Zero Point Energy

Quantum theory predicts, and experiments verify, that so-called empty space (the vacuum) contains an enormous residual background energy known as zero-point energy or ZPE.

This energy derives its name from the fact that at temperatures of absolute zero (- 273º Celsius), elementary particles continue to exhibit energetic behavior. Advances in the theories of zero-point energy, nonlinear thermodynamics, and Connective Physics open up the possibility of cohering this energy for practical purposes -- in effect tapping the zero-point, and thereby accessing a universe-sized source of energy.

Originally, the possible uses of zero-point energy was thought to be of significance only for such esoteric concerns as small perturbations in atomic emission processes. But now, zero-point energy theories suggest new ways to understand inertia and gravity (and thus potentially control these forces!).

Such theories may also be able to explain anomalies such as Sonoluminescence, the inhibition of spontaneous emission, and the generation of short-range attractive forces (e.g. the Casimir Effect). More practical applications include “mining” these vacuum fluctuations for practical uses such as spaceflight and such far-out possibilities as “warp-drive” space propulsion systems.

Theoretical contributions have been done by such pioneers as Nobel laureates Ilya Prigogine, P. A. M. Dirac, John Wheeler, and Julian Schwinger.

Prigogine, for example, has shown that the second law of thermodynamics can be expanded to include systems in which order evolves from randomness - a result also obtained by Puthoff who utilized theories of zero-point energy to obtain an equivalent result.

The critical factor here is that linear systems tend toward increasing entropy (i.e. the result of two inputs being the sum of their corresponding outputs), whereas under certain conditions, nonlinear systems have been shown to evolve toward macroscopic order.

Such nonlinear systems imply transient or apparently uncontrolled systems, but the reality remains that clever designs can and do provide means to skirt traditional understandings of thermodynamic limitations and literally tap into the surrounding universe for unlimited amounts of useful energy.

Experimentally, the emphasis has been to demonstrate an energy device whose power output exceeds the power input as measured through conventional methods. The quest of such a device has been pursued -- with some success -- by dedicated and innovative researchers, including Tesla, Moray, DePalma, Newman, Boyer, Puthoff, Fleischmann, Pons, Bearden, Graneau, Patterson, Ward, and many others.

It is sometimes assumed that the era of overunity energy research began with the pivotal work of Pons and Fleischman in their discovery of what came to be referred to as cold fusion.

While the possibly premature nomenclature of “fusion” might not be strictly applicable, Patterson has taken this work even further, achieving significant results in both energy production and the transmutation of elements. In many respects, while this work cannot be overestimated in its profound importance to a better understanding of physics and chemistry, it nevertheless has shown greater potential for the transmutation of elements than it has for energy production.

T. E. Bearden, on the other hand, has described in detail the operational principles of overunity electromagnetic engines under development by Johnson, Takahashi, and Kawai.

Bearden is also heavily involved in the MEG Scalar Energy Device, which is reputed to have attained an energy output of 5 to 20 times the input. Unfortunately, economic pressures have supposedly delayed the introduction of this potential breakthrough device. Anomalies from hydrosonic pumps and Superconductivity at room temperatures have, meanwhile, continued to fuel the research for ever improved energy generating devices.

Many of the technologies which are already considered “proven” are included in the World of Free Energy, by Peter Lindemann.

Joe Firmage has created an organization named Motion Sciences, which has brought scientists and researchers from a variety of other organizations and groups in an attempt to jump-start the integration of these efforts into our everyday lives. And as a further indication of the progress of research, one can review any of several Selected New Energy Patents, or visit the Institute of New Energy.

Interestingly, while fledgling theories abound - from regauging scenarios to zero-point energy theories to ether concepts -- all viable systems tend to congregate around a few fundamental principles. These include the need for nonlinear, transient (as opposed to steady state), far-from-equilibrium, and rapidly oscillating systems. These in turn make the possibilities of mechanical over-unity systems extremely difficult to achieve, and the mathematics to describe the systems considerably more complicated.

The good news, however, is that designs incorporating extensions of Connective Physics, inertial field theories and Mach’s Principle -- when combined with state of the art solid-state and other fields of physics -- provide the potential for practical, attainable new energy devices.

The immediate and down-to-Earth future of ZPE and related theories is very exciting. It is now clear that these fields of scientific endeavor lead simultaneously to:

Zero-point and Connective Physics energy generating devices require no fuel of any kind to burn, transform, and otherwise modify - and thus leave no waste products (i.e. no pollution) of any kind. Instead, by the “simple” expedient of tweaking the rest of the universe in a clever way, unlimited amounts of energy may be obtained from the fabric of space.

Inertial Propulsion devices transcend so-called “anti-gravity” systems in that a gravity field (such as the earth) is not required in order to achieve significant propulsive thrust. In both cases, the universe is contributing, and thus connected to the propulsion and/or energy systems. The connection mechanism (involving both mass and charge) may then be extended to include the connectedness and physical dynamics of consciousness.

Connective Physics is based upon the simple premise that if one can enter a local system, accomplish work, and then exit the local system before it can respond in a conserving, equal-and-opposite reaction, then useful work can be accomplished without paying for it with local energy.

Within the theory is the possibility of energy systems which provide useful energy in convenient forms (such as electricity) and which simultaneously do not burn anything, transform anything, or in any manner result in a waste product. This feature is incredibly important, in that some concepts of over-unity energy devices still convert some fuel to a lesser energetic state.

The lesser-energetic state may ultimately then constitute the waste product or the pollution from such a device. The fact that the waste product may not now be considered pollution may be only temporary. The moment that there is a build up of the less-than-useful commodity, it will become “pollution”.

The quest for over-unity energy machines must thus consider that ultimately, the most viable and future-oriented direction is the development of devices that use no fuel. Period. Energy generating devices based on The Fifth Element fulfill this stringent requirement, but then so do zero-point energy, vacuum polarization, and other such devices.

Zero-Point Energy allows for the possibility of tapping energy directly out of the fabric of space.

Zero-point energy is sometimes referred to as “vacuum polarization”. In this view, additional “higher” dimensions are not an essential characteristic (but are not precluded by it). Instead the nature of the vacuum itself is under investigation.

In such vacuum considerations, Bearden ^{[7,
8]} has shown theoretically that asymmetrically regauging the scalar potentials,

The Fifth Element theories of Ward ^[10] would suggest Puthoff’s cosmological feedback principle could be expanded to constitute a continual exchange of energy between any massive particle and the rest of the massive particles in the universe.

In fact, it has been suggested that all massive particles have charge! So called “neutral particles” are merely combinations of equally charged positive and negative charges, such that the net sum of the charge is zero. Thus the connecting link between massive-charged particles is the basis of the cosmological energetic principle throughout the universe. [An alternate view is that Mass is an illusion, and merely a convenient representation of electrical charge.]

Inertial Propulsion systems (even Levitation) are inherent in Connective Physics. Again, the essence is to push a massive object and then back away prior to the object being able to react to the push and push back in accordance with Newton’s Third Law. In effect, the non-simultaneity of Newton’s Third Law once again allows one to enter the system, cause an effect, and then exit the system before paying the price.

Work on this aspect of Connective Physics is being accomplished by Dan Sewell Ward of Quantum Genesis, L.L.C., James Woodward of California State University at Fullerton and Ning Li of the University of Alabama.

Woodward, for example, has been studying the connection between inertia and gravity, and suspects that,

Clearly, Woodward is moving in the same direction as Ward. Li’s work on an anti-gravity device (using what is likely to be Superconductivity effects) could yield both rockets without propellants as well as power plants that run without fuel. Bearden ^[8] and King ^[1] have also mentioned superconductivity as a viable alternative to developing over-unity energy and advanced propulsions systems.

The Physical Dynamics of Consciousness may also be involved. This involves a fundamental paradigm shift from the 20^th Century’s science of separateness, Zero-Sum Games, and “not enough”, to all things connected and no limits.

It’s importance cannot be overemphasized. Just as recent experiments in quantum physics have shown connectedness between particles with information exchanged at speeds many times that of the speed of light, the realization and experimental confirmation of inertial field and Zero-Point Field theories will inevitably transform our view of the universe.

This connection also ultimately suggests a physical dynamic of consciousness, albeit quite likely at the quantum level.

Bearden ^[8] has said that,

The philosophical implications of unlimited and connected energy and propulsive sources implied by both inertial field and zero-point energy theories both echo Bearden’s thoughts. It is inevitable that if all massive charged particles in the universe are connected, then it follows that this includes the biological aspects of consciousness.

Many religious and philosophical traditions have advocated a connectedness of human consciousnesses (and potentially other consciousnesses, as well). It now appears that science is finally providing the details of the physical dynamics of such connectedness, and all part of the current research by diverse individuals and groups.

What is being learned in the energy and propulsion fields will ultimately affect theories and research on the physical dynamics of consciousness.

Energy fills empty space,
but is there a lot to be tapped,

as some propound?
Probably not.

Something for nothing. That's the reason for the gurgling water, ultrasonic transducers, heat-measuring calorimeters, data-plotting software and other technological trappings-some seemingly of the backyard variety--inside the Institute for Advanced Studies in Austin, Tex.

One would not confuse this laboratory with the similarly named but far more renowned one in Princeton, N.J., where Albert Einstein and other physicists have probed fundamental secrets of space and time. The one in Austin is more modestly appointed, but its goals are no less revolutionary. The researchers here test machinery that, inventors assert, can extract energy from empty space.

Claims for perpetual-motion machines and other free-energy devices still persist, of course, even though they inevitably turn out to violate at least one law of thermodynamics. Energy in the vacuum, though, is very much real. According to modern physics, a vacuum isn't a pocket of nothingness. It churns with unseen activity even at absolute zero, the temperature defined as the point at which all molecular motion ceases.

Exactly how much "zero-point energy" resides in the vacuum is unknown. Some cosmologists have speculated that at the beginning of the universe, when conditions everywhere were more like those inside a black hole, vacuum energy was high and may have even triggered the big bang. Today the energy level should be lower. But to a few optimists, a rich supply still awaits if only we knew how to tap into it.

These maverick proponents have postulated that the zero-point energy could explain "cold fusion," inertia and other phenomena and might someday serve as pan of a "negative mass" system for propelling spacecraft.

In an interview taped for PBS's Scientific American Frontiers, which aired in November, Harold E. Puthoff, the director of the Institute for Advanced Studies, observed:

That conceit is not shared by the majority of physicists; some even regard such optimism as pseudoscience that could leech funds from legitimate research. The conventional view is that the energy in the vacuum is minuscule.

In fact, were it infinite, the nature of the universe would be vastly different: you would not be able to see in a straight line beyond a few kilometers.

Steve K. Lamoreaux, also at Los Alamos, is harsher: "The zero-point-energy community is more successful at advertising and self-promotion than they are at carrying out bona fide scientific research."

[Picture of a virtual particle and virtual antiparticle.]

QUANTUM FLUCTUATIONS, ripples that form the basis for energy in a vacuum, pervade the fabric of space and time.

The concept of zero-point energy derives from a well-known idea in quantum mechanics, the science that accounts for the behavior of particles near the atom's size. Specifically, zeropoint energy emerges from Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which limits the accuracy of measurements.

The German physicist Werner Heisenberg determined in 1927 that it is impossible to learn both the position and the momentum of a particle to some high degree of accuracy: if the position is known perfectly, then the momentum is completely unknown, and vice versa.

That's why at absolute zero, a particle must still be littering about: if it were at a complete standstill, its momentum and position would both be known precisely and simultaneously, violating the uncertainty principle.

Energy and Uncertainty

Like position and momentum, energy L and time also obey Heisenberg's rule.

Residual energy must therefore exist in empty space: to be certain that the energy was zero, one would have to take energy measurements in that volume of space forever. And given the equivalence of mass and energy expressed by Einstein's E = mc², the vacuum energy must be able to create particles. They flash briefly into existence and expire within an interval dictated by the uncertainty principle.

This zero-point energy (which comes from all the types of force fields--electromagnetic, gravitational and nuclear) makes itself felt in several ways, most of them obvious only to a physicist. One is the Lamb shift, which refers to a slight frequency alteration in the light emitted by an excited atom. Another is a particular kind of inescapable, low-level noise that registers in electronic and optical equipment.

