Unraveling the Mysteries of Zero-Point Energy and Casimir Appareture

[drag]

Greetings !

I'd like to ask a few questions about
Zero-Point energy:

1. I recently read about an experiment that
was planned to attempt to connect the ZPE to
inertia. The experiment includes a Casimir
appareture with a laser beam that passes between
the plates. If the ZPE is responsible for inertia
then in theory the lack of some of it(due to the fact
that low frequency particles can not be created
in the shorter distance between the plates)
will mean that light should travel at faster than
c (c itself will change) through such "vacuum".
Has this experiment been carried out (and what were
its results of course ) ?

2. Has there been any SUCCESSFUL attempt of
"extracting" ZPE or any successful theoretical proof
that it is possible ?

3. Aren't the maximum and minimum wavelenghts
that can be created limmited by the observable part
of the Universe and the Planck length scale respectivly ?

4. Anything else that's interesting/new on the subject
including links to really good (the really good ones
are not that easy to find) sites on this (or stuff
I may think about later).

Thanks !

Live long and prosper.

 

[Erich Schoedl]

Hello drag,

1. I didn't know about that test you mentioned for inertia. That's pretty interesting. I wonder if that would really be a test for proving the zpe is responsible for inertia though, because I would think wave-dependent phenomenon would travel faster between such closely spaced plates as a given... since limiting the paths would foce a kind of quantum tunneling. It would be a small effect though - maybe they are looking for a bigger one.

2. I wrote a short article in physicspost, about a very simple mechanism I believe will be entirely possible...
http://www.physicspost.com/articles.php?articleId=114
check it out - for the logical argument in it.

3. I would think that wavelengths are limited by the scale of the universe, but that is subjective. If light leaves your flashlight now, it might not reach the end of the universe ever... therefore, it might have a weak photon of light with near infinite wavelength. I don't know about the small end - in my view, the Planck scale is relative to the rate of aging.

4. There are entire websites devoted to zpe like...
http://www.zpenergy.com/
and some of them have neat links to other sites.

 

[drag]

Greetings !

Originally posted by Erich Schoedl
Hello drag,

Hi Erich, thanks for answering !

Originally posted by Erich Schoedl
1. ... I wonder if that would really be a test for
proving the zpe is responsible for inertia though,
because I would think wave-dependent phenomenon
would travel faster between such closely spaced
plates as a given... since limiting the paths
would force a kind of quantum tunneling. ...

What do you mean ?
But, quantum tunneling does not occur at
velocities higher than c (at the macroscopic scale).
I was talking about the assumption
of the possibility of ftl EM signal
movement (at the macroscopic scale).

Originally posted by Erich Schoedl
2. I wrote a short article in physicspost,
about a very simple mechanism I believe
will be entirely possible...
http://www.physicspost.com/articles.php?articleId=114
check it out - for the logical argument in it.

I really do not think that with my current
amateur level I can, within the bounderies
of good taste, provide some real point of
view on this.

However, I'd like to point out that like
in the case of "perpetula mobile" it may
be useful to look at the underlying theoritical
principles involved, rather than trying to sort
out the increasingly more complicated devices.
In the case I just mentioned energy conservation
is the principle we need to look at and in the
ZPE energy extraction case we need to look at
the HUP and the fact that QM says that no
energy can be extracted through it. (What about
quantum tunneling though ?)

Then again, the fact there's so much talk about
this and that I asked this question is possibly
an indication of the optimism that new theories
and ideas are bringing into this area. Maybe
even real possibilities ?

Originally posted by Erich Schoedl
3. I would think that wavelengths are limited
by the scale of the universe, but that is
subjective. If light leaves your flashlight now,
it might not reach the end of the universe ever...
therefore, it might have a weak photon of light
with near infinite wavelength.

I agree with that now.

Originally posted by Erich Schoedl
I don't know about the small end - in my view,
the Planck scale is relative to the rate of aging.

What do you mean ?

Thanks for the link !

Live long and prosper.

 

[Erich Schoedl]

Hello, and thanks for the input.

Last things first... what do I mean about the relativity of the Planck length. That is a very loaded question, but you can read about that to the detail you want in my paper "Unified Relativity" also on the physics post (it is my take on the unification of relativity and QM. It's not too difficult a concept.)

About extracting the zpe... yes it has the shadow of perpetual motion. Even in the quantum world, we can't just "harness" uncertainty to supply power for a perpetual motion machine. But if you look very closely at the underlying idea in the article, the Casimir effect creates (in a sense, and at very small scale) a cold sink. That is the reason I think this energy might be tapped someday.

I don't have the experience with the mechanism of light to know if it would be affected by quantum tunneling. I think now that you are right, and that tunneling would not affect the paths.

