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Penrose Process — Extracting Energy from a Spinning Black Hole

Interactive 3D Kerr black hole: drop a particle into the ergosphere, split it in two, and watch one fragment escape with more energy than it fell in with — extracting rotational energy and spinning the hole down.

Special Relativity3DAdvanced60 FPS

A rotating (Kerr) black hole carries a reservoir of rotational energy outside its event horizon, in a region called the ergosphere where spacetime itself is dragged along with the hole's spin. This simulator lets you drop particles into that region and split them in two: tune the black hole's spin, the entry angle, and how close the split comes to the theoretical optimum, then launch a particle and watch one fragment plunge in with negative energy while the other escapes carrying away more energy than went in — the Penrose process. Live readouts track the hole's mass and spin as they are shaved down by each successful extraction, alongside the cumulative energy harvested and the theoretical maximum efficiency (η_max ≈ 29.3% for a maximally-spinning hole) for the current configuration.

⚙ Under the hood

Drop a particle into the ergosphere of a rotating Kerr black hole and split it in two: watch one fragment fall in with negative energy while the other escapes carrying away more energy than it started with, spinning the hole down as it goes.

black holegeneral relativityKerr metricergosphereenergy extractionastrophysics

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install