Perhaps the most dramatic example, though, is the Casimir effect. In 1948 the Dutch physicist H.B.G. Casimir calculated that two metal plates brought sufficiently close together will attract each other very slightly. The reason is that the narrow distance between the plates allows only small, high-frequency electromagnetic "modes" of the vacuum energy to squeeze in between.

The plates block out most of the other, bigger modes. In a way, each plate acts as an airplane wing, which creates low pressure on one side and high pressure on the other. The difference in force knocks the plates toward each other.

While at the University of Washington, Lamoreaux conducted the most precise measurement of the Casimir effect. Helped by his student Dev Sen, Lamoreaux used gold-coated quartz surfaces as his plates. One plate was attached to the end of a sensitive torsion pendulum; if that plate moved toward the other, the pendulum would twist. A laser could measure the twisting of the pendulum down to O.Ol-micron accuracy.

A current applied to a stack of piezoelectric components moved one Casimir plate; an electronic feedback system countered that movement, keeping the pendulum still. Zero-point-energy effects showed up as changes in the amount of current needed to maintain the pendulum's position.

Lamoreaux found that the plates generated about 100 microdynes (one nanonewton) of force.

The result falls within 5 percent of Casimir's prediction for that particular plate separation and geometry.

[Picture of virtual particles disappearing in a time internal h/(4*Pi).]

VIRTUAL PARTICLES can spontaneously flash into existence from the energy of quantum fluctuations.

The particles, which arise as matter-antimatter twins, can interact but must, in accordance with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, disappear within an interval set by Planck's constant, h.

Zero for Zero-Point Devices

Demonstrating the existence of zero-point energy is one thing; extracting useful amounts is another. Puthoff's institute, which he likens to a mini Bureau of Standards, has examined about 10 devices over the past 10 years and found nothing workable.

One contraption, whose Russian inventor claimed could produce kilowatts of excess heat, supposedly relied on sonoluminescence, the conversion of sound into light. Bombarding water with sound to create air bubbles can, under the right conditions, lead to bubbles that collapse and give off flashes of light. Conventional thinking explains sonoluminescence in terms of a shock wave launched within the collapsing bubble, which heats the interior to a flash point.

Following up on the work of the late Nobelist Julian Schwinger, a few workers cite zero-point energy as the cause. Basically, the surface of the bubble is supposed to act as the Casimir force plates; as the bubble shrinks, it starts to exclude the bigger modes of the vacuum energy, which is converted to light. That theory notwithstanding, Puthoff and his colleague Scott Little tested the device and changed the details a number of times but never found excess energy.

Puthoff believes atoms, not bubbles, offer a better approach. His idea hinges on an unproved hypothesis: that zeropoint energy is what keeps electrons in an atom orbiting the nucleus. In classical physics, circulating charges like an orbiting electron lose energy through radiation; what keeps the electron zipping around the nucleus is, to Puthoff, zero-point energy that the electron continuously absorbs. (Quantum mechanics as originally formulated simply states that an electron in an atom must have some minimum, ground-state energy.)

Physicists have demonstrated that a small enough cavity can suppress the natural inclination of a trapped, excited particle to give up some energy and drop to a lower energy state [see "Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics," by Serge Haroche and Jean-Michel Raimond; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, April 1993]. Basically, the cavity is so small that it can exclude some of the lower-frequency vacuum fluctuations, which the excited atom needs to emit light and drop to a lower energy level. The cavity in effect controls the vacuum fluctuations.

Under the right circumstances, Puthoff reasons, one could effectively manipulate the vacuum so that a new, lower ground state appears. The electron would then drop to the lower ground state--in effect, the atom would become smaller--and give up some energy in the process. "It implies that hydrogen or deuterium injected into cavities might produce excess energy," Puthoff says. This possibility might explain cold-fusion experiments, he notes--in other words, the occasional positive results reported in cold-fusion tests might really be indicators of zero-point energy (rather than, one would assume, wishful thinking).

[Picture of a piezoelectric stack within a suspended device to measure the Casimir Effect.]

[Picture of vacuum fluctuations flowing between the Casimir Plates.]

Work in cavity quantum electrodynamics is experimentally challenging in its own right, however, so it is not clear how practical an energy supply from "shrinking atoms" could be.

The Austin institute is testing a device that could be interpreted as manipulating the vacuum, although Puthoff declines to provide details, citing proprietary nondisclosure agreements with its designers.

How Much in Nothing?

Underlying these attempts to tap the vacuum is the assumption that empty space holds enough energy to be tapped.

Considering just the fluctuations in the electromagnetic force, the mathematics of quantum mechanics suggest that any given volume of empty space could contain an infinite number of vacuum-energy frequencies--and hence, an infinite supply of energy. (That does not even count the contributions from other forces.) This sea of energy is largely invisible to us, according to the zeropoint-energy chauvinists, because it is completely uniform, bombarding us from all directions such that the net force acting on any object is zero.

But just because equations produce an infinity does not mean that an infinity exists in any practical sense. In fact, physicists quite often "renormalize" equations to get rid of infinities, so that they can ascribe physical meaning to their numbers. An example is the calculation of the electron's mass from theoretical principles, which at face value leads to an unrealistic, infinite mass.

The same kind of mathematical sleight-of-hand might need to be done for vacuum-energy calculations.

In fact, several signs indicate that the amount of energy in the vacuum isn't worth writing home about. Lamoreaux's experiment could roughly be considered to have extracted 10^-15 joule.

That paltry quantity would seem to be damning evidence that not much can be extracted from empty space. But Puthoff counters that Casimir plates are macroscopic objects. What is needed for practical energy extraction are many plates, say, some 10^23 of them. That might be possible with systems that rely on small particles, such as atoms.

Milonni replies by noting that Lamoreaux's plates themselves are made of atoms, so that effectively there were 10^23 particles involved. The low Casimir result still indicates, by his figures, that the plates would need to be kilometers long to generate even a kilogram of force. Moreover, there is a cost in extracting the energy of the plates coming together, Milonni says: "You have to pull the plates apart, too.

Another argument for a minuscule vacuum energy is that the fabric of space and time, though slightly curved near objects, is pretty much flat overall. Draw a triangle in space and the sum of its angles is 180 degrees, as it would be on a flat piece of paper. (The angles of a triangle on a sphere, conversely, sum to more than 180 degrees.) Because energy is equivalent to matter, and matter exerts a gravitational force, cosmologists expect that an energy-rich vacuum would create a strong gravity field that distorts space and time as it is seen today.

CASIMIR EFFECT is the motion of two parallel plates because of quantum fluctuations in a vacuum. The plates are so dose together that only small fluctuations fit in between; the bigger modes are excluded (above).

They exert a total force greater than that by the smaller modes and hence push the plates together. The effect was observed by Steve K. Lamoreaux, now at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who relied on a torsion pendulum (left). A current applied to the piezoelectric stack tried to move the Casimir plate on the pendulum; the compensator plates held the pendulum still.

The voltage needed to prevent any twisting served as a measure of the Casimir effect.

ZERO-POINT ENERGY was purportedly tapped with a machine that made use of ultrasonically generated bubbles (right). Such devices are tested by Harold E. Puthoff (below), director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Austin, Tex. So far no apparatus has been found to produce a net gain in energy.

{Picture of Hal Puthoff.]

[Picture of an ultrasonic device.]

That argument ties into the cosmological constant, a concept that Einstein first developed, then discarded. In the equations that describe the state of the universe, the cosmological constant--which incorporates zeropoint energy--is in a sense a term that can counteract gravity. Astronomical observations suggest the constant must be nearly zero. Consequently, if the vacuum energy really is large, then some other force that contributes to the constant must offset it.

And as physicist Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas notes in his 1992 book Dreams of a Final Theory, that offset feels unnatural: calculations that sidestep the infinity terms produce a vacuum energy 120 orders of magnitude greater than the nearly zero value of the cosmological constant, so that other force must be opposite but identical in magnitude to the vacuum energy out to 120 decimal places.

Puthoff replies that the connection between the cosmological constant and zero-point energy is more complex than is often realized. "Obviously, the zeropoint-energy problem and the cosmological constant, though related, are really different problems," Puthoff argues, noting that predictions of quantum mechanics have proved correct time and again and that instead something is still missing from cosmologists' thinking.

Such disagreements in science are not unusual, especially considering how little is really known about zero-point energy. But those would-be utility moguls who think tapping zero-point energy is a worthwhile pursuit irritate some mainstream scientists.

Puthoff's institute receives a little government money but gets most of its funds from contracts with private firms.

Others are backed more explicitly by public money. This past August the National Aeronautics and Space Administration sponsored a meeting called the "Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Workshop." According to participants, zero-point energy became a high priority among those trying to figure out which "breakthroughs" should be pursued.

The propulsion application depends on a speculation put forth in 1994 by Puthoff, Bernhard Haisch of Lockheed Pale Alto Research Laboratory and Alfonso Rueda of California State University at Long Beach. They suggested that inertia--the resistance that objects put up when they are accelerated--stems from the drag effects of moving through the zero-point field.

Because the zeropoint field can be manipulated in quantum experiments, Puthoff reasons, it should be possible to lessen an object's inertia and hence, for a rocket, reduce the fuel burden. Puthoff and his colleagues have been trying to prove this inertia-origin hypothesis--a sensitive pendulum should be able to detect a zero-point-energy "wake" left by a moving object--but Puthoff says they have not managed to isolate their system well enough to do so.

More conventional scientists decried the channeling of NASA funds to a meeting where real science was lacking.

Certainly, there should be room for far-out, potentially revolutionary ideas, but not at the expense of solid science.

In sizing up zero-point-energy schemes, it may be best to keep in mind the old caveat emptor: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

INTRODUCTION

Quantum mechanics predicts the existence of what are usually called ''zero-point'' energies for the strong, the weak and the electromagnetic interactions, where ''zero-point'' refers to the energy of the system at temperature T=0, or the lowest quantized energy level of a quantum mechanical system.

Although the term ''zero-point energy'' applies to all three of these interactions in nature, customarily (and hereafter in this article) it is used in reference only to the electromagnetic case.

In conventional quantum physics, the origin of zero-point energy is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states that, for a moving particle such as an electron, the more precisely one measures the position, the less exact the best possible measurement of its momentum (mass times velocity), and vice versa. The least possible uncertainty of position times momentum is specified by Planck's constant, h.

A parallel uncertainty exists between measurements involving time and energy (and other so-called conjugate variables in quantum mechanics). This minimum uncertainty is not due to any correctable flaws in measurement, but rather reflects an intrinsic quantum fuzziness in the very nature of energy and matter springing from the wave nature of the various quantum fields.

This leads to the concept of zero-point energy.

Zero-point energy is the energy that remains when all other energy is removed from a system. This behavior is demonstrated by, for example, liquid helium. As the temperature is lowered to absolute zero, helium remains a liquid, rather than freezing to a solid, owing to the irremovable zero-point energy of its atomic motions. (Increasing the pressure to 25 atmospheres will cause helium to freeze.)

A harmonic oscillator is a useful conceptual tool in physics. Classically a harmonic oscillator, such as a mass on a spring, can always be brought to rest. However a quantum harmonic oscillator does not permit this. A residual motion will always remain due to the requirements of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, resulting in a zero-point energy, equal to 1/2 hf, where f is the oscillation frequency.

Electromagnetic radiation can be pictured as waves flowing through space at the speed of light. The waves are not waves of anything substantive, but are ripples in a state of a theoretically defined field. However these waves do carry energy (and momentum), and each wave has a specific direction, frequency and polarization state. Each wave represents a ''propagating mode of the electromagnetic field.''

Each mode is equivalent to a harmonic oscillator and is thus subject to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. From this analogy, every mode of the field must have 1/2 hf as its average minimum energy. That is a tiny amount of energy in each mode, but the number of modes is enormous, and indeed increases per unit frequency interval as the square of the frequency.

The spectral energy density is determined by the density of modes times the energy per mode and thus increases as the cube of the frequency per unit frequency per unit volume. The product of the tiny energy per mode times the huge spatial density of modes yields a very high theoretical zero-point energy density per cubic centimeter.

