Moving mirrors make light from nothing

Moving mirrors make light from nothing

www.nature.com

A team of physicists is claiming to have coaxed sparks from the vacuum of empty space1. If verified, the finding would be one of the most unusual experimental proofs of quantum mechanics in recent years and "a significant milestone", says John Pendry, a theoretical physicist at Imperial College London who was not involved in the study.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Light is of course a form of energy, so if these experiments are perhaps the first legitimate experiments to create energy out of "nothing".

The next steps IMO would be to ramp up the process to create enough light that nearby solar cells could convert it to electricity.

And if all of that could be made to happen inexpensively ...

www.nature.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Yes yes yes, very good discovery if true of course.

I can see it now, huge, huge underground bunkers with this process going on creating clean renewable energy which is also out of sight, out of mind.

This, if true, opens so many doors it's unreal. We can create lights from mirrors, there goes street lights, there goes house lights, there goes any light form that currently uses electricity.

If we can create lights from nothing using mirrors, we can obviously use the light source as a heat source, which means what? A form of travel which doesn't use fuel. It could combine electricity with heat to form combustion.

Ships could use the heat to form steam, trains could do the same.

Okay maybe a little far fetched but still a good discovery.

reply to post by centurion1211


Cool story! I have a great interest in quantum physics and appreciate any stories on the subject.

reply to post by centurion1211


I dont think its created out of nothing. Isnt light everywhere and the spinning just amplifies its mirrorification

reply to post by centurion1211

Zero Point Energy, perhap?

My geek meter is pegged!

The energy created has simply been taken from the moving 'mirror' IMO. I don't think this is actually a valid experiment.

The mind boggles! Star and Flag.



Something similar to the double slit experiment at work... I wonder if this process is any different when observed or not?

Originally posted by scottlpool2003
Yes yes yes, very good discovery if true of course.

I can see it now, huge, huge underground bunkers with this process going on creating clean renewable energy which is also out of sight, out of mind.

This, if true, opens so many doors it's unreal. We can create lights from mirrors, there goes street lights, there goes house lights, there goes any light form that currently uses electricity.

If we can create lights from nothing using mirrors, we can obviously use the light source as a heat source, which means what? A form of travel which doesn't use fuel. It could combine electricity with heat to form combustion.

Ships could use the heat to form steam, trains could do the same.

Okay maybe a little far fetched but still a good discovery.

even this would be true....we are the last ones who get a benefit from this..

they wont give us cheap and free energie as long they can sell the dirty but expensive energie

I think the energy used to move the mirrors 5% the speed of light would make the energy production moot. I certainly don't know the conversion but i'm thinking bad returns. This certainly does not seem to be an experiment on possible energy sources.

S & F OP, thank you for posting this.

Seems to verify the soup of virtual particles in so-called empty space. Even if it has no immediate practical application towards energy production, it might in the future.

There is also the analogy to burning oil, coal, or nuclear to transform the energy (heat in these cases) put into a system into another form, electricity. Might offer a way to transform electrical energy into some other kind of form, like perhaps a propulsion source.

Who knows? Somebody will figure out a way to do something with it.

Passing a magnetic field through the SQUID moved the mirror slightly, and switching the direction of magnetic field several billion times per second caused it to 'wiggle' at around 5% the speed of light, a speed great enough to see the effect.

I'm sure it took no energy at all to accomplish this. Something from nothing.... riiiight.

The most important point in the article:

They have already posted a paper on the popular pre-print server arXiv.org, but have declined to talk to reporters because the work has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Originally posted by doctornamtab
reply to post by centurion1211

 

I dont think its created out of nothing. Isnt light everywhere and the spinning just amplifies its mirrorification

Truly amazing experiment and, if approved by peer-review, probably as historical as the famous double-slit.

Basically they have just EXTRACTED ENERGY FROM VACUUM.
Off course, asi this is an experiment the energy input was far greater than the output and it will probably be so for a long time.
But, IF we can find a way to use this "dynamic cassimir effect" of them to extract more energy than what it is used to start-up the whole thing, then yes, all of the "utopian" examples given above could be feasible.
A (sort of) free energy source.

But, again, don't expect to have "cassimir drives" in the next few years. But at least this shows that it CAN be done.
I'm quite excited about this... But I know that as soon as "reason" gets back i'll start findind all kinds of errors in an experiment I can't even start to understand

S & F

Originally posted by Big Raging Loner
The mind boggles! Star and Flag.

Something similar to the double slit experiment at work... I wonder if this process is any different when observed or not?

Observing the double slit experiment doesn't change the results. Interfering with the experiment via the tools used to measure the experiment on the other hand, does change the result. Just thought I would clarify that one for ya.

reply to post by drakus

Basically they have just EXTRACTED ENERGY FROM VACUUM. Off course, asi this is an experiment the energy input was far greater than the output and it will probably be so for a long time.

You got that understanding from reading their paper?

Located Here

In conclusion, we observe broadband generation of microwave photons in an open trans-mission line with a periodically modulated boundary condition. The emitted photons exhibit two-mode squeezing correlations, which are characteristic of photons generated in correlated pairs. Taken together, we believe these results represent the rst experimental observation of the dynamical Casimir effect.

Originally posted by Big Raging Loner
The mind boggles! Star and Flag.

Something similar to the double slit experiment at work... I wonder if this process is any different when observed or not?

I can just see the headlines in newspapers (on-line of course) in the year 2089. "Blackout caused by employee looking at reaction."

"We train all our employee's to provide maintenance of the equipment blindfolded" Plant Manager Bart Knutzen stated. "The employee stated that he had an itch in his eye and removed the blindfold to scratch." "He caught a glimpse of the reaction which caused the wave function to collapse, creating the blackout."

Originally posted by boncho

Passing a magnetic field through the SQUID moved the mirror slightly, and switching the direction of magnetic field several billion times per second caused it to 'wiggle' at around 5% the speed of light, a speed great enough to see the effect.

I'm sure it took no energy at all to accomplish this.

Something from nothing.... riiiight.

Exactly.

My guess is, the energy they are putting in to wiggle something at 5% of the speed of light may be 1000 times the energy they are getting out of the photons they created from "nothing".

The group's analysis shows that the frequency of the photons was roughly half the frequency at which they wiggled the mirror — as was predicted by quantum theory.

that's the only clue we get about the energy they're getting out, but it's got to take a lot of energy to wiggle something at 5% of the speed of light.

Originally posted by centurion1211
Light is of course a form of energy, so if these experiments are perhaps the first legitimate experiments to create energy out of "nothing".

It sounds to me like they are putting a lot of energy in and getting a tiny amount of energy out. That's not exactly a good formula for energy production.

The article even says:

Capasso calls the experiment "very clever". He doubts that the effect has any practical use...

from what I've seen so far, I also doubt it has any practical use, but it is an interesting demonstration of quantum effects, so it seems like I agree with Capasso.

Yes but,

HOW CAN WE WEAPONIZE IT???

Yes Yes! S&F my friend. Very nice story.

Would be nice if something came out of this.

Oddly enough, we seem to be in a world of disaster now, as well as a world of breaking discoveries. I hope we're all here to enjoy them and watch them come to "light". Hua hua hua!