8 Iconic Doctor Who Things That Scientists Say Are Real

3. Powered By A Black Hole

Okay, let's take a closer look at that black hole that is supposed to be lurking in the engine room of the TARDIS. As it turns out, the idea of using black holes as an energy source is not all that far fetched. Don't get me wrong, you won't be buying Black Hole Batteries any time soon, but it's still something that real, proper physicist will entertain as a possibility. Far from being the cosmic plug holes that we used to think they were, black holes actually kick out a buttload of radiation produced by the quantum fluctuations in space around it. This is known as Hawking Radiation, after the venerable Stephen Hawking who was the first to theorise its existence way back in the 1970s. The only obstacle we have now (apart from locating our friendly, local black hole) is how to get at all that lovely radiation. The proposed solutions for this are actually surprisingly low-tech. One of these, put forwards in the early 80s, was to simply lower a "box" close to the event horizon of a black hole and get it to capture some of the radiation before pulling it back in - much like lowering a bucket into a well. Unfortunately, due to the extreme gravitational field around a black hole, the bucket would have to be no bigger than a bacterium and would still probably melt into a pile of quarks. However, it can't have escaped your notice that the idea of putting a black hole into a "box" and using it for fuel sounds mightily like, I don't know, some kind of TARDIS?