Zero Point Energy

[Gamingphreek]

THe most i can find is that it is thoguht to be virtually limitless energy from space or something.

-Kevin

 

[Sp33d]

http://www.padrak.com/ine/ZPESCIAM.html

 

[Farmer]

HLAF LIFEOMG!!!!1!1

Seriously, I know nothing about this. Good read.

 

[unipidity]

Hmm....

Black hole radiation is a form of useful zero-point energy isnt it? Anyone?

 

[filterxg]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Point_Energy

 

[AbAbber2k]

Gotta give props to Wikipedia... I'd use it for all my papers if I thought my profs would count it as a valid reference.

 

[cquark]

The Casimir Force, which causes two very close (a few angstroms) perfectly parallel plates to be attracted to each other, may be a way of extracting zero point energy.

There are a variety of controversies about the zero point energy. In particular, quantum mechanics requires that it be extremely large, but general relativity indicates that energy produces gravitational effects so that such a large amount of energy would curve spacetime in such a way that's inconsistent with observations that indicate we live in a Minkowski spacetime. I'm not sure if someone's found a regularization scheme for the ZPE similar to the ones that solved similar problems arising in QED and QCD.