Casimir force not caused by vacuum energy

It is still somewhat controversial. But there seems to be some motion towards the van der Waals forces model as the correct explanation. This means the effect originates from matter (charge density fluctuations), not vacuum fluctuations (EM field).

Here is a paper arguing that while producing the same result, the vacuum energy model is phenomenologically wrong in attributing the effect to EM field fluctuations. To put it simply, there is an error in the derivation.
www.sciencedirect.com...

I find this interesting in so far as vacuum energy has some serous issues with energy density (vacuum catastrophe) requiring the assumption that it can only be measured (have an effect) in a relative sense.

More generally it shows that you can have a mathematical model producing results matching reality, while not being the correct description of what is actually happening. I feel like this is an inherent issue with trying to describe reality using models/abstractions.

How do you define a vacuum? A space with no matter? What kind of forces are required to remove all matter from a space that is spinning around the earth, around a sun and around a galaxy?

What kind of pressure is going to want to collapse this vacuum once created? How does time affect these other variables?

a reply to: kwakakev

What kind of pressure is going to want to collapse this vacuum once created?

You do not collapse a vacuum, you fill it with something.

P

a reply to: moebius

There's a book you might enjoy: Hossfelder(?) Lost in Maths
It deals exactly with the problem how beautiful mathmatical proof can lead physics astray.

originally posted by: pheonix358
a reply to: kwakakev

What kind of pressure is going to want to collapse this vacuum once created?

You do not collapse a vacuum, you fill it with something.

P

unless it is infinitely dense

a reply to: Vector99

Then that would make it a Dyson...

...sphere!!

🧉

vDWs is just being seriously investigated so having two “different things” describing a measurable effect rather regular occurrence in physics. Maybe that Shaw EM Engine is not focusing “vacuum energy microwaves” but has more due to stacking graphene on copper and creating some kind of waveguide thing that can translate one form of energy into a slightly different form that is useful to us ugly bags of mostly water!!

a reply to: moebius

I am not going to pretend to get this fully, but I have a few "armchair phys.org questions."

Is it just because the weak value of The cosmological constant (problem) are orders of magnitude off from predicted values in zero point theories?

Could the answer be multiversal?

Is it like string theory explanations for gravity and it is diluted through higher dimensions?

Or is it just a natural occurrence or charges and currents?

Thanks for the OP. In my view it isn't that modeling has an inherent problem, but rather that we've been using the wrong model for quite a while. 1905 was a very bad year, but Poincare, Mach and Hume had a lot to do with it too.

QED has been loudly advertised as being the most accurate theory ever devised. But when I looked at it long ago it merely matched experiments by setting free parameters to match its predictions. If you dug far enough you could always find where there was some mass or length or charge that was being set so as to make the experiments perfectly consistent with the theory. The theory was being used to define to high accuracy what the elemental charges and masses were, as well as how coupling constants "run". Basically there were always just as many settable parameters as there were results. When a new test came up, there would always be a new constant that needed to be set, such as some nuclear property (mass, size, charge distribution) that affected the atomic binding energy and hence the experimental result. I don't know whether the intervening decades have actually found anything different from that conclusion or not. I asked here some years ago and no one offered any solid counter example.