From this line of reasoning, quantum physics predicts that all of space must be filled with electromagnetic zero-point fluctuations (also called the zero-point field) creating a universal sea of zero-point energy. The density of this energy depends critically on where in frequency the zero-point fluctuations cease.

Since space itself is thought to break up into a kind of quantum foam at a tiny distance scale called the Planck scale (10-33 cm), it is argued that the zero point fluctuations must cease at a corresponding Planck frequency (1043 Hz). If that is the case, the zero-point energy density would be 110 orders of magnitude greater than the radiant energy at the center of the Sun.

How could such an enormous energy not be wildly evident?

There is one major difference between zero-point electromagnetic radiation and ordinary electromagnetic radiation. Turning again to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle one finds that the lifetime of a given zero-point photon, viewed as a wave, corresponds to an average distance traveled of only a fraction of its wavelength. Such a wave ''fragment'' is somewhat different than an ordinary plane wave and it is difficult to know how to interpret this.

On the other hand, zero-point energy appears to have been directly measured as current noise in a resistively shunted Josephson junction by Koch, van Harlingen and Clarke up to a frequency of about 0.6 Tz (see Abstract).

LORENTZ INVARIANCE OF THE SPECTRUM

That the spectrum of zero-point radiation has a frequency-cubed dependence is of great significance.

That is the only kind of spectrum that has the property of being Lorentz invariant. The effect of motion is to Doppler shift detected electromagnetic radiation, but a frequency-cubed spectrum has the property that up-and-down-shifting of the radiation is exactly compensated, i.e. there is as much radiation Doppler shifted into a given frequency interval as there is shifted out by uniform motion.

A remarkably different phenomenon occurs when accelerating through zero-point radiation. The zero-point radiation acts upon an accelerating detector as if the detector were immersed in a thermal spectrum, even though heat and temperature are not involved.

CASIMIR EFFECT

In 1947 Hendrik Casimir, once an assistant of Pauli, was working in applied industrial research at the Philips Laboratory in the Netherlands along with physicist J.T.G. Overbeek.

They were analyzing the theory of van der Waals forces when Casimir had the opportunity to discuss ideas with Niels Bohr on a walk. According to Casimir, Bohr ''mumbled something about zero-point energy'' being relevant. This led Casimir to an analysis of zero-point energy effects in the related problem of forces between perfectly conducting parallel plates.

The cavity between such plates cannot sustain all modes of the electromagnetic field. In particular wavelengths comparable to the plate separation and longer are excluded from the region between the plates.

This fact leads to the situation that there is a zero-point radiation overpressure outside the plates which acts to push the plates together. This can be considered analogous to radiation pressure (radiation pressure from the Sun pushes comet tails away from the comet nucleus), and the resulting effect is now called the Casimir force. It has the property of increasing in strength with the inverse fourth power of the plate separation.

The force ceases when elements of the plates come into contact, the surface smoothness of the plates being a limiting factor, or when the plates are so close that the corresponding zero-point radiation wavelengths no longer ''see'' a perfectly conducting surface. The actual non-continuous nature of the plates, as opposed to the true surface and molecular nature of the materials, becomes an important factor for very short distances.

The Casimir force was not measured to high precision until the mid 1990s, when measurements by S. Lamoreux at the University of Washington verified Casimir's predictions to within five percent in the size range of a few microns.

It has since been verified even more precisely, by U. Mohideen at the University of California at Riverside, again in agreement with Casimir's formula. Moreover the Casimir force (also called Casimir effect) has become relevant to micro-electro-mechanical structures in which it is both a problem (termed ''stiction'') and a possible mechanism for control.

The Casimir force is widely cited as evidence that underlying the universe there must be a sea of real zero-point energy. This argument follows from Casimir's analysis and prediction. It is not necessarily true, however.

It is perfectly possible to explain the Casimir effect by taking into account the quantum-induced motions of atoms in each plate and examining the retarded potential interactions of atoms in one plate with those in the other.

FORWARD THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

There is growing interest concerning the possibility of tapping zero-point energy and many claims exist of ''over unity devices'' (gadgets yielding a greater output than the required input for operation) driven by zero-point energy.

In spite of the dubious nature of these claims (to date no such device has passed a rigorous, objective test), the concept of converting some amount of zero-point energy to usable energy cannot be ruled out in principle. Zero-point energy is not a thermal reservoir, and therefore does not suffer from the thermodynamic injunction against extracting energy from a lower temperature reservoir.

In 1993 Cole and Puthoff published a thermodynamic analysis, ''Extracting energy and heat from the vacuum'' , in which they concluded that ''extracting energy and heat from electromagnetic zero-point radiation via the use of the Casimir force'' is in principle possible without violating the laws of thermodynamics.

A thought experiment for a device that readily demonstrates how the Casimir force could be put to use in principle was proposed by physicist Robert Forward in 1984 (see below). A ''vacuum fluctuation battery'' could be constructed consisting of stacked conducting plates.

Applying the same polarity charge to all the plates would yield a repulsive force between plates, thereby opposing the Casimir force which is acting to push the plates together. Adjusting the electrostatic force so as to permit the Casimir force to dominate will result in adding energy to the electric field between the plates, thereby converting zero-point energy to electric energy.

One can imagine an even simpler microdevice in which the Casimir force pushes two plates together thereby engaging some kind of lever which does work.

There is no practical application in these examples since ideally it would take just as much energy, and in practice somewhat more energy owing to frictional and other losses, to separate the plates for a second cycle.

Nevertheless, this would demonstrate the concept of conversion of zero-point energy in principle if the Casimir effect attribution to zero-point energy is correct (which is debatable).

DARK ENERGY

A major discovery in astrophysics in the late 1990s was the finding from type Ia supernovae redshift-luminosity observations that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

This led to the concept of dark energy, which is in effect a resurrection of Einstein's cosmological constant. (The universe now appears to consist of about 70 percent dark energy, 25 percent dark matter and five percent ordinary matter.) Zero-point energy has the desired property of driving an accelerated expansion, and thus having the requisite properties of dark energy, but to an absurdly greater degree than required, i.e. 120 orders of magnitude.

According to relativity theory, energy is equivalent to mass as a source of gravity, thus zero-point energy should gravitate, which according to general relativity means producing a positive curvature in space-time.

At first glance one might assume that if there is an enormous amount of zero-point energy underlying the universe, its effect would be to dramatically curve the universe to a minute size. Indeed, if the spectrum of zero-point energy extends to the Planck scale, its energy density would be the mass equivalent of about 1093 grams per cubic centimeter which would reduce the universe to a size smaller than an atomic nucleus.

Zero-point energy behaves differently.

For ordinary radiation, the ratio of pressure to energy density is w=1/3c², which is customarily expressed in units whereby c=1, and thus the ratio is expressed as w=+1/3. But for zero-point energy the ratio is w=-1. This is owing to the circumstance that the zero-point energy density is assumed to be constant: no matter how much the universe expands it does not become diluted, but instead more zero-point energy is assumed to be created out of nothing.

A further peculiarity is that a ratio of w=-1 implies that the zero-point energy exerts a negative pressure which, counter-intuitively, leads to an expansion of space-time.

Thus zero-point energy would appear to be identical with the mysterious dark energy, but unfortunately if the energy spectrum does continue up to the Planck frequency, there may be 120 orders of magnitude more energy per cubic centimeter than the observations of cosmic acceleration permit. Indeed, this amount of zero-point energy, interpreted this way, would have accelerated the universe into oblivion in microseconds.

Recent work by Christian Beck at the University of London and Michael Mackey at McGill University may have resolved the 120 order of magnitude problem.

In Measurability of vacuum fluctuations and dark energy and Electromagnetic dark energy they propose that a phase transition occurs so that zero-point photons below a frequency of about 1.7 THz are gravitationally active whereas above that they are not.

If this is the case, then the dark energy problem is solved: dark energy is the low frequency gravitationally active component of zero-point energy. Zero-point photons continue to exist above the 1.7 THz phase transition, consistent with measurable QED effects such as the Casimir effect, the Lamb shift, etc.

The proposed phase transition should be testable in the near future when the Koch et al. experiment is extended from 0.6 Tz to the proposed cutoff.

STOCHASTIC ELECTRODYNAMICS THEORY

Although zero-point energy is usually regarded as a quantum phenomenon and a consequence of the Heisenberg uncertainty relationship, the existence of zero-point energy was inferred by Einstein, Planck, Nernst and others in the context of blackbody radiation prior to the discovery of quantum mechanics.

Einstein and Otto Stern came close to deriving the blackbody function without assuming quantization but with the presence of zero-point energy. Nernst in particular claimed in 1916 that the universe was filled with zero-point energy. This line of investigation was abandoned with the advent of quantum mechanics, but the concept of zero-point energy soon reemerged with a quantum interpretation.

In the 1960s British physicist Trevor Marshall and, separately, American Timothy Boyer were two of the principal investigators who essentially took up the abandoned approach and pushed it much farther by asking the question:

For the contribution of other researchers, see the book "The Quantum Dice" by de la Pena and Cetto.

This became the discipline known as stochastic electrodynamics (SED, earlier sometimes referred to as random electrodynamics). In the SED representation the zero-point field is taken to be a given, and is treated as an ensemble of ordinary electromagnetic plane waves having an energy 1/2 hf in each and every mode. There is no quantum physics involved.

This theory has had some success, although it is far from explaining most quantum effects. Apart from its ontological aspirations of possibly doing away with quantum physics in favor of solely classical physics, SED is useful as a computational tool since it involves well-known classical electrodynamics in place of more esoteric quantum laws and processes.

Two noteworthy successes of SED are its derivation of the Planck blackbody function without assuming quantization and its suggestion that the Bohr orbit of hydrogen could arise without a quantum law. In the latter case, the ground state electron is assumed to emit Larmor radiation which causes it to spiral inward, but this does not lead to collapse of the orbit because the electron also absorbs zero-point energy.

The calculation of the absorption was done by Boyer and later by Puthoff by treating the electron as undergoing harmonic oscillation rather than true motion in a Coulomb potential. This is a weakness in the analysis but nonetheless it is striking that the Larmor emission and harmonic-oscillator-type absorption prove to be in balance exactly at the Bohr radius.

The fact that the orbital angular momentum is zero in the quantum ground state is mirrored in the SED orbiting-electron interpretation by random changes in the orbital plane (due to the zero-point fluctuations) yielding a time averaged zero net angular momentum.

Recent simulations by Cole have successfully modeled the electron motion in the Coulomb potential of a hydrogen atom and have thereby replicated the electron probability density predicted by the Schroedinger wave function. In the SED case, the electron in a Coulomb field is jostled by its emission and absorption to a range of radial distances which reproduce the Schroedinger probability. This is an intriguing extension of the earlier result, but problems still remain such as the need to cut off the particle-field interactions to avoid auto-ionization, i.e. a single very high frequency, hence very energetic, zero-point fluctuation could free the electron.

The representation of the zero-point field as an ensemble of plane waves each with an energy of precisely 1/2 hf in all possible directions and random phases was modified in 1995 by Ibison and Haisch.

They added a parameter having a random distribution of energies with 1/2 hf as the mean, thereby yielding a closer formal correspondence with the quantum behavior.

ZITTERBEWEGUNG

Schroedinger was apparently the first to note that solving the Dirac equation for the motion of the electron resulted in a necessary component that could be interpreted as random, speed-of-light fluctuations of a point-like particle.

He dubbed this motion ''zitterbewegung'' (German for ''jitter motion''). In SED theory, the phenomenon of zitterbewegung is caused by the electromagnetic zero-point fluctuations.

Several things are interesting about zitterbewegung.

Zitterbewegung thus suggests possibly deep connections between zero-point energy and the mass-energy relationship of matter and with the quantum properties of particles.

Click here for a new popular-level overview on this topic by Marcus Chown

The connection in SED theory between zitterbewegung and the zero-point fluctuations have led to speculative investigations of a possible mass-generating role as an alternative to the Higgs field.

The Higgs field was first proposed in 1964 and is still a key element of the Standard Model of particle physics; it is needed to confer the property of mass on the fundamental particles. In the theory, all particles are intrinsically massless until acted upon by the Higgs field.

The quantum of the Higgs field is the Higgs boson. Attempts to detect the Higgs boson, and therefore to verify the Higgs field as the mass-generating mechanism of the Standard Model, have been unsuccessful.

