by Keith_McClary » Tue 28 Jun 2005, 01:07:53
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')And, I'm really sorry, but even at a micro scale you ALWAYS need to put in at least as much energy as you get out of "zero point" energy via the Casimir effect. An analysis that shows otherwise has simply not accounted for the entire input energy budget. This is an entirely obvious consquence of energy conservation within the framework of quantum field theory (a subject that I teach regularly at a major research univeristy). Shame on the Physical Review referees who either didn't know this or didn't have the guts to have a fight over it.
Avo
Right on. It's just like perpetual motion machines made from magnetic coils, wheels, levers, etc. All these components conserve energy so any combination of them does also. There are many designs for perpetual motion machines that look like they should produce free energy, but when you build them they don't work - there is always some energy needed to shift a weight or build up a magnetic field that has been overlooked.
Many people understand enough about classical mechanics and electromagnetism to realize that you are not going to get free energy out of some arrangement of wheels, magnets, gears, wires and levers.
Fewer people understand quantum field theory, but the same applies there.
An analogy for "Zero Point Energy" might be to say that there is energy in air, because if you took a volume of air up into space you could extract energy from it by expanding it against a piston. But if you try to do this you will find you put in more energy than you get out.