The mathematics of hypothetical extraction of energy from the vacuum

reply to post by JibbyJedi

Originally posted by yampa

Any person with decent common sense should not accept theories from rouge scientists ...

Arbitrageur dealt with the physics, but I just want to say I do agree with you on one thing: rouge scientists are evil. The only scientists I trust are blue ones.

Originally posted by CLPrime

Originally posted by yampa

Any person with decent common sense should not accept theories from rouge scientists ...

Arbitrageur dealt with the physics, but I just want to say I do agree with you on one thing: rouge scientists are evil. The only scientists I trust are blue ones.

Arbitrageur seems like he has a considerably better grasp on the physics than yourself. Are you really sure about the reality of the babble you keep outputting here? The fact that out of a whole page of specific criticism about current models, you choose to pick up on a typo is highly indicative.

reply to post by yampa


I'm sorry...I have a sense of humor.

Arbitrageur seems like he has a considerably better grasp on the physics than yourself.

Arbitrageur definitely has a very good grasp of physics. In this case, he was obviously awake to respond to you before I was, and this is his thread. He's doing a fine job discussing this with you, he doesn't need me.
Have you read the rest of my posts in this thread? Have you read the rest of my posts on ATS? My grasp of physics speaks for itself.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Some models are useful. Our model of quantum mechanics is very useful as it makes extremely accurate predictions.

But by all means if you have different atomic models and images of atoms that look like your models, please share them with us. If you don't, I think we have just cause to be impressed by these images as evidence that our models are on the right track. Some of these shapes in our models are pretty odd, so the matching images generated from real atoms can't just be coincidence, can they?

Isn't it absolutely amazing that if I google "extremely accurate predictions", the first hit I get is:
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_tests_of_QED

Why, it's almost as if you're repeating blindly what it is you're think you're supposed to be saying, rather than putting your own analysis forward.

You are correct that Feynman's diagrams showed some kind of pictographic representation of his math. It did not depict quantum particle motion, because he said over and over that it was not possible to do this with anything but probability math.

You link to a perfectly acceptable set of diagrams. I am not claiming that there is no such thing as electrons, protons, neutrons, photons etc. I am not denying any data. What I am claiming is that the models that you are all lauding here are nowhere near as efficient or sane as you believe. This is entirely evident by the fact you are all sitting around trying to guess how much energy you could get out of a nothing.

No sane science would permit this discussion.

Originally posted by CLPrime

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

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?).

I bet your calculator can't handle a googolplex.
And I dare you to ask it to calculate Graham's number.

I sometimes use this software calculator, it's pretty decent:

www.calculator.org...

I just tested it. I can enter 10^308, but if I multiply that by 10, I get "overflow error" so it apparently can't handle 10^309.

I'm not sure why that's where it overflows, but there must be a reason. So yeah, a googolplex is out of the question on that one. There probably aren't many people working with googolplexes so calculators that can handle it might be rare. I probably could have calculated the number of coffee cups though!

Originally posted by yampa
you are all sitting around trying to guess how much energy you could get out of a nothing.

No sane science would permit this discussion.

It's an educated guess based on an actual measurement.

One thing to keep in mind is that all models have a useful range. If you use the model inside that useful range, you can get accurate predictions, and if you try to apply the model outside that useful range, the predictions may no longer be accurate. This isn't an inherent defect in the model as I see it, it's just the way all models I've ever seen work. The only perfect answers come from observing nature itself and not from models.

So we made measurements of the cosmological constant using multiple tools such as WMAP. These measurements are not guesses, they are relatively accurate measurements. That's what I used for the calculations in my OP.

As Maslo correctly pointed out, we haven't yet proven the cosmological constant is equal to the vacuum energy but it's a popular idea we are trying to prove so right now all we can say is it's the best idea we've got.