The current best hope is on the forthcoming Large Hadron Collider at CERN scheduled to go on line in May 2008.

Even if the Higgs field is experimentally discovered, however, that will still not explain the origin of inertial mass of ordinary matter. The Higgs field applies only to the electro-weak sector of the Standard Model. The mass of ordinary matter is overwhelmingly due to the protons and neutrons in the nuclei of atoms. Protons and neutrons are comprised of the two lightest quarks: the up and down quarks.

The masses of their constituent quarks (approx. 0.005 and 0.010 GeV/c² for the up and down quarks respectively) comprise only about one percent of the masses of the protons and neutrons (0.938 and 0.940 GeV/c² respectively).

The remainder of the mass would have to be due to the gluon fields and strong interaction energies. The quark masses, the gluon fields and other strong interaction energies would not be affected by a Higgs field. The origin of inertial mass of ordinary matter is thus a wide open question.

SED studies published in the 1990s showed that a massless point-charge oscillator accelerating through the zero-point field will experience a Lorentz force (from the magnetic components of the zero-point fluctuations) that turns out to be directly proportional to acceleration, allowing the derivation of the fundamental F=ma relationship of mechanics from electrodynamics.

This points to the electromagnetic quantum vacuum as the origin of forces which appear as inertial mass.

The same result can be derived by considering the transformation properties of the electromagnetic field when experienced in an accelerating coordinate system, and in that case the proper four-vector relativistic equation of motion can be derived. A recent study showed that such a zero-point field based mass-generating approach would explain the origin of Einstein's principle of equivalence.

These as yet still speculative concepts suggest that zero-point energy may be involved in some of the most fundamental properties of matter.

It should be noted that this unorthodox approach to mass based upon electrodynamics is not taken very seriously by the mainstream physics community, whose efforts remain focused on superstring - and M-theory.

IS IT POSSIBLE TO TAP ZERO POINT ENERGY?

As to whether zero-point energy may become a source of usable energy, this is considered extremely unlikely by most physicists, and none of the claimed devices are taken seriously by the mainstream science community.

Nevertheless, SED interpretation of the Bohr orbit (above) does suggest a way whereby energy might be extracted.

Based upon this, a patent has been issued and experiments have been underway at the University of Colorado (U.S. Patent 7,379,286).

We live in a harmonic universe, built upon a unified, unseen foundation of conscious, loving energy, known as "zero point energy" or "aether."

Up until the 20th century, all Western scientific tradition proposed that such an energy force existed, going back to at least the time of the ancient Greek philosophers, and most likely to a far older civilization with advanced scientific knowledge.

The existence of this aether was supposedly proven to be false by the Michaelson-Morley experiment (M-M) at the beginning of the 20th century, and most scientists still believe that it is correct. There are a number of reasons for why the M-M experiment is flawed, and for our technically-inclined readers, many of the researchers that we will be mentioning have detailed explanations of how it was misinterpreted. We now know that an “aetheric” science is the only remaining model of the Universe that fits together with the evidence that is now available.

...and any number of “Unified Field Theories,” all agree that our physical reality arises from this hidden energy substance, which creates all that we know and see by vibrating.

And thus, like fishes in the sea, the pressure of this energetic “fluid” constantly surrounds us, though we do not normally notice its presence. In this wealth of new data, the aether fluid is a source of tremendous energy that is in constant vibrational motion, flowing through all objects in the Universe, creating and recreating them every second -- just as a candle flame is constantly absorbing new wax and oxygen and radiating new heat and light, but still continues to exist as a measurable "unit."

Should this aether ever stop flowing and swirling about with such an intelligent, purposeful behavior, all mass would shed heat, gradually "dissolve" and return to its primordial energy state; the "flame" would go out.

Indeed, this new "physics of the 21st century" tells us that the very building blocks of mass, the atoms and molecules themselves, are not particles at all. Instead, they are ultimately nothing more than spherical whirlpools of energy in this flowing river of aether.

And the aether itself provides the most tangible, scientific way to define, explain and even engineer the Mind of God.

It is important to remember that this new theory is not simply an abstract notion being entertained in the minds of amateur "crackpot" scientists working out of garage laboratories.

Or, to put it metaphorically, this "pot" is not cracked at all; it is just about ready to fill up to the brim and start spilling over into the mainstream public consciousness. The most significant forces that resist such a “disclosure” are arguably those connected to the fossil-fuel industry, as we will outline clear, irrefutable evidence that this technology can be harnessed for producing limitless “free energy” for all of humanity. Obviously a commercially priced anti-gravity system would render our entire fossil-fuel based world of cities, highways and transportation systems obsolete.

Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that the wealthy elites are now aware that they/we will lose everything if we do not implement this technology; there is no point in maintaining financial control over an Earth that has been destroyed. Even the United Nations has come forward to state that our environment is on the brink of dire, irreversible catastrophe if we do not make immediate, painful changes.

This might be why visible cutting-edge physicists with government research backgrounds, such as Cambridge University’s Dr. Hal Puthoff, are beginning to acknowledge that a modern "aether" science is required to explain the many problems and paradoxes of science. Drop by drop, we’re being given the message by the mainstream media… and in this book we will hold nothing back, with full knowledge of the potential risks involved in doing so.

Consider this a “sneak preview.”

In order to lend proof to the idea that the “aether” really exists, Dr. Puthoff reminds us of experiments that were conducted before quantum mechanics theory ever existed, which were designed to see if there was any energy in “empty space.” If these areas of the universe are truly empty, then nothing should be there; no electromagnetic fields, no X-rays, no heat, no energy, nothing. In order to test this idea in the laboratory, it was necessary to create an area that was completely free of air (a vacuum) and shielded from all known electromagnetic radiation fields.

The shielding of this “empty” area from energy fields was accomplished by using what is known as a Faraday cage, which is lined with lead. This airless vacuum was then cooled down to absolute zero – the temperature where all matter should stop vibrating and thus produce no heat.

At this point, all conventional explanations, having to do with what physicists call the “conservation of energy,” would simply say that it should be a dead, lifeless “vacuum.” You’ve cooled it down to zero degrees Kelvin, sucked out all the air and shielded off all the energy fields. That’s it; now you’ve got a “dead” space.

These experiments proved that instead of an absence of energy in the vacuum, there was a tremendous amount of it!

Dr. Puthoff has often called this a "seething cauldron" of energy in very high magnitudes. This force was dubbed "zero point energy" or ZPE.

That complex-sounding term simply means that this energy applies force (vectors) equally in all directions, and thus to us it has no typically measurable movement or force; it just cancels itself out as a result.

However, Lt. Col. Tom Bearden points out that if you set two fleas into a head-to-head pushing battle and neither one of them can move forward or backward, you could measure the pressure in the area between their heads and have a vector zero resultant. However, if you measured the pressure between two elephants going head-to-head the same way, you would also have a vector zero resultant.

Therefore, Bearden suggests that different areas of space can have different pressures of energy, which are not normally noticeable or measurable to us. He refers to these invisible energy forces as “scalar waves,” and has built detectors that allow us to measure them, using coils that are shielded in Faraday cages.

So, if you’re still thinking that none of this matters very much in your own life, we’ll just give you an idea of exactly how high of an energy magnitude actually exists within the vacuum.

Imagine, just for a moment, what might be possible if you could harness this energy for your own miracle healing power. Or for psychic ability. Or to levitate your own body, or other heavy objects.

How many of our readers will completely discount every reported miracle of Jesus and other spiritual adepts and masters? If you resist the idea that such possibilities exist, then this book is probably not for you. Lt. Col. Bearden reminds us that when we tap this energy for our own needs, it is the equivalent of dipping a teaspoon into the ocean. This limitless reservoir of energy around us is of far greater magnitude than we could ever dream of.

Once we accept this energy’s existence, many problems in quantum mechanics clear up. The very existence of atoms, as now seen in quantum mechanics theories, cannot be adequately explained with our existing models. (We will have much more to say on this as the book progresses.)

Dr. Hal Puthoff notes that mainstream quantum mechanics theory does not understand why an electron does not simply radiate away all of its energy and crash into the nucleus, as a satellite will eventually do in Earth orbit. If there is such a thing as an “electron,” it would indeed appear to be akin to a tiny perpetual motion machine.

When asked, quantum physicists will usually just say that this strange behavior is "the magic of quantum mechanics."

Problematically, they propose a ’closed system’ where energy is radiated out but no new energy can come in, even though every physicist knows that "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed."

However, if the electron itself were constantly drawing energy from the ZPE or aether, as Dr. Puthoff suggests, then it would be able to sustain itself as an ’open system’ just like a candle flame, where energy is constantly flowing in and flowing out.

More and more researchers are unafraid to use the forbidden word "aether" when discussing zero-point energy, this flowing background substance of the Universe that can be proven to exist everywhere.

The word "aether" had essentially become "taboo" after the Michaelson-Morley (M-M) experiment supposedly disproved its existence in 1887, even though all it truly did was to disprove the existence of a material aether, which would be a literal physical substance of matter that was hanging in the air like a gas. The original idea for this experiment was not to prove or disprove the aether’s existence; it was simply to measure how much was there.

The experiment proposed that as the Earth moved through space, there would be a “drag” of aetheric substance that could be measured in the direction of Earth’s travel, similar to ripples on a pool of water as you move your hand through it.

There are several problems with this being used to “disprove” that there is an aether. Firstly, conventional science does not understand that gravity is the primary movement of aether on Earth that we can measure, which overrides the “aether drag” of Earth’s movement through space. To a person inside the gravitational field, gravity would be the only noticeable aetheric movement; it shields us from other movements.

Secondly, they did not realize that the aether was also forming the measuring instruments as well as the measurement area, thus making any measurement of such subtle changes impossible! Any change in the surrounding area will also produce a change in the instrument itself.

Even though M-M did not disprove the existence of a non-material energy source such as ZPE, even the use of the term “aether” now is likely to create automatic rejection from society’s scientific authorities. As long as people continue to “believe” in the scientific fraternity’s inherent trustworthiness without examining the facts for themselves, this game can be perpetuated. And even though we cannot “see” the aether directly, we also can’t see the bacteria on our skin, the air that we breathe or the gravity that holds us to the Earth. Thus, even though one might feel that something “nonphysical” means that it cannot exist, all it really means is that it is not directly perceptible with our natural sensory organs.

Prior to Michaelson and Morley’s experiment, most physicists agreed that this aether had to exist, and created workable models and mathematical constructs based on it. And now, the “negative” result of the M-M experiment has been superseded by a plenum of findings that prove that the ancient concepts were right all along. The difference is that we now know that atoms and molecules are composed of nothing but electromagnetic fields, whose energy comes from a source that is not yet measurable with most conventional methods!

Therefore, whereas Relativity and Quantum Mechanics were the hallmarks of 20th century physics, stalemated with obvious contradictions and impossible Babylonian towers of increasingly contorted logic, a modern interpretation of the "aether" will rapidly rejuvenate physics with new, orderly life in the 21st century, returning the Universe to an understandable Unity where we “know the playing field.”

As our understanding of this universal energy source continues to expand, we are soon confronted with the idea that it is intelligent, that it can directly interact with our consciousness. After all, if this truly is the “Unified Field” that mainstream science has been searching for as the basis for all matter, then we are also a part of that unified field – mind, body and spirit. Or to put it in different terms, since we have consciousness, then consciousness must be a functioning part of that unified field as well.

This simple point of philosophy is quite often ignored in the course of a scientific investigation:

And in his book A Brief History of Time, well-known physicist Stephen Hawking predicted in the late 1980’s that this Unified Field Theory would be solved within twenty years.

The concept of a consciousness that is inherent in the energy of the universe is no longer in the realm of the spooks and spiritualists, as modern quantum physicists have discovered irrefutable evidence that the expectations of the experimenter can dramatically affect the outcome of the experiment – the quantum energies involved “know that they are being watched.”

Anyone can go to the science section of their local bookstore and find scores of titles that will discuss this, such as the classic Dancing Wu-Li Masters by Gary Zukav, who is now well known for his frequent, insightful appearances on the Oprah Winfrey show. Furthermore, we also know that this conscious interaction with “matter” doesn’t have to stop with the quantum arena.

