Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 23:25:08 -0500

Dear Jim,

Yes, that's the Casimir effect, which is well-known and quite well proven with some fine experiments.

The problem with the Casimir effect on the bench is that it is so small. One doesn't get very much energy out of it at all, and it seems quite impractical (at least as of now) that it will provide a "power source" for commercial electrical power. However, its energy contributions is astronomical phenomena is a different matter.

On the bench, the really tremendous "extraction of energy from the vacuum" is demonstrated by the source charge or source dipolarity. Yet this problem has been very little studied over the decades, and mostly just ignored (the EE folks have completely scrubbed it out of their texts; but it is still occasionally discussed briefly in a particle physics book, etc.). In year 2000, we took (1) the broken symmetry of opposite charges, proven conclusively in 1957 and now well-established, (2) the fact in quantum field theory that any charge polarizes its vacuum, and so the "classical charge" becomes something quite different and is surrounded by virtual charges of opposite sign. Even for a single electron, there is an infinite bare negative charge in the middle, surrounded by clustering positive charges in the vacuum which also form an infinite charge. The difference between the two infinite charges is finite, and that is what the "external observer" or instrument "sees" and measures, peering through the external screen. E.g., quoting Weinberg:

"[The total energy of the atom] depends on the bare mass and bare charge of the electron, the mass and charge that appear in the equations of the theory before we start worrying about photon emissions and reabsorptions. But free electrons as well as electrons in atoms are always emitting and reabsorbing photons that affect the electron's mass and electric charge, and so the bare mass and charge are not the same as the measured electron mass and charge that are listed in tables of elementary particles. In fact, in order to account for the observed values (which of course are finite) of the mass and charge of the electron, the bare mass and charge must themselves be infinite. The total energy of the atom is thus the sum of two terms, both infinite: the bare energy that is infinite because it depends on the infinite bare mass and charge, and the energy shift . that is infinite because it receives contributions from virtual photons of unlimited energy."
[Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory, Vintage Books, Random House, 1993, p. 109-110.]

So the source charge actually has infinite energy to draw upon. And "broken symmetry" means specifically that "something virtual has become observable." In short, the charge ensemble continuously absorbs virtual state photon energy, coherently integrates it (we specified the exact coherent integration mechanism, which is a true negative entropy mechanism), and re-emits the energy as real photons emitted in all directions. The steady state emission of these photons establish and continuously replenish the associated fields and potentials, spreading outward at light speed from the time of formation of the charge ensemble (the dipolarity).

So this is the basic and fundamental mechanism by which large amounts of energy can be and are extracted from the vacuum, via the source charges. Every joule of EM energy in the universe is and has been extracted and produced in this manner.

Attached are a few citations of references on the Casimir effect.

Best wishes,

Tom Bearden

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020917.html

Does this have any connection with Tom's theories and if so, does the Casimir Effect have any use in his work?

Jim B