The other values people are throwing about are not observed measurements. They are theoretical calculations. It could be that these high vacuum energy calculations are outside the range where those models make accurate predictions. The author of the source I used for the OP feels this way and I tend to agree that's likely. But I'm not pretending this is well defined science like plotting the trajectory of a new probe to one of Saturn's moons. This part of science is bordering on the edge of what we know and what we don't know. There are things about the vacuum we understand, and some things we don't understand, like why we haven't been able to observe the high vacuum energy levels some models predict. But we wouldn't need any scientists if we had all the answers already, right?

reply to post by Arbitrageur


vaccuum energy has different values in regards to special relativity and quantum. Using special relavity the Vaccuum energy is low however Quantum says its not and is a high value. isnt that the paradox of quantum? that at this level the rules for special relativity dosent cut it. And another thing most people tend to forget about the birth of our universe where it came from nothing. Seems to me that by acknowleding this high value you can get some sort of answer on how our universe came to be. The cyclic universe is one in which i favour in which the universe is born dies and reborn. This model of the universe requires the vaccuum energy to be high when all matter has finally gone and all that is left is vaccuum energy

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Admittedly I was in the department of "yay warp drive", not free energy.


Still, it is quite easy to vibrate something small and light. Usually generators are big and heavy to max out resistance in the magnetic field. But if the field in question is space time, that's a whole other ball game.



On another note, generators from the late 1800s were shockingly efficient. Because of their bulk mass. The more mass, the less energy it needs to rotate. It's own momentum suffices.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I am unsure whether You have read the book, Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion, but it also has a bit about the energy extraction through electrogravitics, a science pulled into black ops in late 1959, early 1960, and also the math of subquantum kinetics, which grew out of chemical kinetics and predicts the Biefield-Brown effect of gravity control.

For more (and a link to a PDF of Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion) see My thread here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

I just tested it. I can enter 10^308, but if I multiply that by 10, I get "overflow error" so it apparently can't handle 10^309.

I'm not sure why that's where it overflows, but there must be a reason.

That's similar to (if not the same as) Excel's limitation of about 1.8x10^308. This is due to the program having a limited memory space in which to store the binary number. That calculator must have the same memory capacity as Excel.

The scientific calculator in Windows goes much higher because it uses whatever memory the computer can give it. I'm not sure about the one in Mac (I haven't used it much), but it's probably the same. The Windows calculator overflows at 10^43429, though it will go much higher than that if a higher number is obtained from a calculation. It really only begins to lag at around 10^100000 (on my computer, with the memory I have). Still not a googolplex, though.

Anyway...this has nothing to do with vacuum energy.
Or does it...?

Originally posted by Aletheia007
vaccuum energy has different values in regards to special relativity and quantum. Using special relavity the Vaccuum energy is low however Quantum says its not and is a high value. isnt that the paradox of quantum?

You should read the source I linked to in the OP, it will improve your understanding.

But here's as a short excerpt from it:

2. We can try to calculate the energy density of the vacuum using quantum field theory. If we calculate the lowest possible energy of a harmonic oscillator, we get a bigger answer when we use quantum mechanics than when we use classical mechanics. The difference is called the "zero-point energy". The zero-point energy of a harmonic oscillator is 1/2 Planck's constant times its frequency. Naively we can try calculating the energy density of the vacuum by simply summing up the zero-point energies of all the vibrational modes of the quantum fields we are considering (e.g. the electromagnetic field and various other fields for other forces and particles). Vibrational modes with shorter wavelengths have higher frequencies and contribute more vacuum energy density. If we assume spacetime is a continuum, we have modes with arbitrarily short wavelengths, so we get INFINITY as the vacuum energy density. But there are problems with this calculation....

3. A slightly less naive way to calculate the vacuum energy in quantum field theory is to admit that we don't know spacetime is a continuum, and only sum the zero-point energies for vibrational modes having wavelengths bigger than, say, the Planck length (about 10^-35 meters). This gives an ENORMOUS BUT FINITE vacuum energy density. Using E = mc2 to convert between energy and mass, it corresponds to a mass density of about 10^96 kilograms per cubic meter! But there are problems with this calculation, too....