In the field of parapsychology, which is solidly empirical and has struggled in vain for mainstream academic acceptance for many years, we have prestigious institutions such as Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research or PEAR that have absolutely proven that human consciousness can affect the outcome of seemingly “random” procedures.

This can include effects where the participant is able to demonstrate the following, statistically significant results:

The experimenter drops the balls through a single slot into a matrix that normally should funnel them into a random configuration throughout ten or fifteen slots at the bottom, and yet by sheer intent the participant is able to significantly increase the number of ping-pong balls that fall into a certain slot.

It is also important to remember that the subjects for these sorts of experiments are not heavy-duty psychics, but ordinary people; so we are not talking about something that is only available to certain “elite” humans in our society. These experiments clearly reveal that the human being possesses untapped potential that has not yet gained mainstream scientific acceptance.

So therefore, if the entire Universe is composed of a unified field, or One Unified Conscious Energy Source, then as we said, we are also a part of that field; our consciousness can interact with it at many levels. And though many of us have not reached consensus about who or what God actually is, we must also follow the logic and admit that all of our most fundamental conceptualizations of God must be considered in this model as well.

And when we strip away the religious and denominational distinctions of various belief systems on the planet and try to weave a single thread through their teachings, we are left with the simple fact that the fundamental nature of God’s Energy is Love and Light.

And since its nature is loving, we are told that it seeks to have everyone else feel the same way; it is continually striving to have each conscious life form in the Universe reunite with that Love and Light as much as possible. Hence, Jesus taught us to “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” We are told that God is evolving, through the free-will decisions of its apparently separate participants. The whole universe changes as we choose to reunite in Oneness.

The key point that can connect the concepts of God, Love and physics is the idea of sympathetic vibrations, as researcher John Keely suggested.

Keely reminds us that this principle is easily seen with a tuning fork. If you strike a tuning fork and have another nearby of similar proportions, the sound vibrations will mysteriously "carry over" to the non-vibrating fork and cause it to resonate on its own. Similarly, we have different people, different nations, different planets, and we can either choose to love and get along with each other, or choose to hate and destroy each other.

So, in the simplest possible sense, we can either have faith or simply postulate that the entire universe is One Being with One Mind, and that both the nonphysical aether and physical matter is all a fundamental part of that interconnected being. The world’s spiritual teachings all tell us that God seeks Oneness, unity and connection, and they also associate this quite directly with the concept of vibration.

To use an analogy given by Dr. Walter Russell in The Secret of Light, we can take a single wire, bend it 90 degrees and begin rotating it.

At slower speeds we can easily see the wire, but the faster we vibrate it in circular motion, the more it will appear as a completely solid disc. This is a model for how our apparently solid matter could be seen as ultimately composed of non-solid energies vibrating at a certain frequency, but it is also a model that allows us to see how the higher the vibrations rise, the more stable and Unified their composition will become.

Therefore, Unity or Oneness is the point of “singularity” where all vibrations become simultaneous: all colors become White Light and all space and time merges into a single “moment center” – which we will cover later in the book. Again, the closer we get to the “moment point” of Oneness, the higher the vibrations will become – and the model of physics in this book will show us very concretely how this is working, if we are willing to accept that simple philosophical premise.

And thus, even though love is often seen as merely a nebulous, subjective concept that often gets tied up in ideas of control and sexuality, in the aether models it can very well be defined:

So, you ask, what does love in the human being have to do with vibrational movement?

There are several ways to look at it. In a more physical sense, the feeling of love causes more motion in the nervous system and throughout the body: pupils dilate, heart rate accelerates, skin conductivity changes, perspiration increases, breathing is accelerated and neurological processes flow more quickly, leading to greater inspiration.

Moreover, the feeling of love will bring a human being into greater harmony with the others around it; there is a greater propensity to smile, to be happy, and to be friendly. In a very real sense to many spiritual philosophies, this creates a radiant motion, as when love is radiated to another person, that person also begins to feel it, and is likely to continue radiating it to others.

This radiant motion could be seen to travel through humanity in much the same way that a wave exhibits motion through a given medium, though it may not seem to be a fast-moving wave on the time axis. (At least, that is, until we study the Maharishi effect, which is covered further along in this chapter.) And indeed, the ETs tell us that at any one time, the total mass of humanity has a strong hand in determining the total vibrational frequency of the earth, whether higher or lower; so “everyone counts.”

We have stated that this motion of Love is a factor in physics, such as at the quantum level, as well as in human beings.

Consequently, the aether that forms all objects in the Universe must be in motion. But why must there be motion, you ask? Without motion, there is no Existence. If ultimately the universe is comprised simply of a Unified Field, then something has to happen within that field to create change – it can’t just “sit there.”

In other words, if the field remained static, unmoving and unchanging, then you couldn’t build reality, as on the most fundamental quantum level, energy has to move in order to function. That movement is a vibration; therefore, all elements of this Unified Field could be seen as existing fundamentally as vibrational motion.

If the nerves in your brain were not capable of vibrating energy through themselves and into the appropriate areas, you would not be able to think or operate your body in any capacity. If blood did not vibrate through your veins by the action of various muscular contractions, you would die. If electricity is not allowed to vibrate through the circuit boards of your computer, the computer will not function. If the energy in atoms did not move, we couldn’t perceive them and they couldn’t bond with each other to form basic chemical compounds.

So for you, the human being, it is important to see that in a very direct neurochemical sense, every thought and action, however small, is creating a form of vibration in the aetheric energy that surrounds and creates you. If the electrical interactions in your brain and body were only occurring in the context of “empty space” surrounding you, then you might not expect them to travel outside of the barrier of your skin to the air– but we now know that there is no empty space in the Universe.

If all energy is unified as one field, as aetheric energy, then any movement of energy within that field must resonate throughout it – including the movement of consciousness.

Think about it this way. Your body couldn’t function very well if each cell declared itself separate from the body and shut down, refusing to “vibrate” with the rest of the body systems. It is for this simple reason that the world’s spiritual teachers all suggest to us that God has an agenda, seeking to reinforce the loving, unifying thoughts and actions. How could one part of the body rage against another if the body is to perpetuate itself through cooperation? No one can deny that each one of us wishes to be happy – it is written directly into the Constitution of the United States as one of our most fundamental “rights.”

Why should God be any different?

So, if your consciousness is actually creating “ripples” of vibration in this sea of nonphysical aether energy, then the more loving you become, for yourself and for others, the more this causes you to strengthen your vibrational fusion with the energy of Creation. And ultimately, this fusion is a point of no space / no time and all space / all time. Geometrically, it is the Center.

Love is a radiating, strengthening, unifying force, moving towards the central point of Oneness, whereas hate, or the absence of love, is an absorbing, dis-integrating, weakening force, absorbing energy away from the central point of Oneness and compartmentalizing it.

Though many people will probably disagree with such an assessment of the vibrational nature of consciousness, it is certainly something that deserves a fair trial, especially in light of the scientific evidence that we are about to cover. This importance of “love as vibration” is by far the most fundamental spiritual message that the positive ETs seem to be attempting to impart to humanity through any number of methods, such as the phenomenon of “psychic readings.”

So, although it does indeed bend the mind somewhat to think of Love as an actual tangible energetic movement, there are an ever-increasing number of people who are working on their spiritual growth and healing processes who speak about this “energy” constantly.

Even as science is making great strides in many very important ways, we must also respect how many spiritual strides are occurring in our society as well. More and more of us are becoming cognizant of the bigger pictures that define reality as we know it - and we are not afraid to follow the clues to their new solutions.

Science no longer needs to be compartmentalized to the degree that the physicist goes to church and prays to God on Sunday, and then spends the rest of the week in the laboratory trying to disprove its existence.

Indeed, the conscious aether itself is arguably the most direct energetic manifestation of God that we will ever find – and as we have said, all spiritual traditions seem to agree that God is Love and Light.

Certain replicable experiments, including Cleve Backster’s various polygraph experiments with plants and other forms of life, and a host of mind-body medicine studies in humans, reveal that hatred destroys life and love enhances life. Although we could argue about the cause, the fact remains that when a human being sends harmful thoughts to a plant, it goes into great alarm and shock and will eventually wither and die, whereas other equally valid experiments showed that if a human being sends love to a plant and / or plays music around it, the plant will blossom and grow more vigorously.

This methodologically sound research was originally highlighted in the extremely popular 1970s book known as The Secret Life of Plants, and more recently in another book known as The Secret Life of Your Cells, by Dr. Robert Stone.

The “Backster effect” demonstrates that plants are very well attuned to the energetic vibrations within their environment. It has been demonstrated and recorded countless times, eliminating all extraneous variables with strict design protocols. Cleve Backster had many years of police experience in administering “lie detector” tests, where a human being would be set up to a machine that measured minute electrochemical changes in the skin.

This process, known as polygraph testing, would produce data in the form of a continuing graph on paper, similar to a measurement of heartbeat or other vital signs. The stylus that deposited ink on the paper was designed to wiggle in accordance with any changes in the person’s Galvanic Skin Response, or GSR, which is basically a measurement of how well the skin conducts electricity.

If the person suddenly felt the internal stress of telling a lie, their physiological system would reveal that stress through such things as an increase in heart rate, breathing and perspiration. Any of these increases would change how well the skin could conduct electricity, and often quite abruptly.

So, after many years of work in this field and becoming one of the top polygraph experts throughout the country, Cleve Backster got the idea one day to delicately connect the same metallic terminals that he normally would connect to a human being for a “lie detector” test to the leaf of a plant, and graph the plant’s electrochemical changes.

Over time, he discovered that the plant was somehow responding to its environment quite directly; anything that may damage the plant in the outside world seemed to cause a reaction.

Cutting the plant seemed to be nowhere near as traumatic as burning the plant, however if he pretended that he was going to burn the plant but knew that he wasn’t actually going to do it, the plant wouldn’t respond. It was only when he formed a clear mental image of grabbing a book of matches, lighting a match and holding it to a leaf that the graph would register a sudden spike – the plant was going into shock, sending as much extra moisture as possible to the leaf in order to protect itself against any damage. This effect also ripples throughout all other plants in the vicinity.

Some will dismiss this research out of hand, no matter how many charts and graphs they are shown, or even if it is demonstrated right in front of them. On the other hand, other people who are more open-minded would choose to interpret this experiment as indicating that the plants are thinking creatures just as we are.

However, at the most fundamental level, we must consider that either way, there has to be a means by which the thoughts of the human are being transmitted to the plant – there has to be a medium through which consciousness can travel. Mainstream science has not yet acknowledged the niche where this medium would exist; namely aether or zero-point energy.

Novel theories of a chemical “message” being sent through the air are certainly possible, but the effect works just as well when the plants are isolated from each other, thus prohibiting any such form of communication.

So again, let us use our example of love as representing a higher level of vibration in the aether. The plant may not have any “emotions” as we would think of them as humans, but simply is responding to changes in the vibrating resonance of aether that constantly surrounds and thereby creates it on a moment by moment basis.

In other words, when a person sends loving thoughts to a plant or plays it music, the aetheric energy that the plant draws on for growth and development is increased, and it thereby becomes more vigorous. Similarly, when Backster sent hateful thoughts to the plant, the frequency of energy around it actually decreased, and based on the plant’s primitive design, this energy change triggered a natural survival response as a result.

Backster also demonstrated that the plant’s shock response could just as easily be caused by the suffering of other creatures in the same area. He designed a series of experiments where a machine would randomly dump brine shrimp into a bath of boiling water while he was not present in the building.

The plant naturally and immediately responded to the death of brine shrimp in its environment, reacting with the electromagnetic vibrations that were present in the area; it wasn’t necessary for a human to send negative thoughts to the plant. Hence, inharmonious aether vibrations, no matter who or what creates them, could be seen as leading to inharmonious and even toxic growth conditions, whereas loving aether vibrations enhance the speed and vigor of vitality that streams into the plant, as other experiments clearly demonstrated.

Pain, death and hateful thoughts draw away energy from the aetheric forces in that area and reduces the plant’s ability to grow.

