Penrose process

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Penrose process

[′pen‚rōz ‚prä·səs]

(relativity)

A hypothetical means of extracting energy from a rotating black hole in which a particle spirals into the ergosphere of the black hole in a direction opposite to the black hole's rotation and then breaks up into two fragments, one of which escapes with an energy greater than the energy of the original particle.

References in periodicals archive ?

The concept is a variant of the Penrose process, first identified in 1969 by British astrophysicist Sir Roger Penrose as a mechanism for extracting energy from a spinning black hole.

"Previous work indicated that the maximum output energy from the collisional version of the Penrose process was only about 30 percent higher than what you start with," Schnittman said.

These results suggested that clear evidence of the Penrose process might never be seen from a supermassive black hole.