One problem is that treating the vibrational modes of our fields as harmonic oscillators is only valid for "free field theories" - those in which there are no interactions between modes. This is not physically realistic.

However, while taking interactions into account changes the precise answer, we are still left with an enormous energy density. The ridiculous ratio between this density and what's actually observed is often called the cosmological constant problem. One way to put it is that in units of Planck mass per Planck length cubed, the cosmological constant is about 10^-123. It's hard to make up a theory that explains such a tiny nonzero number.

But there's an even bigger problem, too....

4. Quantum field theory as it is ordinarily done ignores gravity. But as long as one is ignoring gravity, one can add any constant to ones definition of energy density without changing the predictions for anything you can experimentally measure. The reason is that without measuring the curvature of spacetime, one can only measure energy differences. The big problem with calculations 2 and 3 is that they ignore this fact. If we take advantage of this fact we are free to redefine energy density by subtracting off the zero-point energy, leaving an energy density of ZERO. In fact this is what is ordinarily done in quantum field theory.

So based on that, I don't really agree with your assessment.

In summary that says you can calculate 3 values using quantum field theory depending on what assumptions you make, so vacuum energy is calculated to be:
2. infinite, if you assume a continuous universe
3. a large number, if you assume the universe is not continuous but discrete and fail to realize the model only deals with energy differences and not absolute values
4. Zero, if you realize the model deals with energy differences and not absolute values

People stating they have confidence in any of these numbers don't show a comprehensive understanding of how the model works, but John Baez does when he explains calculation #5:

5. An even less naive way to think about the vacuum energy density in quantum field theory is the following. In quantum field theory we are neglecting gravity. This means we are free to add any constant whatsoever to our definition of energy density. As long as we are free to do this, we can't really say what the vacuum energy density "really is". In other words, if we only consider quantum field theory and not general relativity, the vacuum energy density is NOT DETERMINED.

So that's really the correct answer for what quantum field theory gives us, in the opinion of John Baez, which I happen to agree with. Not infinite, not zero, and not insanely high, it's NOT DETERMINED.

By the way, #1 is the measured value, not a theoretical calculation, so that's the one I used.

reply to post by CLPrime

Hmmm I'm not sure if anyone actually use googolplexes or why they would?

But that's good to know the Windows 7 calculator has better capabilities. I tried upgrading to win7 but I'm so much happier with XP I'll probably stick with it until they drop support for it, and probably a while after that.

Originally posted by Amaterasu
I am unsure whether You have read the book, Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion, but it also has a bit about the energy extraction through electrogravitics, a science pulled into black ops in late 1959, early 1960, and also the math of subquantum kinetics, which grew out of chemical kinetics and predicts the Biefield-Brown effect of gravity control.

For more (and a link to a PDF of Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion) see My thread here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

I'm not sure why you're linking me to that thread, I was the 4th person to reply.

I've seen no evidence for electrogravitics and don't find the claims in that book to be credible as I said in your thread. Searle's story that his anti-gravity machine flew into outer space and that's why he can't demonstrate it is an absolute joke. When a book uses bunkum like that as evidence, it lends no credence to the author's critical thinking skills or ability to sort fact from fiction on the other claims.

But I'm sure he's sold a lot of books to people who are happy to believe things with zero evidence. I'm sure I could write a book about how unicorns are real, have zero evidence for the claim, and it would still sell. Maybe I could borrow Searle's trick and say I had a unicorn, but the reason I can't show it is because it flew into outer space? Or would that be stealing Searle's original idea too much?

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Well i throw some links back at you since you are the one not getting it
www.bbc.co.uk... this is about the evidence found of a previous universe enforcing the cyclic universe theory

and here is a link to a pdf file.

bstract: We present evidence in terms of a D'Alembertain operator acting on a scalar field minus the first ... This permits us to state that Penrose's cyclic universe model in its initial .... hole solution is dominated by a huge vacuum energy value.

reply to post by Aletheia007


Your editing of the paper, especially that last sentence, is interesting. The paper says:

We add in another caveat, that the worm hole solution is dominated by a huge vacuum energy value.

