The mathematics of hypothetical extraction of energy from the vacuum

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver
Unless I am completely wrong, did Tesla not extract huge amounts of power just from the "air" and not "the vacuum"? That tower that J P Morgan funded then retracted support for once he realised its true potential and damage to his monetary grip?

If he did, you'll have to bring me up to speed on the details.

I read several of his patents and even some second hand accounts of his experiments and the extraction of energy he made from the air, was power that came from a transmitter, something like what is shown in this video. This receiver is getting power from the air, but in reality it's coming from the transmitter, and it's inefficient, which is why we don't use it, though there is at least one company that makes this type of technology available for specialized applications. They use somewhat directional transmitters to improve efficiency, but it's still inefficient compared to normal AC power transmission.

Tesla Wireless Power Transmission

reply to post by Pimander

you're right, so long as you assume there is an infinite amount of time. the conservation of mass/energy law is broken, but the particle pairs annihilate so fast that it isn't directly observable. because they can't be observed, the universe doesn't care that they violate the laws of physics.

the energy for any given space should stay constant.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

I understand that radio transmissions emit "energy" but he seemed to be able to pull an inordinate amount of power from "nothing". You can forget patents and documents though, they were "confiscated". So in effect no real proof exists now due to,........

ETA I remember the term my (British) grandparents used for radio. It was called wireless and was because the radio itself did not require a power supply but got its power from the radio transmitter itself. I could be wrong though. It was before my time.

Originally posted by Pimander
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

At a quantum level particles are constantly being created and annihilated. Surely that means that there is no limit to the energy potentially available from a vacuum?

I posted this as an open-source solution to the world's energy problems and only asked that anyone who implements it send me a teeny tiny percentage of their huge profits for giving them the idea:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

So far, I haven't received any royalties

Don't take that too seriously though, I didn't really expect to.

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

I understand that radio transmissions emit "energy" but he seemed to be able to pull an inordinate amount of power from "nothing". You can forget patents and documents though, they were "confiscated". So in effect no real proof exists now due to,........

They did take his documents after his death and who knows if they kept some? They might have for all I know.

But I thought his patents were a matter of public record. There should be some kind of evidence trail if a Tesla patent was hidden. There are roughly 5000 classified patents the public can't access, but the applicable patent secrecy act only went into effect in 1951 and Tesla died in 1943 so I'm not sure how his patents could have been classified.

There is also a psychologist who claims to have a fire breathing dragon in his garage, but he has no evidence for it. Should we believe that too? People can make up stories, but that doesn't mean they are true. The psychologist made up that story to illustrate a point. Some people get the point more than others, I'm afraid.

Edit to add reply to your added text: That's true. No power source is needed. Here's the wiki:
Crystal Radio

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz

 

you're right, so long as you assume there is an infinite amount of time. the conservation of mass/energy law is broken, but the particle pairs annihilate so fast that it isn't directly observable. because they can't be observed, the universe doesn't care that they violate the laws of physics.

the energy for any given space should stay constant.

Originally posted by CLPrime
This limits the amount of energy we can extract at any given time. The source, itself, is unlimited, since particles are, as you say, constantly being created, but they are being created at a rate too slow to be of any practical use.

I was thinking along the lines of extracting the particles as they manifest. There is theoretically no reason why you can't go on doing so forever so in that respect the source is limitless.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
I posted this as an open-source solution to the world's energy problems and only asked that anyone who implements it send me a teeny tiny percentage of their huge profits for giving them the idea:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

So far, I haven't received any royalties

Don't take that too seriously though, I didn't really expect to.

Great minds think alike it seems. There must be a patent holder for the method already surely?

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
But I thought his patents were a matter of public record.

I repeat, except for the papers that were stolen at the time of his murder. Yup. Another "conspiracy"

Originally posted by Pimander
Great minds think alike it seems. There must be a patent holder for the method already surely?

Who knows? I don't really know what's in those 5000 classified patents, but I'm curious...who isn't?

Originally posted by Pimander

I was thinking along the lines of extracting the particles as they manifest. There is theoretically no reason why you can't go on doing so forever so in that respect the source is limitless.

In the same way solar and wind energy are limitless. Vacuum energy is just much less productive than either of those.

Originally posted by CLPrime
reply to post by Aletheia007

 

So, are you using the observed 6×10⁻¹º J/m³ or the theoretical 10¹¹³ J/m³? 'Cause there's a big difference. Personally, I'd think the observed value would be preferred.

That's a logical way to express it.

The source I used for the OP actually presented not one, but five different calculations for the value of vacuum energy. The author concluded as you state, that there is reason to prefer the observed value over those calculations which have no supporting observations.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

there is reason to prefer the observed value over those calculations which have no supporting observations.

Now is it just me or does that statement not turn everything into nothing? To a simple man, this is like throwing me forcibly in a canoe and cutting off my left arm. Going round in circles. Possibly in # Creek.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Just for fun, if 10¹¹³ J/m³ were the true value: a single instantaneous tap of 2.575×10⁻⁷⁴ nm³ would be enough to power a house for a lifetime. 3×10⁻⁶⁴ nm³ could power the entire US until the year 10,000.

The energy required to boil the Earth's oceans is about 3.4×10²⁷ J.
At 10¹¹³ J/m³, this would be the energy contained in 3.4×10⁻⁵⁹ nm³ -- a cubic space 3.24×10⁻²º nm on each side.
At 6×10⁻¹º J/m³, it would be the energy contained in 5.667×10²⁷ km³ -- equal to 5232 trillion Earths.

