From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Subject: Making Star Trek Real 1
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 08:18:03 GMT


Prospects for harnessing the cosmic quantum vacuum energy for practical
interstellar propulsion, time travel and space-like communication.

"It would be just as presumptuous to deny the feasibility of useful
application as it would be irresponsible to guarantee such application."
attributed to R. Podolny by Hal Puthoff.

Hal Puthoff's work on extracting useful energy from the quantum vacuum
using the Casimir force looks very interesting.
Puthoff writes:
".. the Casimir force, ... closely-spaced metal plates being pushed
together ... is due to radiation pressure from the background
electromagnetic zero-point energy which has become unbalanced ..(by).. the
plates.  This attractive force is proportional to 1/D4... and becomes quite
strong at (D) ... on the order of 1000 Angstroms ...

An alternative candidate .. to obtaining energy from vacuum fluctuations
might lie in ... cold, dense, ... plasma in which charge condensation
occurs on the basis of a Casimir pinch effect ..."

My "precognitive" intuition assures me that eventually we earthlings will
build star ships powered by zero point energy. We will be able to amplify
traversable time-machine wormholes out of the quantum gravity foam for our
ships to fly through.  We will be able to communicate in "subspace" faster-
than-light on the quantum connection in a globally causally consistent
forever expanding universe. Indeed, if some UFO reports do prove to be real
in the near future, some of them are sure to be such ships from our future
manned by our descendants.

"".. with the theory of the inflationary universe ... the entire universe
was created as a 'false vacuum',  ... the decay of that particular vacuum
to an ordinary quantum vacuum produced all the mass in the universe and
started the Big Bang."
from The Timetables of Science quoted by Puthoff in Speculations in Science
and Technology 13, 4, p.247, 1990 - more excerpts follow:

".. an expression for the spectral energy density that characterizes the
vacuum electromagnetic zero-point energy

p(f)df = f^3df/2pi^2 [joules/m3, hbar = 1 = c]  (1)

with a high frequency cut-off at Planck scale 10^-33 cm)

S[p(f)df] = 10^94 grams/cm^3

This f^3 zero point energy (ZPF) density is Lorentz invariant.

"Whereas motion through all other radiation fields ... can be detected by
Doppler-shift ... the ZPF spectrum with its cubic frequency dependence iis
unique in that detailed cancellation of Doppler shifts with velocity
changes leaves the spectrum unchanged ... It is also the case, unique to
the ZPF cubic frequency .. that Doppler shifts due to ... cosmological
expansion, gravitation ... also do not alter the spectrum.  This stands in
contrast to, for example, the 3K blackbody microwave background left over
from the Big Bang which cools with cosmological expansion.

Yet another feature .... is the complete lack of a drag force (the
Einstein-Hopf drag ... p(f) - (f/3)dp/df  -> 0 if p(f) = f^3.

On the other hand, accelerated motion through the vacuum can in principle
reveal the presence of the ZPF energy density directly .... One factor
yields a thermal (Planck) spectrum of temperature

T = (hbar)a/2pick, where a is acceleration, k is Boltzmann's constant..
This is known as the Davies-Unruh effect.

"Yet another factor which shows up in the ZPF spectrum of an accelerated
observer is found, via the equivalence principle, to reveal a deep
connection between zero point energy and gravity along lines orginally
proposed by Sakharov .... "

"... the Casimir effect ... With parallel, non-charged conducting plates
set a distance D apart, only those (electromagnetic) modes which satisfy
the plate boundary conditions (vanishing tangential electric field) are
permitted to exist. In the interior space this constrains the modes to a
discrete set of wavelengths for which an integer number of half-wavelengths
just spans the distance D ,,, no mode for which a half-wavelength is
greater than D can fit ... all longer-wavelength modes are excluded ... The
constraints for modes exterior to the plates .. are much less restrictive
due to the larger spaces .. Therefore, the number of viable modes exterior
is greater than that interior ... the radiation pressure inward
overbalances that outward ... the plates are pushed together with a force
that varies as 1/D^4 ...  the plates will move toward each other.  The
conservation of energy dictates that in this process potential energy is
converted to ... kinetic energy .. the conversion of vacuum energy into
heat .... What takes getting used to ... is that the vacuum state does not
have a fixed enegy value, but changes with boundary conditions. .. vacuum-
plus-plates-far-apart is a higher energy state than vacuum-plus-plates-
close-together ... in Forward's ... design ... the two plates are charged
with the same sign ... At sufficiently small spacings the Coulomb repulsion
.. 1/D^2 ,, can always be overcome by the stronger 1/D^4 attractive Casimir
force. ... This confines the charge distribution to smaller and smaller
volume and results in an increased electric field ... the zero-point energy
(Casimir energy) is transformed into stored Coulomb energy, which can then
be extracted ... the (Forward) generator is a one-shot device. To recycle
the generator one must put as much energy into the device to return the
plates to their original separated positions .... not even 'break0even'
operation can be achieved ... however, if one could arrange to have an
inexhaustible supply of such devices, and if it took less energy to make
each device than was obtained from the Casimir-collapse process, and if the
devices were discarded after use rather than recycled ... a possible
candidate ... would be the generation of a cold, dense, non-neutral
(charged) plasma in which charge condensation takes place ... on the basis
of a Casimir pinch effect ..."

Indeed, if cold fusion cells really do produces excess energy the mechanism
will not be thermonuclear fusion but, rather, this kind of Casimir pinch
effect.  It may also be possible to create a "unitary" quantum connection
communication device by focusing the "transmitter" part of pair correlated
light into an active beam splitter in which Casimir pinch electric fields
are non-linearly converted to "cloned" transmitter photons.  It would not
be necessary to clone photons for every possible orientation of the
transmitter amplifier so that the superposition principle need not be
violated as it was in Nick Herbert's FLASH gedankenexperiment.  This
proposal is admittedly "half-baked" - a telepatype from the future?

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