The Backster effect has also been demonstrated with bacteria – an even simpler life-form than brine shrimp. We attended a lecture of his that was hosted by Walter Russel’s University of Science and Philosophy on September 8, 2000, and during this talk, Backster revealed that he discovered the bacteria effect after pouring a pot of boiling water from the coffeemaker into the sink in his laboratory. His plants, which were always connected to the polygraph machine, registered a huge and immediate shock when he did this, which he later found on the printout.

Obviously, he was very puzzled as to what had caused this at first, and had to think carefully about what he was doing right at the moment that the shock had registered.

Once he traced it back to the boiling water, he sampled the sink with a cotton swab and analyzed the specimen under a microscope. He then got the answer, which was that a huge colony of bacteria was growing in the sink, which he did not clean regularly! Subsequent experiments proved that the plants consistently reacted to the death of the bacteria.

This unexpected result was what led him to perform the brine shrimp experiments indicated above.

If a human being can make objects levitate and move through “empty space” by themselves, then our current scientific understandings are in need of serious revision.

As we said, if love is simply a motion of energy that trends toward a higher level of vibration, then this might not have to be a motion solely within the nonphysical field of consciousness; physical matter can be affected as well, even to the levitation of the body.

However, the data on levitation is still open to other interpretations, some of which are simply religious and do not bother with the question of “how.” In the mind of the scientist, the universe is composed of four basic forces: gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear and strong nuclear force. If the aether truly forms all of physical matter and either creates or is a function of consciousness, then there must be a way for consciousness to spontaneously generate any of these four basic forces we have cited, in addition to being able to move physical objects.

If we can’t find the basic forces of the Universe created in this movement of consciousness, then the entire, widespread body of data “can’t be true.”

Rigorous studies of the phenomenon of psychokinesis were conducted in the former Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, later reported on in the unclassified Defense Intelligence Agency’s Soviet and Czechoslovakian Parapsychology Research (U), by Mr. Louis F. Maire III and Major J.D. LaMoth, MSC, published September 1975.

Since it appears that these countries were far ahead of the United States in this research, it is worthwhile to pursue these leads - as most Westerners are not aware of the degree of scientific progress that has been made in the former Soviet bloc on these areas. In these studies, the aetheric energy being harnessed is referred to as “bioplasma.”

We have italicized certain portions of this rather long excerpt below for emphasis.

[Note: Right away, the criteria for human consciousness to create the basic energy fields in the Universe has been satisfied, published in a document from the US Defense Intelligence Agency.]

[Note: At this point the authors try to speculate as to what these detectors might be. We have omitted this portion and certain others. When we review Lt. Col. Tom Bearden’s work on Soviet scalar-wave technology we can see why it was classified, as he has written entire books on how the former Soviets had used this technology for weapons applications.]

Nina Kulagina in the laboratory with objects that she moved while being filmed

[Note: At this point in the document the authors take several pages to describe Czechoslovakian research into PK that can be done with most people, not just exceptional individuals. This typically involves a lightweight object that hangs downward on a string attached to its midpoint and is free to rotate inside of a sealed glass container. By simply touching the outside of the container, people are able to make it spin on their own. The first example of such an object that would turn inside the glass is a spoked wheel:]

Now in the end of this section of the document there are speculations as to possible military applications of such abilities.

Clearly there is a great deal of information to absorb and to consider within this document.

Many of us might not have been aware of the anomalies surrounding the phenomenon of psychokinesis, including the creation of measurable electromagnetic, electrostatic, magnetic or gravitational fields around target objects. And even more importantly, the energetic field around the objects was showing the same rhythms as those within the person’s body – such as heartbeat and respiration rate.

Consequently, if a person is able to create all of the main "fields" that we observe on the macro level by consciousness, (excluding the atomic-level weak and strong nuclear forces,) then we should clearly put consciousness at a higher plateau than these other forces, as a unifying factor for all these forces. In other words, if the fundamental forces of nature that our scientists have observed can all be created or harnessed by a force of consciousness, then ultimately they must all be connected in Oneness.

Furthermore, Kulagina’s experiments with PK clearly demonstrate that the amount of love or sympathetic vibrations in the room had a noticeable effect on her results - skeptical, tense atmospheres created much more energetic stress on her than calm and relaxed, supportive situations.

Our ultimate contention is that all of the fundamental fields – gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear and strong nuclear force – must emanate directly from the aether, a unifying force of sympathetic vibrations that forms all of physical reality as we now see it.

Consciousness is fundamentally interwoven with this process. If the Unified Field is pure energy, and the energy must move to form all of physicality, then ultimately Consciousness is another from of aetheric movement. Once a person is properly trained, they can use their consciousness to create motion in the aether in any of its forms, including the commonly observed force fields.

And as the Russian scientists have demonstrated, this is no longer speculation; this is experimental data.

Even when all matter and heat radiation have been removed from a region of space,

the vacuum of classical physics remains filled with a distinctive pattern of electromagnetic fields

Aristotle and his followers believed no region of space could be totally empty: This notion that "nature abhors a vacuum" was rejected in the scientific revolution of the 17th century; ironically, though, modern physics has come to hold a similar view.

Today there is no doubt that a region of space can be emptied of ordinary matter, at least in principle. In the modern view, however, a region of vacuum is far from being empty or featureless. It has a complex structure, which cannot be eliminated by any conceivable means.

This use of words may seem puzzling. If the vacuum is not empty, how can it be called a vacuum?

Physicists today define the vacuum as whatever is left in a region of space when it has been emptied of everything that can possibly be removed from it by experimental means. The vacuum is the experimentally attainable void. Obviously a first step in creating a region of vacuum is to eliminate all visible matter, such as solids and liquids. Gases must also be removed.

When all matter has been excluded, however, space is not empty; it remains filled with electromagnetic radiation. A part of the radiation is thermal, and it can be removed by cooling, but another component of the radiation has a subtler origin. Even if the temperature of a vacuum could be reduced to absolute zero, a pattern of fluctuating electromagnetic waves would persist.

This residual radiation, which has been analyzed only in recent years, is an inherent feature of the vacuum, and it cannot be suppressed.

A full account of the contemporary theory of the vacuum would have to include the ideas of quantum mechanics, which are curious indeed. For example, it would be necessary to describe the spontaneous creation of matter and antimatter from the vacuum. Nevertheless, some of the remarkable properties of the vacuum do not depend at all on the peculiar logic of the quantum theory, and they can best be understood in a classical description (one that ignores quantum effects). Accordingly I shall discuss the vacuum entirely in terms of classical ideas.

Even in the comparatively simple world of classical physics the vacuum is amply strange.

The Discovery of the Vacuum

Aristotle’s doctrine that a vacuum is physically impossible was overthrown in the 17th century. The crucial development was the invention of the barometer in 1644 by Evangelista Torricelli, who had been secretary to Galileo. Torricelli poured mercury into a glass tube closed at one end and then inverted the tube, with the open end in a vessel filled with mercury.

The column of liquid fell to a height of about 30 inches above the level of the mercury in the vessel, leaving a space at the top of the tube. The space was clearly empty of any visible matter; Torricelli proposed that it was also free of gas and so was a region of vacuum. A lively controversy ensued between supporters of the Aristotelian view and those who believed Torricelli had indeed created a vacuum. A few years later Blaise Pascal supervised a series of ingenious experiments, all tending to confirm Torricelli’s hypothesis.

In the following decades experiments with the vacuum had a great vogue.

The best-remembered of these demonstrations is one conducted by Otto von Guericke, the burgomaster of Magdeburg, who made a globe from two copper hemispheres and evacuated the space within. Two teams of eight draft horses were unable to separate the hemispheres. Other experiments of the era were less spectacular but perhaps more informative.

For example, they led to the discovery that a vacuum transmits light but not sound.

[Picture.]

MAGDEBURG HEMISPHERES made in 1654 by Otto von Guericke demonstrated the existence of the vacuum, When the hemispheres were put together and the air was pulled out, two teams of eight draft horses could not separate them. The apparatus is now in the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

The understanding of the vacuum changed again in the 19th century. The nature of the change can be illustrated by a thought experiment to be done with imaginary ideal apparatus.

Suppose one had a piston and cylinder machined so perfectly that the piston could move freely and yet nothing could leak past it. Initially the piston is at the closed end of the cylinder and there is no vacant space at all. When a steady force is applied to withdraw the piston against the pressure of the air outside, the space developed between the piston and the end of the cylinder is a region of vacuum.

If the piston is immediately released, it moves back into the cylinder, eliminating the vacuum space.

If the piston is withdrawn and held for some time at room temperature, however, the result is quite different. External air pressure pushes on the piston, tending to restore the original configuration. Nevertheless, the piston does not go all the way back into the cylinder, even if additional force is applied. Evidently something is inside the cylinder. What appeared to be an empty space is not empty after the wait.

The physicists of the 19th century were able to explain this curious result. During the period when the piston was withdrawn the walls of the cylinder were emitting heat radiation into the vacuum region. When the piston was forced back in, the radiation was compressed. Thermal radiation responds to compression much as a gas does: both the pressure and the temperature rise.

Thus the compressed radiation exerts a force opposing the reinsertion of the piston. The piston and cylinder could be closed again only if one waited long enough for the higher-temperature radiation to be reabsorbed by the walls of the cylinder.

The form of thermal radiation is intimately connected with the structure of the vacuum in classical physics. Nothing in my discussion so far has indicated that this should be so, and indeed the physicists of the 19th century were unaware of the connection.

The Thermal Spectrum

Thermal radiation consists of electromagnetic fields that fluctuate in the most random way possible.

Paradoxically this maximum randomness gives the radiation great statistical regularity. Under conditions of thermal equilibrium, in which the temperature is uniform everywhere, the radiation is both homogeneous and isotropic: its properties are the same at every point in space and in every direction. An instrument capable of measuring any property of the radiation would give the same reading no matter where it was placed and what direction it was pointed in.

The one physical quantity that determines the character of thermal radiation is its temperature. In 1879 the Austrian physicist Josef Stefan investigated the total energy density (or energy per unit volume) of thermal radiation and, on the basis of some preliminary experiments suggested that the energy density varies as the fourth power of the absolute temperature.

Five years later Stefan’s student Ludwig Boltzmann found the same relation through a theoretical analysis.

The temperature of thermal radiation determines not only its total energy density but also its spectrum, that is, the curve defining the amount of radiant energy at each frequency.

The effect of temperature on the thermal spectrum is familiar from everyday experience; as an object is heated it first glows red and then white or even blue as the spectrum comes to be dominated by progressively higher frequencies. The thermal spectrum is not a monochromatic one, however; a red-hot poker emits radiation most strongly at frequencies corresponding to red light, but it also gives off lesser quantities of radiation at all higher and lower frequencies.

The shape of the thermal spectrum and its relation to temperature were explored experimentally in the last years of the 19th century, but the attempt to formulate a consistent theoretical explanation met with only limited success. The aim was to find a mathematical expression that would give the intensity of the radiation as a function of the frequency and the temperature. In other words, given some specified temperature, the expression had to predict the intensity of radiation that would be measured at any chosen frequency.

A sophisticated classical analysis of the thermal spectrum was given by the German physicist Wilhelm Wien in 1893. Wien based his analysis on a thought experiment much like the one described above, but with the added provision that the cylinder be perfectly insulated so that no heat could be gained or lost. Wien calculated the change in the spectrum that would be brought about by an infinitesimal change in the internal volume of the cylinder.

From this calculation he was able to deduce that the mathematical expression describing the spectrum must have two factors, which are multiplied to yield the intensity at a given frequency and temperature. One factor is the cube of the frequency. The second factor is a function of the absolute temperature divided by the frequency, but Wien was not able to determine the correct form of the function. (He made a proposal, but it was soon shown to be wrong.)

[Figure.]

CREATION OF A VACUUM proceeds in stages that parallel the historical development of ideas about the vacuum. In the 17th century (a) it was thought a totally empty volume of space could be created by removing all matter, and in particular all gases. Late in the 19th century (b) it became apparent that such a region still contains thermal radiation, but it seemed the radiation might be eliminated by cooling.

Since then both theory and experiment have shown there is nonthermal radiation in the vacuum (c), and it would persist even if the temperature could be lowered to absolute zero. It is called zero-point radiation.

Classical Electron Theory

The mathematical function needed to describe the thermal spectrum was suggested by Max Planck in 1900. Planck emphasized that an understanding of thermal radiation required the introduction of a new fundamental constant, now called Planck’s constant, with a value of 6.26 x 10^-27 erg-second.

