I just spent 10 minutes explaining an idea for a starship in my story that uses an artificial neutron star as a power source…

@Straylight same! We can use it to time travel

@TryingtoLava @Straylight Not time travel really, but quick travel. They use it as the power source on gigantic 150 km diameter ships in what I’m calling a blink drive…a means of opening a very short lived wormhole in space that can instantly transport the ship hundreds or even thousands of light years, provided the calculations made for the journey are incredibly precise, and the longer the jump the more precise the calculations have to be.

@Zaphod42 So this would be a tiny neutron star?

@Zaphod42 I once had an idea of a Dyson sphere that produces and changes these power cells. The catch was that the cells were created quantum entangled with others. So long as the master cell was at the sphere being charged, all the others manufactured with it would be charged as well.
Basically the idea was the ships could be powered without the actual power source needing to be on it.

@Straylight @Zaphod42 ya guys totallllyyy lost me

@TryingtoLava So a Dyson sphere has nothing to do with vacuum cleaners but is a hypothetical structure that would completely encase a star to gather 100% of the energy it gives off. This is a nearly unimaginable amount of energy that could theoretically power several planets for nearly the entire of the star.

Quantum entanglement is a theoretical condition where two particles could be separate but on a subatomic level, be the same particle. And what happens to one would happen to the other simultaneously, regardless of the distance between them.

So my idea was that the star inside the Dyson sphere keeps charging the power cells that in turn power the cells they’re quantum entangled with.

@Straylight what bout entropy?

@TryingtoLava Like when the star dies?

@Straylight ya doesnt thermodynamics affect that system? I think its the 3rd law?

@TryingtoLava I mean eventually sure, it would go supernova. But that would take so long there would probably be a better power source by then.

@Straylight like i asked zaph thou what do you wana do with all that power?

@TryingtoLava Power everything else, I guess.

@Straylight so you could techhhhnically make a time machine right? I mean with all that power you could make a worm hole

Ok, back from LAX now.

The starship it’s in is roughly 150km in diameter with a 75km void at the center that houses a 10km artificial neutron star which is held in place by magnetic compression fields that both keep the star stable and control the gravitational fields emitted. The void is lined with photo thermal voltaic cells for direct energy conversion at a 98% efficiency rate. The power is used for the general operations of the ship and living quarters for over 3 million inhabitants as well as defensive and offensive systems. The main power draw is the blink drive, which uses magnetic manipulation to open a wormhole to jump the ship from point to point within the empire.

@TryingtoLava While time travel is theoretically possible this way, it’s not a part of the plot. Besides, my own solution to the grandfather paradox makes time travel boring anyway.

@Straylight Love the battery idea! But wouldn’t the act of using the battery’s power break the entanglement? As I understand it, entanglement is broken in the act of observation, which is science speak for any interaction of any kind…two atoms bumping each other is an act of observation. But I’m just an armchair physicist so I could easily be wrong, lol