Vacuum power? Zero point energy?

[Guest Schwarzwald]

A lot of hard SF games talk about 'vacuum power" and "zero point energy". I've also heard there's a "kasimir process" that can produce energy by having a pair of metal plates facing each other.

 

Would someone here mind contributing to a thread about these matters? I can only imagine what things might be like if the so-called 'free energy' technologies take off. A couple hundred years from now people may look back at our modern 'hard' sf and laugh at the idea of using fusion or anti-matter as power sources as they tool around in ships powered by vacuum energy.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Vacuum power? Zero point energy?

 

I've also heard there's a "kasimir process" that can produce energy by having a pair of metal plates facing each other.

You're referring to the Casimir Effect. And it's far too weak to ever be considered as a "source" of energy for anything' date=' with the [i']possible[/i] exception of certain types of nanomachines, and I have my doubts about that.

[pinecone]

Re: Vacuum power? Zero point energy?

 

The casimir effect is that at very small seperations...things seem to be attracted....so the theory is you use two charged plates that repell and siphon off the extra energy produced by the casimir effect....if this could work it would be done by now though......but if its Sci-fi...?

[Curufea]

Re: Vacuum power? Zero point energy?

 

From - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_point_energy

 

zero-point energy is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical physical system may possess; it is the energy of the ground state of the system. All quantum mechanical systems have a zero point energy. The term arises commonly in reference to the ground state of the quantum harmonic oscillator. In quantum field theory, it is a synonym for the vacuum energy, an amount of energy associated with the vacuum of empty space. In cosmology, the vacuum energy is taken to be the origin of the cosmological constant. Experimentally, the zero-point energy of the vacuum leads directly to the Casimir effect, and is directly observable in nanoscale devices.

 

Because zero point energy is the lowest possible energy a system can have, then this energy can not be removed from the system.

 

Despite the definition, the concept of zero-point energy, and the hint of a possibility of extracting "free energy" from the vacuum, has attracted the attention of amateur inventors. Numerous perpetual motion and other pseudoscientific devices, often called free energy devices, exploiting the idea, have been proposed. As a result of this activity, and its intriguing theoretical explanation, it has taken on a life of its own in popular culture, appearing in science fiction books, games and movies. As of 2006, there is no known practical method to extract usable energy from the vacuum, although mainstream research is being carried out by the Calphysics Institute, NASA's Glenn Research Center, and aerospace giant BAE Systems.

[Nyrath]

Re: Vacuum power? Zero point energy?

 

Vacuum energy is one of those things that is not forbidden by the laws of physics, but is very hard to make it do anything practical.

 

You can find Dr. Robert Forward's paper on extracting zero point energy with charged foils here:

http://www.calphysics.org/articles/Forward1984.pdf

but it is rather technical. He writes in more layman's terms in his science fact books FUTURE MAGIC and INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM MAGIC.

 

It is used in the SF novels THE SONG OF DISTANT EARTH by Arthur C. Clarke and THE MACANDREWS CHRONICLES by Charles Sheffield.

[Cancer]

Re: Vacuum power? Zero point energy?

 

Of course, if our universe is just another form of the false vacuum rather than the true vacuum, then it's quite possible to extract lots of energy from that false vacuum. However, the act of doing so irrevocably destroys our universe and all its content in a picosecond, and dumps all its energy content (including the false vacuum zero-point content, which dominates) into a newly-formed very hot universe's inflationary epoch, replaying the very early stages of the Big Bang.

 

... not a possibility to take very seriously.

[mirage]

Re: Vacuum power? Zero point energy?

 

A lot of hard SF games talk about 'vacuum power" and "zero point energy". I've also heard there's a "kasimir process" that can produce energy by having a pair of metal plates facing each other.

 

Would someone here mind contributing to a thread about these matters? I can only imagine what things might be like if the so-called 'free energy' technologies take off. A couple hundred years from now people may look back at our modern 'hard' sf and laugh at the idea of using fusion or anti-matter as power sources as they tool around in ships powered by vacuum energy.

 

Lots of good posts and links.

 

Here's another good one:

 

http://library.thinkquest.org/C007571/english/advance/intro1.htm

 

It talks a lot about Black Holes and Hawking Radiation. (The site explains things from the top down with pretty pictures.):

 

I'm going to assume that you've heard of Heisenberg Uncertainty where you can not know the exact location and momentum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle there's another part to that occasion and that's exact energy and time or delta-E delta-t. The uncertainty in energy and uncertainty in time must be >= h-bar ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac%27s_constant ) . Since h-bar is not 0, that means that neither energy nor time can be zero either.

 

Since energy is non-zero, and the energy of a photon is E = h * f and we need 2 photons because momentum must be conserved. So we have 2*h*f * delta-t >= h-bar . ( The Casimir Effect at least partially comes from unbalaced forces http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect . ) Now we have two photons or particles with equivelant energy. Hawking radiation will occures when one of these particles falls into a black hole and mutual annhilation is not possible.

 

But this is where the vacuum energy comes from: since the potential of free space is non-zero, there are always virtual particles and these particles can be used as a source of energy.

[Jaxom]

Re: Vacuum power? Zero point energy?

 

But this is where the vacuum energy comes from: since the potential of free space is non-zero' date=' there are always virtual particles and these particles can be used as a source of energy.[/quote']

 

Keep in mind that in order to create a pair of particles and drop one of them into a black hole but allow the other to escape you need a pretty specific set of conditions. You're positing being able to move a small black hole around and if you work out the actual energy requirements you find those are huge compared to the energy produced.

 

Great for rubber science, but don't go looking for it to be realized based on our current understanding of physics.