In the course of his struggle to explain his function for the thermal spectrum Planck launched the quantum theory. The start of quantum physics, however, did not mark the end of the story of classical physics.

Stefan’s and Boltzmann’s proposal that the total energy density of the thermal radiation is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature implies that the energy density falls to zero at a temperature of absolute zero. The thermal radiation simply disappears at zero temperature. The possibility of eliminating all thermal radiation led to a conception of the classical vacuum that was an extension of the 17th-century view.

A perfect vacuum was still a totally empty region of space, but to attain this state one had to remove not only all visible matter and all gas but also all electromagnetic radiation. The last requirement could be met in principle by cooling the region to absolute zero.

This conception of the vacuum within classical physics was embodied in the fundamental physical theory of the time, which has since come to be known as classical electron theory. It views electrons as point-like particles whose only properties are mass and electric charge. They can be set in motion by electric and magnetic fields, and their motion in turn gives rise to such fields. (An electron in steady oscillation, for example, radiates electromagnetic waves at the frequency of oscillation.)

The interactions between particles and fields are accounted for by Newton’s laws of motion and by James Clerk Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism. In addition certain boundary conditions must be specified if the theory is to make definite predictions. Maxwell’s equations describe how an electromagnetic field changes from place to place and from moment to moment, but to calculate the actual value of the field one must know the initial, or boundary, values of the field, which provide a baseline for all subsequent changes.

It is through the choice of initial conditions that the nature of the vacuum enters classical electron theory. Since in the 19th-century view the vacuum was empty of all radiation, the initial conditions set on Maxwell’s equations were the absence of electric and magnetic radiation. Roughly speaking, the 19th-century version of classical electron theory assumed that at some time in the distant past the universe contained matter (electrons) but no radiation.

All electromagnetic radiation evolved from the acceleration of electric charges.

The Casimir Effect

Classical electron theory remains a viable field of investigation today, but it has taken a new form in the 20th century. The need for a revision is easily seen from an experiment proposed in 1948 by Hendrik B. G. Casimir of the Philips Research Laboratories in the Netherlands.

Casimir analyzed the forces that would act on two electrically conducting, parallel plates mounted a small distance apart in a vacuum. If the plates carry an electric charge, the laws of elementary electrostatics predict a force between them, but Casimir considered the case in which the plates are uncharged. Even then a force can arise from electromagnetic radiation surrounding the plates. The origin of this force is not immediately obvious, but a mechanical analogy serves to make it clear.

Suppose a smooth cord is threaded snuggly through holes in two wood blocks, as in the upper illustration on the next page. The cord is not tied to the blocks, and so at rest it neither pushes them apart nor pulls them together. Nevertheless, if the part of the cord between the blocks is made to vibrate transversely, a force acts on the blocks and they tend to slide along the cord away from each other.

The force arises because transverse motion of the cord is not possible where it passes through a block, and so waves in the cord are reflected there. When a wave is reflected, some of its momentum is transferred to the reflector

The situation in Casimir’s proposed experiment is similar.

The metal plates are analogous to the wood blocks, and the fluctuating electric and magnetic radiation fields represent the vibrating cord. The analogue of the hole in the wood block is the conducting quality of the metal plates; just as waves on the cord are reflected by the block, so electromagnetic waves are reflected by a conductor. In this case there is radiation on both sides of each plate, and thus the forces tend to cancel. The cancellation is not exact, however; a small residual force remains.

The force is directly proportional to the area of the plates and also depends on both the separation between the plates and the spectrum of the fluctuating electromagnetic radiation.

[Figure.]

IDEAL PISTON AND CYLINDER provide the apparatus for a thought experiment revealing the presence of thermal radiation.

The piston is initially at the closed end of the cylinder, leaving no free space; then it is withdrawn partway and held in this position for some time at room temperature. The space enclosed would seem to be a vacuum, and yet when the piston is released, it does not return to its initial position; indeed, it cannot be pushed all tile way back into the cylinder even with additional force.

While the piston was held in the open position tile walls of the cavity emitted thermal radiation with a spectrum determined by the temperature. An attempt to reinsert the piston compresses the radiation, raising its temperature and tiles altering its spectrum. The hotter radiation opposes the compression.

So far this analysis is wholly consistent with the 19th-century view of the vacuum. The force acting on the plates is attributed to fluctuating thermal radiation. When the temperatures reduced to absolute zero, both the thermal radiation and the force between. the plates should disappear.

Experiment contradicts this prediction. In 1958 the Dutch physicist M. J. Sparnaay carried out a series of experiments based on Casimir’s proposal and found that the force did not approach zero when the thermal radiation was reduced to low intensity. Instead there was a residual attractive force that would persist even at absolute zero.

The residual force is directly proportional to the area of the plates and inversely proportional to the fourth power of their separation; the constant of proportionality is 1.3 x 10**(-18) erg-centimeter. Although such a force is small, it is measurable if the plates are sufficiently close together. For plates with an area of one square centimeter separated by 0.5 micrometer the Casimir force is equivalent to the weight of 0.2 milligram.

Whatever the magnitude of the Casimir effect, its very existence indicates that there is something fundamentally wrong with the 19th-century idea of the classical vacuum. If one is to fit classical theory with experiment, then even at zero temperature the classical vacuum cannot be completely empty; it must be filled with the classical electromagnetic fields responsible for the attractive force Sparnaay measured.

Those vacuum fields are now referred to as classical electromagnetic zero-point radiation.

[Figure.]

CASIMIR EFFECT demonstrates the existence of electromagnetic fields in the vacuum.

Two metal plates in a vacuum chamber are mounted parallel to each other and a small distance apart. Because the plates are conducting, they reflect electromagnetic waves; for a wave to be reflected there must be a node of the electric field - a point of zero electric amplitude - at the surface of the plate. The resulting arrangement of the waves gives rise to a force of attraction.

The origin of the force can be understood in part through a mechanical analogy. If a cord threaded through holes in two wood blocks is made to vibrate, waves is the cord are reflected at tire holes and generate forces on the blocks. The forces on a single block act in opposite directions, but a small net force remains. Its magnitude and direction depend on the separation between the blocks and the spectrum of waves along the cord.

FORCE OBSERVED IN THE CASIMIR EXPERIMENT has two components. At high temperature thermal radiation gives rise to a force directly proportional to the temperature and inversely proportional to the cube of the distance between the plates.

This force disappears at absolute zero, as the thermal radiation itself does. The force associated with the zero-point radiation is independent of temperature and inversely proportional to the fourth power of the distance between the plates.

The forces shown are for plates with an area of one square centimeter; the thermal force is an approximation valid at high temperature.

The Zero-Point Spectrum

What are the characteristics of the zero-point radiation in the classical vacuum? Much can be deduced from the fact that it exists in a vacuum: it must conform to accepted basic ideas about the nature of the vacuum.

For example, it seems essential that the vacuum define no special places or directions, no landmarks in space or time; it should look the same at all positions and in all directions. Hence the zero-point radiation, like thermal radiation, must be homogeneous and isotropic. Furthermore, the vacuum should not define any special velocity through space; it. should look the same to any two observers no matter what their velocity is with respect to each other, provided the velocity is constant.

This last requirement is expressed by saying the zero-point radiation must be invariant with respect to Lorentz transformation.

(The Lorentz transformation, named for the Dutch physicist H. A. Lorentz, is a conversion from one constant-velocity frame of reference to another, taking into account that the speed of light is the same in all frames of reference.)

[Figure.]

LORENTZ INVARIANCE of the zero-point radiation ensures that the vacuum looks the same to observers moving through it at different velocities, provided each observer’s velocity is constant.

The Lorentz transformation relates frames of reference that differ in velocity; for radiation to be Lorentz-invariant its spectrum must be unchanged by the transformation. The effect of motion on the spectrum is illustrated by an observer surrounded by peculiar traffic signals, which always indicate the intensity of the zero-point radiation at three frequencies, namely those of red, green and blue light, Suppose an observer at rest with respect to the array of signals finds they all show green (a), meaning that all the zero-point radiation is concentrated in the green part of the electromagnetic spectrum. If the observer then begins to move (b), the pattern is altered by the Doppler effect: the signals ahead appear blue and those behind red.

The Lorentz transformation also makes the approaching signals brighter and the receding ones dimmer. It turns out that ’ only one spectral form has the property of Lorentz invariance: the intensity must be proportional to the cube of the frequency.

When the traffic signals are illuminated according to this rule, an observer at rest (c) and an observer in motion (d) see the same pattern.

The requirement of Lorentz invariance is a serious constraint. A railroad passenger may be momentarily unsure whether his own train or the one on the next track is moving relative to the earth, but the ambiguity can be resolved simply by looking at some landmark known to be fixed. Lorentz invariance implies that there are no such landmarks in the vacuum and that no experiment could ever reveal an observer’s velocity with respect to the background of zero-point radiation.

To meet this condition the spectrum of the radiation must have quite specific properties.

Suppose for the moment that the zero-point radiation, as perceived by some observer, were all in the region of the electromagnetic spectrum corresponding to green light. No matter where the observer stood and no matter in what direction he looked, the vacuum would appear to be filled with uniform green radiation. Such a spectrum satisfies the requirements of homogeneity and isotropy for this one observer, but now suppose there is another observer moving toward the first one at a constant speed.

Because of the Doppler effect, the moving observer would see the radiation in front of him shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum and the radiation behind him shifted toward the red end. The Lorentz transformation also alters the intensity of the radiation: it would be brighter in front and dimmer behind. Thus the radiation does not look the same to both observers; it is isotropic to one but not to the other.

It turns out that the zero-point spectrum can have only one possible shape if the radiation is to be Lorentz-invariant. The intensity of the radiation at any frequency must be proportional to the cube of that frequency.

A spectrum defined by such a cubic curve is the same for all unaccelerated observers, no matter what their velocity; moreover, it is the only spectrum that has this property.

[Figure.]

ZERO-POINT SPECTRUM is independent of the observer’s velocity because of compensating changes in frequency and intensity. When an observer is approaching a source of radiation, all frequencies are shifted to higher values and all intensities are increased; moving away from the source has the opposite effect.

Thus a spectrum that has a peak in the green region for a stationary observer has a larger blue peak for so approaching observer and a smaller red peak for a receding observer. The cubic curve that defines the zero-point spectrum balances the shifts in frequency and intensity. Light that appears green in the stationary frame of reference becomes blue to an approaching observer, but its intensity matches that of the blue light seen by an observer at rest.

By the same token, green light is shifted to red frequencies for a receding observer, but its intensity is diminished correspondingly.

One immediate objection might be made to the cubic form of the zero-point spectrum: because the intensity of the radiation increases steadily at higher frequencies, the spectrum predicts an infinite energy density for the vacuum. In the 19th century such a prediction might well have been considered a fatal flaw, but since the 1940’s infinities have turned up in several areas of physics, and methods have been developed for dealing with them. In this case the infinite energy is confronted directly only in the realm of gravitational forces. All other calculations are based on changes or differences in energy, which are invariably finite.

If the universe is permeated by classical zero-point radiation, one might suppose it would make its presence known in phenomena less subtle than the Casimir effect. For example, one might think it would alter the outcome of the piston-and-cylinder experiment by resisting the insertion of the piston even after all thermal radiation had been eliminated.

Analysis indicates otherwise. Under equilibrium conditions, when no external force is applied to the piston, there is radiation both inside and outside the cylinder, and the radiation pressures acting on the piston are balanced.

This balance holds for both thermal and zero-point radiation. When the piston is pushed into the cylinder, the radiation is compressed. Wien’s calculation of the change in the spectrum as a result of a change in volume indicates that the thermal radiation resists such compression; it increases in temperature and exerts a greater pressure against the piston.

When the same analysis is made for the zero-point radiation, however, the result is different: the zero-point spectrum does not change at all in response to compression. Indeed, a spectrum described by a cubic curve is the only one that has this remarkable property.

The other experiment in which the cubic zero-point spectrum should be checked is the Casimir effect itself. A theoretical calculation based on the spectrum predicts a force between the plates directly proportional to their area and inversely proportional to the fourth power of their separation, in agreement with Sparnaay’s results.

