Continuing interest of Space agencies and Militaries to exploit Zero-Point Energy for applications like propulsion and for generating electric power.

Rajesh Uppal April 19, 2021 Energy & Propulsion, Military, Quantum Comments Off on Continuing interest of Space agencies and Militaries to exploit Zero-Point Energy for applications like propulsion and for generating electric power. 1,460 Views

Zero-point energy is the energy that remains when all other energy is removed from a system. Zero-point energy is the lowest energy that a given quantum mechanical system can have (i.e., the ground state of the system). In quantum field theory, it refers to the energy of the vacuum (i.e., a space devoid of matter [the energy of “nothing”]).

This behaviour is demonstrated by, for example, liquid helium. As the temperature is lowered to absolute zero, helium remains a liquid, rather than freezing to a solid, owing to the irremovable zero-point energy of its atomic motions. (Increasing the pressure to 25 atmospheres will cause helium to freeze.)

Zero-point energy, also known as ground state energy, could be the greatest gift the quantum world can ever give us. It’s a byproduct 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.

There are also effects and forces arising from the vacuum energy that may be useful for future applications. The Casimir force or effect (also called the Casimir-Polder effect) is a weak attraction between objects due to the resonance of energy fields present in the space between them.

Even though ZPE technology has been secretly developed and implemented by the military-industrial complex (MIC), it is unreported by the U.S. national news media to inform and educate the American people, aaccording to Nicholas P. Ginex. It is reported that the military aerospace sector has developed and implemented interstellar flying objects (IFOs) that can travel into space. Zero-point energy can achieve low cost energy without the use of oil, coal, gas and nuclear fuels that pollute the earth.

While it is tempting to think that the energy of the vacuum in its abundance might somehow be harvested for our general use, Some scinetists think it is not possible. Extracting energy from a ground-state system would imply that the resulting system would have a lower energy, which is a nonsensical concept given that the system is (by definition) already at its lowest energy state. Forays into “free energy” inventions and perpetual-motion machines using ZPE are considered by the broader scientific community to be pseudoscience, says US Army.

Zero Point Energy principle

Zero-point energy, vibrational energy that molecules retain even at the absolute zero of temperature. Temperature in physics has been found to be a measure of the intensity of random molecular motion, and it might be expected that, as temperature is reduced to absolute zero, all motion ceases and molecules come to rest. In fact, however, the motion corresponding to zero-point energy never vanishes.

Zero-point energy results from principles of quantum mechanics, the physics of subatomic phenomena. Should the molecules ever come completely to rest, their component atoms would be precisely located and would simultaneously have precisely specified velocities, namely, of value zero. But it is an axiom of quantum mechanics that no object can ever have precise values of position and velocity simultaneously (see uncertainty principle); thus molecules can never come completely to rest.

In conventional quantum physics, 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 (mass times velocity), and vice versa. The least possible uncertainty of position times momentum is specified by Planck’s constant, h. A parallel uncertainty exists between measurements involving time and energy (and other so-called conjugate variables in quantum mechanics). 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.

A harmonic oscillator is a useful conceptual tool in physics. Classically a harmonic oscillator, such as a mass on a spring, can always be brought to rest. However a quantum harmonic oscillator does not permit this. A residual motion will always remain due to the requirements of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, resulting in a zero-point energy, equal to 1/2 hf, where f is the oscillation frequency.

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 analogy, every mode of the field must have 1/2 hf as its average minimum energy. That is a tiny amount of energy in each mode, but the number of modes is enormous, and indeed increases per unit frequency interval as the square of the frequency. The spectral energy density is determined by the density of modes times the energy per mode and thus increases as the cube of the frequency per unit frequency per unit volume. The product of the tiny energy per mode times the huge spatial density of modes yields a very high theoretical zero-point energy density per cubic centimeter.

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. Since space itself is thought to break up into a kind of quantum foam at a tiny distance scale called the Planck scale (10 −33 centimeters), it is argued that the zero-point fluctuations must cease at a corresponding Planck frequency (10 43 hertz). If this is the case, the zero-point energy density would be 110 orders of magnitude greater than the radiant energy at the center of the Sun.

Zero-point energy appears to have been directly measured as current noise in a resistively shunted Josephson junction by Koch, van Harlingen and Clarke up to a frequency of about 0.6 Tz. Richard Feynman and John Wheeler calculated the energy contained in the vacuum, and found that 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.

