/sci/ - Science & Math

Recently I've heard about this while browsing a couple youtube videos and from what I've heard it's a sort of energy produced by vacuum... fluctuations...? I'm not a physicist or an engineer so I thought It'd be a good idea to ask about it here.

How long until we can start harnessing the energy of the quantum vacuum, and can we get to that point with wind, solar, and batteries?

Is the Casimir Effect the ultimate proof that the Universe is a computer with a floating point rounding functionality?

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27388/?p1=blogs

The researches in this article say that, using metamaterials, they can produce a Casimir effect that produces 10^11 times more energy than the Casimir effect in free space.

From the article:
"They say that in a particular kind of electromagnetic space called a Rindler space, the Casimir effect is huge. The essential idea here is that the space can be designed to allow only certain wavelengths to operate. If the electromagnetic properties of the Rindler space are matched to the ambient temperature, then these kinds of thermal waves can be made to dominate the Casimir energy. That makes the Casimir energy huge. Zhao and Miao calculate that in a lab at 300K (room temperature), the Casimir energy would be some 10^11 times bigger than the free space value. That's a significant difference that ought to make these effects accessible in an entirely new way to a much broader audience."

I know the Casimir effect in free space is a very small amount of force, but 10^11 is a huge factor. How much theoretical force are we talking about here? Could the energy from this then be harnessed for practical applications?

Casimir effect

Free energy? FTL communication?

Discuss