But if the "cold sink" idea I just mentioned is even partially accurate, then there should be less energy for the light to travel through in such close spaces (because of the Casimir effect). Then the light would be faster than "c" as we know it in the ordinary unshielded vacuum. Just like light travels slower in mediums that are not true vacuums, it should travel even faster when more energy is removed from a 4-volume it passes through. That’s just a different angle. I'll probably think of one I like better later.

 

[drag]

Greetings Erich Schoedl !

Originally posted by Erich Schoedl
Last things first... what do I mean about the
relativity of the Planck length. That is a very
loaded question, but you can read about that to
the detail you want in my paper "Unified
Relativity" also on the physics post (it is my
take on the unification of relativity and QM.
It's not too difficult a concept.)

Hmm... Actually, with no relation to this
particular subject I read your article (I did
not read beyond page 3 as intently though
because you lost me there) and I didn't understand
it - specificly mostly about your "time dilation"
principle. I was meaning to ask you for a
possible clarification in the physicspost
forum, but since the opportunity appears to present
itself here - would you mind briefly explaining
it again ?
Thanks !

Live long and prosper.

 

[Erich Schoedl]

I don’t mind at all - I would love to help (as long as it’s ok with the Mentors). I know it was a bit confusing on a few of the points, but if you forge through, it explains some of them.
Time dilation is actually nothing new. It is a measurable phenomenon (with extremely accurate data) with complete support for Relativity as it is accepted today, as well as in my idea.
Time dilation is the slowing down of the rate of aging of clocks in a given frame as compared to a local clock (assuming both clocks are good clocks of identical structure when in the same frame). So a clock near a source of gravity is aging slower than a clock at a reference frame farther from the mass. A clock in space (with slow orbit speeds) ages faster than the same clock on the surface of Earth, and clocks closer to the sun age slower than clocks farther away.
In case you were confused about length dilation (the part of the article relating to special relativity is particularly confusing), here is a simple way of looking at it...

I get in my ’69 Camaro and keep pushing the gas pedal ‘til I’m going 0.5x the speed of light. Someone sees me fly by, and notice that my car is only 86.6% as long as it is at rest (Lorentz length contraction). So in my car looking out, I don’t see them stretched out to 115.47% of their rest length, I see them contracted to 86.6% also.
{Actually the Doppler effect creates a distortion depending on the angle my passing car is observed. As I’m coming right at the observer, my car appears 173.2% it’s rest length, and 30deg before the Camaro is just passing, the car is 115.47% length, and as I recede away the car is only 57.7% length. That’s another story you can read about at the post if interested “Distortions of Relativistic Measure”.}
Now if we have a fancy computer simulation graphing all points of the car through space-time, and I glue watches all over the fenders, a different picture emerges. The car is length contracted spatially in the reference frame, but the watches near the front don’t agree with the ones further back. If we make the computer plot out the car through space-time where all the times on the watch are the same (as they are for the driver), the car spans a range of reference time and is spatially stretched out 115.47%. The front of the car is further along in the future.
This is complimentary to the length contraction, and just another way of looking at the disagreement of simultaneity. Length dilation is the increase in the relative measure of an object’s spatial dimensions (and potentially other dimensions) as points are simultaneous to their own frame.
It’s a little harder to compare these dimensions near a gravity source, because our rulers are dependent on the local space-time metric. In other words, if we lower a ruler down toward the sun, it would get bigger.

The paper describes how when a region of space-time is time dilated, it is also spatially dilated – and the repercussions of this additional dilation. For instance, near the event horizon of a black hole, the curvature of space-time becomes space-like... and I try to show how this idea explains what we measure when we test for agreement with Relativity.

 

[drag]

Greetings !

I'm aware of SR. I just thought you meant a
different "time dilation" of your own.

Now, what's with the connection to QM and
how does the fact that you describe a more
relativly space-like space-time near a BH
in GR connect to that.

Thanks !

Live long and prosper.

 

[Erich Schoedl]

Yea, I just link the additional space-like dilation with the time dilation (both SR and GR time dilation). The dims perpendicular to the velocity in SR are stretched, but skewed and longer only in a light-like sense. In GR the dimensions are dilated and remain locally orthogonal.

The tie with QM is the very last part of the article...[zz)]
But in a nutshell, space-time itself is stretched into string-like entities. On this sort of topology of the space-time itself, must be attached certain features to represent properties of particles... Like a given number of closed loops would relate to the value of charge. Which is why time-like particles have incremental charges – quarks are devised as partial loops & twists along the closed string.
Even more fundamental, we see strange quantum effects (such as the EPR experiment results) where particles appear to be connected over space and time. I just try to create a logical pallet for the reasoning of “stretching out” space-time to form the basis for such interactions and entities.