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zeromodz
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I have been doing some research and many sources have stated that "zero point energy" exists in all points in space and there is an infinite amount of it. Is this true? please back up what you say. Thanks.
I have been doing some research and many sources have stated that "zero point energy" exists in all points in space and there is an infinite amount of it. Is this true? please back up what you say. Thanks.
wikipedia said:In quantum field theory, the fabric of space is visualized as consisting of fields, with the field at every point in space and time being a quantized simple harmonic oscillator, with neighboring oscillators interacting. In this case, one has a contribution of E=hw/2 from every point in space, resulting in a calculation of infinite zero-point energy.
It's a consequence of Quantum Field Theory:
It hasn't been experimentally verified that I know of, but I think most of you are misinterpreting it. It's not energy that can be used to do work. Remember that only differences in energy are measurable.
Read the two sections of the wiki here for more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy#Gravitation_and_cosmology
"Naively, it is infinite, but only differences in energy are physically measurable. The infinity can be removed by renormalization. In all practical calculations, this is how the infinity is handled. It is also arguable that new physics takes over at the Planck scale, and that the energy growth is cut off at that point."
Free Energy Devices:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy#Proposed_free_energy_devices
...Unless you consider the possible role in universal expansion. Anyway, there is a vast difference between the scientific QM concept of the Quantum Vacuum and its many properties (expectation value, polarization, etc), but "zero point energy" is really just pseudoscience, which is why it is tied to "free energy devices". Perturbation of the vacuum may drive universal expansion, but as you say, it's not energy that is open to use on a lesser scale.
No, zero point energy is a well defined scientific concept. It is the intrinsic energy of a quantum system that is not accessible to do external work. Don't let the kooks take ownership of this concept ... it is the idea of harnessing ZPE to do work, not the concept itself, that is crazy-talking pseudo-science.
1) There is another explanation by Lifgarbagez and Pitaevskii of the Casimir effect in terms of van der Waals force. References are on the wikipage by the way. Please keep in mind that van der Waals forces are well established.Yes - ZPF is not psuedoscience. It has experimental varification as well, such as the positive and negative attraction of the Casimir Force.
1) There is another explanation by Lifgarbagez and Pitaevskii of the Casimir effect in terms of van der Waals force. References are on the wikipage by the way. Please keep in mind that van der Waals forces are well established.
2) Even if there was no other explanation, the tiny effect of Casimir requires for its measurement to spend quite some amount of energy in various cooling of the plates. No experimental device could use the Casimir effect to produce free energy.
Sure, it's up to you. But I'd be interested to know who it is you call "academic community". Is MIT good enough for you ? There are quite a few professional researchers on this very forum who like van der Walls and would call Lifgarbagez "academic".I'm waiting for it to catch on with the academic comminuty, if you don't mind.
Jaffe said:In discussions of the cosmological constant, the Casimir effect is often invoked as decisive evidence that the zero-point energies of quantum fields are “real.” On the contrary, Casimir effects can be formulated and Casimir forces can be computed without reference to zero-point energies. They are relativistic, quantum forces between charges and currents. The Casimir force (per unit area) between parallel plates vanishes as α, the fine structure constant, goes to zero, and the standard result, which appears to be independent of α, corresponds to the α→∞ limit.
Casimir energy, dispersion, and the Lifgarbagez formulaThe physical origin of the Casimir force is connected with the existence of zero-point and thermal fluctuations. The Casimir effect is very general and finds applications in various fields of physics. This review is limited to the rapid progress at the intersection of experiment and theory that has been achieved in the last few years. It includes a critical assessment of the proposed approaches to the resolution of the puzzles arising in the applications of the Lifgarbagez theory of the van der Waals and Casimir forces to real materials. All the primary experiments on the measurement of the Casimir force between macroscopic bodies and the Casimir-Polder force between an atom and a wall that have been performed in the last decade are reviewed, including the theory needed for their interpretation. The methodology for the comparison between experiment and theory in the force-distance measurements is presented. The experimental and theoretical results described here provide a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of dispersion forces in real materials and offer guidance for the application of Lifgarbagez theory for the interpretation of the measurement results.
Despite suggestions to the contrary, we show in this paper that the usual dispersive form of the electromagnetic energy must be used to derive the Lifgarbagez force between parallel dielectric media. This conclusion follows from the general form of the quantum vacuum energy, which is the basis of the multiple-scattering formalism. As an illustration, we explicitly derive the Lifgarbagez formula for the interaction between parallel dielectric semispaces, including dispersion, starting from the expression for the total energy of the system. The issues of constancy of the energy between parallel plates and of the observability of electrostrictive forces are briefly addressed.
I do not think your answer is very interesting, as it does not even address who you call "the scientific community". But I agree that there is an academic debate. I'd just be interested if you could instead share references. For instance
The Casimir force between real materials: experiment and theory
Casimir energy, dispersion, and the Lifgarbagez formula
Well it's better than nothing. The people I quoted where invited speakers in the plenary session at the international conference "60 years of Casimir effect" in 2008. In fact, Milton (second paper) even gave the opening talk. Bob Jaffe was formerly director of the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics.You want papers? Anyone can surf the net for papers on the ZPF - i am assuring you, the papers you follow are not widely-accepted.
Right now, the scientific community has a greater stance on it being the ZPF. Until that dissipates, i will not believe it.
1) There is another explanation by Lifgarbagez and Pitaevskii of the Casimir effect in terms of van der Waals force. References are on the wikipage by the way. Please keep in mind that van der Waals forces are well established.
2) Even if there was no other explanation, the tiny effect of Casimir requires for its measurement to spend quite some amount of energy in various cooling of the plates. No experimental device could use the Casimir effect to produce free energy.
I agree, and Milonni's book on QED and the vacuum is one of my favorite. It contains numerous examples of different calculations with different underlying interpretations leading to the same quantitative predictions, depending on when they were derived. His discussions of Bohr's original calculations for instance are quite revealing. I think such an approach is very interesting.
The zero point energy is fact and is the result or the uncertainty principle.Sir Fred Hoyle would look at these as micro bangs and dark energy is inflation.The energy is obtained from the energy lost from matter and spacetime that is accelerated to the speed of light at our universes event horizon spacetime of the large scale is curved back into the quantum realm.