Ah, theoretical physics - always something fun to read! This time, black hole bombs. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1104/1104.0496v1.pdf https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Black_hole_bomb The basic idea is this: when an electromagnetic wave falls onto a rotating black hole it can be reflected back with higher than initial energy if it happens in the right direction ("superradiant scattering"). If you put the hole inside a reflecting cavity that bounces the wave back, you will get an exponentially increasing energy! The hole is drained of energy and it gets turned into waves. I guess this goes to show that you really *can* make everything lase. In practice, this is likely of minor importance (both for the LHC-will-doom-us-all crowd and for experimentalists), but for EP this might be a nice technobabble explanation. Imagine a device that contains a small black hole that can be tickled to release massive energy. A kind of particle beam/laser that goes through anything - ships, planets, stars (oops, don't heat that core too much!) This might be found in an advanced alien installation while gatecrashing, or be the secret superweapon a hypercorp is guarding in a remote Oort habitat. The system has a few drawbacks: even a small black hole weighs thousands of tons, and these also rotate so they are massive gyroscopes. The device is not exactly portable. And if too much energy is drained the black hole will start evaporating - below 220 tons it will not last more than a second and blow up with 5 million megatons of power. You better feed it material to keep it from starving. "Sir! We have deciphered the alien language. Here is the translation AI." "Hmm... so what does that display say?" {scanning} "A countdown... wait, a countdown to what?"