Specifically, this is speaking of a wormhole "bridge" between Penrose's cyclic universes, and this model predicts the "huge vacuum energy value" to dampen quickly after each "Big Bang" event:

...the very real possibility if we initially have a pre inflationary state of low temperature that the worm hole model as mentioned in the next section could give us emergent quintessence fields which damp out quickly.

That is, the high vacuum energy would, by now, have dampened to a more conservative value -- observationally found to be about 6×10⁻¹º J/m³.

reply to post by CLPrime

I didnt read the pdf just the abstract.

What u said is what I said about the cyclic universe. The vaccuum energy is low now because it is not a true vacuum. Our universe is "too noisy" for the vacuum energy to be high. As the universe gets old the vacuum energy will start to increase as matter starts to decrease.

here is a better link explaining it
ldolphin.org...

reply to post by Aletheia007

Until we have evidence of the hypothesized inflaton field, I'm willing to entertain alternate explanations to inflation such as that, so hooray for creative thinking.

But as CLPrime pointed out, energy density would have probably been higher in the past in most theories, and is probably lower today than what it once was. How fast did it decline, and by exactly what mechanism is a fair point to debate in my opinion, so I have no problem with your source engaging in that debate.

The question is, what is the energy density of vacuum energy today? I don't see where your links change anything I said about that, or if they do, please be more specific and point it out to me.

reply to post by Aletheia007


That page describes a whole bunch of very theoretical ideas that may or may not be justified, and that, regardless, have nothing to do with the cyclic universe Penrose suggests. I'd have to dedicate some more time to reading through it to get a better understanding of what's being claimed.

You seem to be putting these two theories together, but the model Penrose suggests has its own mechanism for the cyclic creation of an inflation field ("huge vacuum energy" -- the so-called Penrose potential), which then rapidly decays to 0 at each "Big Bang." And, honestly, the Penrose model makes use of Einstein's field equations, which are the most accurate description of spacetime we have, as opposed to this other site, which is written at a high school physics level. You can hardly use one to explain any part of the other.

You should stick with Penrose. He seems to be onto something.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


ok u talking about the energy stored in a tea cup and boil off all the oceans right?
Easy the vacuum of space is filled with particles of matter and EM radiation therefore reducing the POTENTIAL ENERGY of the vacuum. If you could build a container that will stop all Electromagnetic radiation neutrinos etc from entering it insides then the potential energy of the vacuum will increase. So potentially a tea cup can contain enough energy to boil of all the water on this planet.
LINK

Originally posted by Aletheia007
here is a better link explaining it
ldolphin.org...

I just glanced at it, but it's kind of a fringe paper using fringe sources, like Halton Arp.

one of Arp's his claims to fame is that this photograph, which I clarified a bit, is evidence of this galaxy and this quasar being 'linked" by a "bridge":
Spiral Galaxy NGC 4319 and Quasar Markarian 205, enhanced by Arbitrageur
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/cd89ae367174.jpg[/atsimg]

I, along with over 99.9% of other scientists in the world who have looked at it, have rejected Arp's claim that it shows any such evidence of proximity. Here's the unedited photo from NASA/Hubble, though you have to go to the website to get their highest resolution version I used:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/31d521316086.jpg[/atsimg]

For example, this would seem to show better evidence of two objects being at the same distance, except we know they aren't in this case.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a4233c433a22.jpg[/atsimg]

Even Arp admits the entire scientific community has completely rejected his claims, I think with good reason after conducting my personal investigation. But if you want to believe this fringe stuff that most scientists have rejected, I obviously can't stop you.

I would also call the authors claim that high vacuum energy calculations must be right even though they haven't been observed, a fringe claim. Most scientists consider these calculations to be a problem (one of the unsolved problems in physics), not a solution as he seems to suggest.