Energy will never cease to be a concern for
human beings, so long as our species plans
to keep growing and expanding. There’s no
shortage of scientists and engineers trying
to come up with solutions that might help
us avoid a catastrophic energy shortage. Some
of these ideas seem pretty feasible, such
as switching to renewables like wind and solar.
Some are incredibly farfetched and probably
impossible, like cold fusion. And then there
are some ideas which are downright bonkers
but if true, could essentially change everything
we know and love about human civilization.
Zero-point energy, also known as ground state
energy, could be the greatest gift the quantum
world can ever give us. It’s a by product
of the fact that subatomic particles don’t
really behave like single particles, but like
waves constantly flitting between different
energy states. This means even the seemingly
empty vacuum of space is actually a roiling
sea of virtual particles fluctuating in and
out of existence, and all those fluctuations
require energy. If there’s as much energy
in those fluctuations as some though definitely
not all physicists believe, and if we could
ever learn how to tap into this phenomenon,
we would gain access to an unparalleled source
of energy. Zero-point energy could power the
planet with the strength of multiple suns,
making it easy for us to solve Earth’s energy
problems forever or to travel beyond the solar
system and take our place among the stars.
However, we can only guess how much energy
is actually contained in the vacuum, with
legendary physicists in fierce disagreement
on this point. Richard Feynman and John Wheeler
calculated the zero-point radiation of the
vacuum was so powerful that even a small
cup of it would be enough to set all of Earth’s
oceans to a boil. But Albert Einstein’s
theory of general relativity suggests zero-point
radiation would “gravitate” spreading
out throughout the universe and be mitigated
to a weak power. Simply put, we don’t know
enough about the universe to figure out whether
zero-point energy — vacuum energy — really
is a bombastic fountain of staggering power.
Let’s hypothesize vacuum energy is real,
and it’s spectacular, and we could maybe
one day learn how to tap into it for energy.
But What would this look like, and what could
we do with it? Perhaps the clearest application
would be super-fast spaceflight — the kind
that could take you across the solar system
in mere hours or minutes. NASA scientists
have looked into developing batteries and
engines which could theoretically produce
a gargantuan amount of energy by harnessing
a zero-point energy system based on a notion
in quantum mechanics called the Casimir effect.
This effect is small, but if there’s a way
to observe and intervene with these very small-scale
forces, they could work as a potential source
of energy for allowing spacecraft to move
through space. There have been many different
groups that pitched different ideas, but perhaps
the most reasonable findings have come out
of NASA’s Eagleworks Laboratories, which
claims to have successfully tested a Quantum
Vacuum Plasma Thruster. This “Q-thruster”,
as outlined by a study that passed peer-review
last year, takes advantage of the Casimir
effect to create propulsion. In such a device,
thrust is created using particles pushing
off a vacuum. Nevertheless, it’s not quite
clear whether this could work in a real, applicable
setting nor can the paper’s authors dismiss
concerns about experimental errors. Many more
trials and rounds of validation would be needed
to really illustrate that a Q-thruster is
viable. It’s a bit strange to think that
centuries after the idea of an “ether”
permeating through the world was debunked,
physics has come around to say that perhaps
there is a universal energy stuck in the empty
space all over. It would be a mighty grand
thing to find ourselves grasping at that vacuum
for an unheralded amount of energy. But that’s
all pretty far away from humanity’s reach
for now. For the foreseeable future, it’s
probably best to continue banking on solar
and wind as acceptable sources of energy.
The origin of zero-point energy is the Heisenberg
uncertainty principle, which states that,
for a moving particle such as an electron,
the more precisely one measures the position,
the less exact the best possible measurement
of its momentum and vice versa. The least
possible uncertainty of position times momentum
is specified by Planck's constant. A parallel
uncertainty exists between measurements involving
time and energy. This minimum uncertainty
is not due to any correctable flaws in measurement,
but rather reflects an intrinsic quantum fuzziness
in the very nature of energy and matter springing
from the wave nature of the various quantum
fields. This leads to the concept of zero-point
energy. Zero-point energy is the energy that
remains when all other energy is removed from
a system. Electromagnetic radiation can be
pictured as waves flowing through space at
the speed of light. The waves are not waves
of anything substantive, but are ripples in
a state of a theoretically defined field.
However these waves do carry energy (and momentum),
and each wave has a specific direction, frequency
and polarization state. Each wave represents
a ''propagating mode of the electromagnetic
field.'' Each mode is equivalent to a harmonic
oscillator and is thus subject to the Heisenberg
uncertainty principle. From this line of reasoning,
quantum physics predicts that all of space
must be filled with electromagnetic zero-point
fluctuations, also called the zero-point field
creating a universal sea of zero-point energy.
The density of this energy depends critically
on where in frequency the zero-point fluctuations
cease. One of the question that generally
comes in mind that IS IT POSSIBLE TO TAP ZERO
POINT ENERGY? As to whether zero-point energy
may become a source of usable energy, this
is considered extremely unlikely by most physicists,
and none of the claimed devices are taken
seriously by the mainstream science community.
Nevertheless, SED interpretation of the Bohr
orbit does suggest a way whereby energy might
be extracted. Based upon this a patent has
been issued and experiments have been underway
at the University of Colorado. So guys that's
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