you will from the corona, and a decent-sized chunk of material could well remain intact until it hit the photosphere.
Not to mention that, even if we could account for all the gravitational interaction with everything,on a trip of 1600 light years, being off course by one millionth of a degree means you would miss your target by about 164 million miles. Yeah, we haven’t got nearly the tech to make that shot.
If you really never want to see it again, send it into the sun. That will destroy almost anything the Fires of Mordor won’t.
Quick clarification:
By “destroy” above, I meant to include “make REALLY hard to recover for a few billion years”. Anything that goes into the sun and stays there is effectively destroyed as far as we humans are concerned.
Not to mention that a black hole that small will evaporate FAST, so you’ll have to constantly feed it lest it blows up on you, releasing all the stored energy in a very short time …
Shoudn’t be too close to earth, then. Not at all, actually, not even if it is meticulously maintained and runnig smoothly.
Of course, all the feed matter needs to be close by. Lots of feed matter, you don’t want to see it run dry for no better reason than supply hiccups.
Assuming we’ll ever be able to handle that kind of technology, we will have a very different understanding of “waste” then.
Toronto (long known as the centre of the universe) used to do that via the 401 until Michigan’s economy lost so much mass from olfactory radiation that by the end of 2010 it ceased to be a black hole, so The Great Toronto garbage shoot was shot.
Interesingly, Michigan is soon to vote on whether or not to permit Canada to build another birdge to Michigan at Canada’s expense.
Even a 4 million tonne black hole would last 180,000 years. I think that a good compromise would be somewhere between those two figures.
Trouble is, to make a million tonne black hole which lasts thousands of years, you probably have to make a much smaller one first, which would evaporate very quickly and violently, destroying the black-hole-making equipment.
There’s a reason why it takes the mass of a star much bigger than our Sun to make a black hole; the pressure required is incroyable.
I admit, I didn’t take the time to look up the numbers. :o
So, we need to start with a black hole big enough to integrate new matter faster then it radiates it away. The rest should be a matter of supply management.
And of course we need a way to turn hawkings radiation into a usable form of energy.
I recall a really a colorful documentary called futurama where a Dr… I think his name was professor Farnsworth spoke of large garbage ball technology that could be tracked with a smellometer, so I think a solution is at hand!
That part’s easy: If nothing else, you can use it in a heat engine. You will get some losses from neutrinos (which are just going to escape whatever your apparatus is), but if we’re talking a hole of mere millions of tons, there’s going to be plenty of energy to emit all sorts of particles, so the neutrinos won’t be a major portion of it.