Quantum physics predicts the existence of an underlying sea of zero-point energy at every spot in the universe. This is different from the cosmic microwave background and is also referred to as the electromagnetic quantum vacuum , since it is the lowest energy state of otherwise empty space. This energy is so enormous that most physicists believe that even though zero-point energy seems to be an inescapable consequence of elementary quantum theory, it cannot be physically real. However, a minority of physicists accept it as real energy that we cannot directly sense because it is the same everywhere, even inside our bodies and measuring devices.

The Cashimir Effect

The Casimir effect is a small attractive force that acts between two close parallel uncharged conducting plates. It is due to quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. It has the property of increasing in strength with the inverse fourth power of the plate separation. The Casimir force is widely cited as evidence that underlying the universe there must be a sea of real zero-point energy.

Since the force drops off rapidly with distance, it is most noticeable between small objects separated by small distances. The force is similar in strength to the Van der Waals force and is similarly most noticeable in everyday observations such as the ability of a gecko’s feet to stick to walls. The Casimir force (also called Casimir effect) has become relevant to micro-electro-mechanical structures in which it is both a problem (termed ”stiction”) and a possible mechanism for control.

It can be attributed to a minutely tiny imbalance in the zero-point energy between the plates and the zero-point energy outside the plates. This is not currently useful for propulsion since it just pulls the plates together. If, however, some asymmetric variation of the Casimir force could be found, one could use it to sail through space as if propelled by a kind of quantum fluctuation wind. This is pure speculation at present.

Applications and demonstrations

In research articles and patents several methods have been proposed for the extraction of zero-point energy from the vacuum. None of the proposals have been reliably demonstrated, yet they remain largely unchallenged.

There is growing interest concerning the possibility of tapping zero-point energy and many claims exist of ”over unity devices” (gadgets yielding a greater output than the required input for operation) driven by zero-point energy. In spite of the dubious nature of these claims (to date no such device has passed a rigorous, objective test), the concept of converting some amount of zero-point energy to usable energy cannot be ruled out in principle.

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.

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.

Can Zero point energy be exploited

Researchers have put forward the thermdynamic principles to assert that zero point energy cannot be harnessed. “For energy to be recoverable or harvestable, you absolutely need a cold source – you can have all the vacuum or zero point energy you want, potentially trillions upon trillions of tetrawatts, if you do not have a cold source to transfer energy towards it won’t do you any good.”

“There is no way to extract useful work from the vacuum, basically because there is no bath into which the fluctuations can be. In general, the idea of extracting useful work from the ZPE is typically the stuff of junk science and useless patent proposals that are intellectually on a par with perpetual motion machines,” says Andrew D. Greentree RMIT University.

According to Koen van Vlaenderen, Ethergy B.V., I suppose ZPE can be harvested if we could enhance our understanding of ZPE beyond the current physics paradigm, that is founded on Einstein’s speed barrier and Heisenberg’s uncertainty. The new paradigm of physics must be beyond Lorentz symmetry and gauge symmetry. Quantum statistics and statistical physics in general imply that harvesting/using zpe is not possible, since this means that the entropy of ZPE can be lowered, and it already has the lowest entropy. A usable source of energy is not totally random/chaotic, it has order/structure on ‘our’ scale of magnitude. The key question: is ZPE truly random or does it have a pattern not yet discovered, such that its entropy can be lowered? Solar energy can be used, it has ‘structure’, although the sun is chaotic, its light wave output is not totally random. I believe the ZPE has a ‘source’ and a ‘pattern’, after all ;-), but be cautious with ZPE patent claims, since our understanding of ZPE is too limited.

Twelfth Conference on Future Energy COFE12

Integrity Research Institute, sponsor of COFE12, hosted a FREE two-day virtual conference via Zoom in the middle of the month on August 14-15, 2020. Steve Hampton presented on his Asymmetric Impulse Drive theory and demonstration. Thrust is generated as impulses where in space, momentum is additive. Rotary motion is converted into bi-linear oscillation of a carriage then its momentum rectified.

Dr. Thorsten Ludwig, who is in Germany, presented his new findings about Zero Point Energy. Casimir predicted that zero point energy can be converted into a force with simple metal configurations. Dr Ludwig is working in projects that aim to use this force for propulsion and for generating electric power.