steve_bank
Diabetic retinopathy and poor eyesight. Typos ...
As to the Casimir effect, The force is measurable. It does not prove something from nothing. That a theory can explain an experiment does not mean the theory is correct. I do not question the actual experiment, I don't see where the experint proves smething from nothing. That would be a speculative conclusion, albeit based in math and science.
A well known effect is that if you put two very smooth metal surfaces together they will stick together. It is a problem in pres ion surfaces and mechanical gauge blocks.. On the old hard drives the read-write heads were ultra smooth ceramics. If you put them together you could not pull them apart.
What causes metals to stick together?
The electrons can move freely within these molecular orbitals, and so each electron becomes detached from its parent atom. The electrons are said to be delocalized. The metal is held together by the strong forces of attraction between the positive nuclei and the delocalized electrons (Figure 1).Aug 15, 2020
When I first read about the Casimir effect that is what came to mind.
Virtual particles do not have to actually exist, they can make a theory work.
In digital control systems sometimes you can not go directly from one state to another. It requires going first to a virtual state, a mathematical state tha does not physically manifest. In solid state theory there are holes and electrons. Does a hole exist? It is given properties which make the theory work. Meaning it allows prediction of transistor behaviour.
Virtual particle - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
A virtual particle is a theoretical transient particle that exhibits some of the characteristics of an ordinary particle, while having its existence limited by the uncertainty principle.[vague] The concept of virtual particles arises in the perturbation theory of quantum field theory where interactions between ordinary particles are described in terms of exchanges of virtual particles. A process involving virtual particles can be described by a schematic representation known as a Feynman diagram, in which virtual particles are represented by internal lines.[1][2]
Virtual particles do not necessarily carry the same mass as the corresponding real particle, although they always conserve energy and momentum. The closer its characteristics come to those of ordinary particles, the longer the virtual particle exists. They are important in the physics of many processes, including particle scattering and Casimir forces. In quantum field theory, forces—such as the electromagnetic repulsion or attraction between two charges—can be thought of as due to the exchange of virtual photons between the charges. Virtual photons are the exchange particle for the electromagnetic interaction.
The term is somewhat loose and vaguely defined, in that it refers to the view that the world is made up of "real particles". "Real particles" are better understood to be excitations of the underlying quantum fields. Virtual particles are also excitations of the underlying fields, but are "temporary" in the sense that they appear in calculations of interactions, but never as asymptotic states or indices to the scattering matrix. The accuracy and use of virtual particles in calculations is firmly established, but as they cannot be detected in experiments, deciding how to precisely describe them is a topic of debate.[3] Although widely used, they are by no means a necessary feature of QFT, but rather are mathematical conveniences - as demonstrated by lattice field theory, which avoids using the concept altogether.
If you can measure a force, aka SI Newtons, then the phemona is real. How you explain theexperiment is theory. All that is required of a theory is that it is predictive.
The test for ergy is to experimentally do work.
Zero-point energy - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Zero-point energy (ZPE) is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical system may have. Unlike in classical mechanics, quantum systems constantly fluctuate in their lowest energy state as described by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.[1] Therefore, even at absolute zero, atoms and molecules retain some vibrational motion. Apart from atoms and molecules, the empty space of the vacuum also has these properties. According to quantum field theory, the universe can be thought of not as isolated particles but continuous fluctuating fields: matter fields, whose quanta are fermions (i.e., leptons and quarks), and force fields, whose quanta are bosons (e.g., photons and gluons). All these fields have zero-point energy.[2] These fluctuating zero-point fields lead to a kind of reintroduction of an aether in physics[1][3] since some systems can detect the existence of this energy. However, this aether cannot be thought of as a physical medium if it is to be Lorentz invariant such that there is no contradiction with Einstein's theory of special relativity.[1]
Zero-point energy (ZPE) is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical system may have. Unlike in classical mechanics, quantum systems constantly fluctuate in their lowest energy state as described by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.[1] Therefore, even at absolute zero, atoms and molecules retain some vibrational motion. Apart from atoms and molecules, the empty space of the vacuum also has these properties. According to quantum field theory, the universe can be thought of not as isolated particles but continuous fluctuating fields: matter fields, whose quanta are fermions (i.e., leptons and quarks), and force fields, whose quanta are bosons (e.g., photons and gluons). All these fields have zero-point energy.[2] These fluctuating zero-point fields lead to a kind of reintroduction of an aether in physics[1][3] since some systems can detect the existence of this energy. However, this aether cannot be thought of as a physical medium if it is to be Lorentz invariant such that there is no contradiction with Einstein's theory of special relativity.[1]
The notion of a zero-point energy is also important for cosmology, and physics currently lacks a full theoretical model for understanding zero-point energy in this context; in particular, the discrepancy between theorized and observed vacuum energy in the universe is a source of major contention.[4] Physicists Richard Feynman and John Wheeler calculated the zero-point radiation of the vacuum to be an order of magnitude greater than nuclear energy, with a single light bulb containing enough energy to boil all the world's oceans.[5] Yet according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, any such energy would gravitate, and the experimental evidence from the expansion of the universe, dark energy and the Casimir effect shows any such energy to be exceptionally weak. A popular proposal that attempts to address this issue is to say that the fermion field has a negative zero-point energy, while the boson field has positive zero-point energy and thus these energies somehow cancel each other out.[6][7] This idea would be true if supersymmetry were an exact symmetry of nature; however, the LHC at CERN has so far found no evidence to support it. Moreover, it is known that if supersymmetry is valid at all, it is at most a broken symmetry, only true at very high energies, and no one has been able to show a theory where zero-point cancellations occur in the low-energy universe we observe today.[7] This discrepancy is known as the cosmological constant problem and it is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries
ZPE is theoretical.
So, nothing in Casimir Effect demonstrates experimentally something from or to non existence.
Back in the 80s a reltaive worked at Brookhaven on the RHIC collider. I had a chance to walk part of the ring and the experiment chamber before the ring went cold. Actually detecting particles experimentally is part art.