Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Engineers Unveil First Casimir Chip That Exploits The Vacuum Energy

Technology Review via Instapundit

Excerpts:
  • One of the strangest effects to arise from the quantum nature of the universe is the Casimir force.
  • This pushes two parallel conducting plates together when they are just a few dozen nanometres apart. 
  • many engineers hope to exploit the Casimir force
  • But there is a problem: Casimir force experiments are extremely hard to do.
  • Today, Jie Zou at the University of Florida and a few buddies take a big step towards changing this.
Comment:

The first time I heard of Casmir force was when I read one of  John G. Cramer's  Alternate View columns.  Re-reading that column on Casimir force was bizarre.  He was talking about making a faster than light spacecraft using such a device.  Wild idea.

There may be all kinds of explanations for unusual phenomena that occurs due to quantum effects.  One of these may well unlock the mystery behind the phenomena known as cold fusion.

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