This is way too much math for 3:30 in the morning.

reply to post by CLPrime

Sorry, this is getting scary now. Why would you even want to know how much energy is required to boil the oceans of the world? No, really! May I wish you both much peace? Please?

reply to post by LightSpeedDriver


What's-his-name on page 1 mentioned it. I don't usually fantasize about these things.

OP, You need to take a course in Magnetic Field theory ...and Integral Calculus which is a prerequisite.
Read about Maxwell's Equations which is all about "point charges...in space."

But why bother if Solar is already collecting particles of energy today.... Here and now for only about $2./watt.

1k watts per day could be generated by 5 3'x5' 230Watt panels today at a cost of approx. $500./ panel.
Today. And far less than 44 sq. meters of roof space are required.

The key is converting the solar panels DC to AC at the panel and (not downstream where it will only incur DC losses) making it far more efficient AND because it is now in phase with the Grids AC power it flows directly into the distribution/breaker box AND actually pays for itself by selling the excess wattage back to the power company/grid.

Also you receive a tax rebate of approx. 35% on all your initial hardware expenditures.

Peace

reply to post by Arbitrageur


This is only a theory, but I am beginning to think space time is what photons decay into.

It makes sense, now that they have sucked photons out of vacuums.


I suppose then you'd have as much energy as you wish, as space time is ultra flexible. I would ask what the gravitational affects would be, however. If mass creates gravity, would sucking energy out of space create gravity? Or remove it?


In theory, it could just be the energy of compression from our very own galaxy.

Originally posted by nh_ee

OP, You need to take a course in Magnetic Field theory ...and Integral Calculus which is a prerequisite.
Read about Maxwell's Equations which is all about "point charges...in space."

I already did that, but I didn't see where I needed that for the calculations in the OP.

But I do have to disagree with this:

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver
ETA You made some impressive calculations though.

There's nothing impressive about the calculations in the OP. But yes there are some harder calculations in electromagnetic field theory, so when people get those right it's more impressive.

Originally posted by nh_ee
But why bother if Solar is already collecting particles of energy today.... Here and now for only about $2./watt.

1k watts per day could be generated by 5 3'x5' 230Watt panels today at a cost of approx. $500./ panel.
Today. And far less than 44 sq. meters of roof space are required.

24 hours at 1020 watts is equal to 24,480 Wh or about 24.5 kWh. So I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 1k watts per day, do you mean 24 kilowatt hours per day?

Do you have a link to more info on those solar panels? $2 a watt sounds pretty good.

reply to post by CLPrime

I was thinking about trying to convert 57.4 trillion swimming pools of volume to the number of coffee cups as the other poster suggested but you fried my brain with that post at this hour

I'm not sure my calculator had enough digits anyway (just kidding, 113 is a lot of zeroes though. I thought a googol was a lot and it's something like 10 trillion googols, right?).

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

This is only a theory, but I am beginning to think space time is what photons decay into.

It makes sense, now that they have sucked photons out of vacuums.

Yes I read about that. I think it's fair to think it goes both ways so some might, but I suspect most don't. Many photons seem to be absorbed by atoms and then new photons are re-radiated at lower energy levels and frequencies, like infrared. Many other photons seem to be able to travel great distances without decay. We see photons that left the source 11 billion years ago, and they are red-shifted, but they didn't decay. So I think most probably don't decay into space-time.

I suppose then you'd have as much energy as you wish, as space time is ultra flexible. I would ask what the gravitational affects would be, however. If mass creates gravity, would sucking energy out of space create gravity? Or remove it?

Photons don't have rest mass but they are believed to have relativistic mass determined by their frequency, however this is so small I have never seen it demonstrated experimentally; I don't think it's been proven. But it seems pretty likely to be true, it's just too small an effect to measure with current technology.

And no I don't think it means you can get as much energy as you wish. The number of photons that were extracted from the vacuum in the experiment you alluded to was finite. Not only that, but it was I suspect very inefficient:

www.sciencedaily.com...

By changing the direction of the magnetic field several billions of times a second the scientists were able to make the "mirror" vibrate at a speed of up to 25 percent of the speed of light.

Well vibrating the "mirror" at 25 percent of the speed probably took some energy, don't you think? I suspect the energy they got out in the few photons they created from the "vacuum" was far less than the energy they put in, and put "vacuum" in quotes because I normally don't think of a mirror vibrating at 25 percent of the speed of light as a "vacuum", so the claim isn't really what some people seem to think it is.

However it's still an interesting result, I just doubt it's any key to "free energy".

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

there is reason to prefer the observed value over those calculations which have no supporting observations.

Now is it just me or does that statement not turn everything into nothing?

To a simple man, this is like throwing me forcibly in a canoe and cutting off my left arm. Going round in circles.

Quantum mechanics and relativity are models. To paraphrase George Box, even the best models we have aren't perfect representations of the natural world (they are after all, just models and not the real thing), but in spite of their imperfections, some models prove to be extremely useful and both those models have proven to be incredibly useful at making extremely accurate predictions in many instances.

However, as long as we don't have a proven model of quantum gravity (and we don't), nobody is claiming those models are perfect; in fact there is a known gap between them which is an unsolved problem in physics.

So if you want my simplest interpretation, those highly accurate models are probably just outside their range of usefulness and accuracy when they are used for calculations involving vacuum energy.

Physicist Richard Feynmann put the argument about matching theoretical predictions with experiment quite succinctly:

Richard Feynman - The Key to Science


That video is pretty simple and only a minute long, but if you can understand that, my guess is you will probably understand more about science than perhaps as many as half the posters on ATS. The key to science is comparing predicted results with observations. If they don't match, then there's something wrong with the prediction.

That's pretty simple in concept, right? Applying it can get tricky though.