Again it can be shown that the spectrum is unique in supporting this prediction; no other spectral curve yields an inverse-fourth-power dependence on distance.

The New Classical Electron Theory

The statement that a spectrum described by a cubic curve is unique refers only to the shape of the curve; actually there are infinitely many curves with the same shape but different scales. In all the curves the intensity of the radiation is proportional to the cube of the frequency, but the magnitude of the intensity in each spectrum depends on a constant, which sets the scale of the curve.

The value of the constant cannot be calculated theoretically, but Sparnaay’s measurement of the force in the Casimir effect allows the value to be determined from experiment. After some preliminary algebraic manipulation it is found that the constant is equal to 3.3 x 10**(-27) erg-second, a magnitude corresponding to one-half of Planck’s constant. Thus Planck’s constant, the hallmark of all quantum physics, appears in a purely classical context.

The introduction of classical zero-point radiation in the vacuum mandates an important change in classical electron theory. The revised version of the theory is still based on Newton’s laws of motion for the electrons and Maxwell’s equations for the electromagnetic field, but the boundary conditions imposed on Maxwell’s equations must be altered.

No longer is the vacuum empty of all electromagnetic fields; it is now filled with randomly fluctuating fields having the zero-point spectrum. The modified theory is called classical electron theory with classical electromagnetic zero-point radiation, a name often shortened to stochastic electrodynamics.

The altered boundary conditions change the predictions of the theory. The changes can be understood by considering one of the favorite models of modern physics: a harmonic oscillator made up of an electron attached to a perfectly elastic and frictionless spring. This imaginary mechanical system is to be set up in the classical vacuum.

If the spring is stretched and then released, the electron oscillates about its equilibrium position and gives off electromagnetic radiation at the frequency of oscillation.

[Figure.]

HARMONIC OSCILLATOR reveals the effects of zero-point radiation on matter.

The oscillator consists of all electron attached to an ideal, frictionless spring. When the electron is set in motion, it oscillates about its point of equilibrium, emitting electromagnetic radiation at the frequency of oscillation.

The radiation dissipates energy, and so in the absence of zero-point radiation and at a temperature of absolute zero the electron eventually comes to rest. Actually zero-point radiation continually imparts random impulses to the electron, so that it never comes to a complete stop. Zero-point radiation gives the oscillator an average energy equal to the frequency of oscillation multiplied by one-half of Planck’s constant.

The harmonic oscillator is a convenient model because the motion of the electron is readily calculated. Under the older version of classical electron theory just two forces act on the electron: the restoring force from the spring and a reaction force arising from the emission of radiation. Because the reaction force is directed opposite to the electron’s motion, the theory predicts that the oscillations will be steadily damped and the electron will eventually come to rest. In the new version of classical electron theory, however, the zero-point radiation provides an additional force on the electron.

The charged particle is continually buffeted by the randomly fluctuating fields of the zero-point radiation, so that it never comes to rest. It turns out the harmonic oscillator retains an average energy related to the zero-point spectrum, namely one-half of Planck’s constant multiplied by the frequency of oscillation.

Up to now the classical vacuum has been described from the point of view of an observer at rest or moving with constant velocity.

The consequences of zero-point radiation are even more remarkable for an accelerated observer, that is, one whose velocity is changing in magnitude or direction.

Effects of Acceleration

Consider an observer in a rocket continuously accelerating with respect to some frame of reference that can be regarded as fixed, such as the background of distant stars.

To find out, one must perform a mathematical transformation from the fixed frame of reference to the accelerated one. The Lorentz transformation mediates between frames that differ in velocity, but the situation is more complex here because the velocity of the accelerated observer is continuously changing. By carrying out Lorentz transformations over some time interval, however, the vacuum observed from the rocket can be determined.

One might guess that the spectrum for an accelerated observer would no longer be isotropic, and in particular that some difference would be detected between the forward and the backward directions.

The spectrum might also, be predicted to change as the acceleration continued. In fact the spectrum remains homogeneous and isotropic, and no change is observed as long as the rate of acceleration itself does not change. Nevertheless, the spectrum is not the one seen by an unaccelerated observer. At any given frequency the intensity of the radiation is greater in the accelerated frame than it is in the frame at rest.

The form of the classical electromagnetic spectrum seen by an accelerated observer is not one immediately familiar to physicists, but it can be interpreted by analyzing the motion of a harmonic oscillator carried along in the rocket. The equation of motion for the accelerated oscillator is much like the one valid in a fixed frame of reference.

There are two differences: the radiation-reaction force has a new term proportional to the square of the acceleration, and the oscillator is exposed to a new spectrum of random radiation associated with the acceleration.

The effect of these changes is to increase the average energy above the energy associated with the zero-point motion. In other words, when an oscillator is accelerated, it jiggles more vigorously than it would if it were at rest in the vacuum.

One way of understanding the effect of acceleration on the harmonic oscillator is to ask what additional electromagnetic spectrum could be added to the zero-point radiation to cause the extra motion. To answer this question one can turn to the equivalence principle on which Einstein founded his theory of gravitation. The principle states that an observer in a small laboratory supported in a gravitational field makes exactly the same measurements as an observer in a small accelerating rocket. The laws of thermodynamics are found to hold in a gravitational field.

From the equivalence principle one therefore expects the laws of thermodynamics to hold in an accelerating rocket. There is then only one possible equilibrium spectrum that can be added to the zero-point radiation: the additional radiation must have a thermal spectrum. With any other spectrum the oscillator would not be in thermal equilibrium with its surroundings, and so it could serve as the basis of a perpetual-motion machine.

By this route one is led to a remarkable conclusion: a physical system accelerated through the vacuum has the same equilibrium properties as an unaccelerated system immersed in thermal radiation at a temperature above absolute zero.

The mathematical relation connecting acceleration and temperature was found in about 1976 by William G. Unruh of the University of British Columbia and P.C.W. Davies of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. The effective spectrum seen by an observer accelerated through the vacuum is the sum of two parts. One part is the zero-point radiation; the other is the spectrum of thermal radiation deduced by Planck in 1900. Planck was able to explain the form of that curve only by introducing quantum-mechanical ideas, which he did with some reluctance; it now turns out the curve can be derived from an entirely classical analysis of radiation in the vacuum.

At least one more intriguing result arises from this line of inquiry. If one again invokes the equivalence principle relating an observer in a gravitational field with an accelerating observer, one concludes that there is a minimum attainable temperature in a gravitational field. This limit is an absolute one, quite apart from any practical difficulties of reaching low temperatures.

At the surface of the earth the limit is 4 x 10^-20 degree Kelvin, far beyond the capabilities of real refrigerators but nonetheless greater than zero.

The discovery of a connection between thermal radiation and the structure of the classical vacuum reveals an unexpected unity in the laws of physics, but it also complicates our view of what was once considered mere empty space. Even with its pattern of electric and magnetic fields in continual fluctuation, the vacuum remains the simplest state of nature.

But perhaps this statement reflects more on the subtlety of nature than it does on the simplicity of the vacuum.

[Figure.]

EFFECT OF ACCELERATION through tire vacuum is to change the spectrum of observed radiation. At a temperature of absolute zero a harmonic oscillator in a frame of reference at rest or moving with constant velocity is subject only to zero-point oscillations.

In an accelerated frame the oscillator responds as if it were at a temperature greater than zero.

Professor Claus W. Turter of the University of Applied Sciences Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, Germany has posted complete online documentation on the conversion of Vacuum Energy!:

The principle has been successfully verified with a measurement of the machine power converted from vacuum-energy !

The practical benefit for the power supply industry free from environmental pollution is obvious: If the principle can be applied on industrial scale, it would not be necessary in future to combust matter in order to supply mankind with energy.

It's all here - theoretical models and equations, diagrams, experiments, applications, references, everything. See "Conversion of the Vacuum-energy of Electromagnetic Zero Point Oscillations into Classical Mechanical Energy".

This is Tom Valone's amazing video lecture Zero-Point Energy Extraction from the Quantum Vacuum (2004) where he gives a great overview of the various methods to extract free energy directly from the quantum vacuum to power our homes and machines.

Today we face a destabilizing dependency on irreplaceable fossil fuels which are also rapidly dwindling.

A real need exists for a portable source of power that can compete with fossil fuel and its energy density. A further need exists for a fuel-less source of power which, by definition, does not require re-fueling. One possible source could be zero-point energy (ZPE).

A major feasibility study by Valone's Integrity Research Institute placed its emphasis on the practical potential for ZPE energy conversion, especially in view of recent advances in nanotechnology, than in the theory.

With primary reference to the works of Casimir, Pinto, Mead and Milonni, key principles for the proposed extraction of energy for useful work are identified and analyzed. These principles fall into the thermodynamic, fluidic, mechanical, and electromagnetic areas of primary, force-like quantities that apply to all energy systems.

A search of ZPE literature reveals that these principles also apply to the quantum level

Address of the Author

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Claus W. Turtur University of Applied Science Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel Salzdahlumer Straße 46 / 48 Germany -38304 Wolfenbüttel

Tel.: (++49) 5331 / 939 - 3412

Only a few years ago, the facts described in this article, would have been regarded as impossible or perhaps as fantasy. In all probability, people may have smiled at the rotor presented here and most likely considered it to be a “perpetual motion machine”, because in reality, such a machine cannot exist, as everybody knows.

Of course the long accepted view that a “perpetual motion machine” cannot exist is unchanged today and probably will remain unchanged forever. Nevertheless the article describes a rotor that can rotate endlessly, without being supported by any visible source of energy.

The remarkable characteristic of this rotor is, that it is driven by a source of energy, which mankind, until a few years ago, had no prior knowledge. This novel type of energy source is now described here.

But how do we give definition to or imagine this type of energy source ? What could it be ?

In order to answer these questions, we go back to the discovery of this energy source, which was achieved in the recent past. In the field of physical cosmology it was observed, that two-thirds of the total universe comprised of an invisible type of energy, about which, mankind [nowadays] knows only slightly more, than the fact that it exists. As we cannot see this type of energy, it was given the name “dark energy”.

This name does not intend to impart any connotation with “dark” or “miraculous paranormal” forces, but it simply points out, that we cannot see this energy – just like we cannot see anything if it is dark. The name shall also indicate, that we have little knowledge of its nature or origin. In order to avoid misunderstanding, this energy is sometimes referred to as “space energy” or “vacuum energy”, because it is a property of mere space, and thus vacuum. This does not however, indicate the necessity to produce a good vacuum in order to establish this energy.

Things are rather like that: Space contains this energy, independently whether it contains any visible matter or not. Another portion of this energy is "quantum mechanical zero point energy" (ZPE energy), because it is supposed, that it originates from quantum mechanical zero point oscillations. Though these oscillations are rather abstract, they are well known within quantum mechanics and have been so, for several decades.

The achievement of the article presented here is, that the author succeeded to make this ZPE energy of the vacuum, visible and manifest in the laboratory, by driving a rotor with it. This rotor spun like a typical rotor. It converted ZPE energy into classical mechanical energy, which was sufficient to surmount the friction within a real setup of a rotor and to drive it continuously.

The advantage of this rotor is, that the propelling energy is coming from mere space, of which there is plenty within the universe. Some of the ZPE energy [in all this universe] is flowing onto the surface of our earth and is ready for utilization.

Historical retrospection and comparison
In the early Middle Ages mankind did not have any awareness, that air is a tangible medium. In analogy to this, there was no awareness, that vacuum is a tangible medium, until the early 20th century.

In principle it would not have been necessary to perform any scientific experiments to recognize, that air is a tangible medium – were it not for a large intellectual barrier that took centuries to overcome. Only this intellectual barrier can explain, why people could not identify the air from the observation that birds can fly or even from the fact that wind exists.

Without this intellectual barrier it should have been possible to understand the existence of the air within the 8th., 10th. or 12th. century. In reality, mankind needed until 1643, when Evangelista Torricelli came upon the idea, to remove the air from a closed volume to demonstrate, that there are some occurrences, which behave differently in the vacuum than in air.

This was when the intellectual barrier was overcome and time was ripe for the PR-demonstration by Otto von Guericke, to bring the existence of the air into the consciousness of everybody. For his famous experiment with two evacuated hemispheres stuck together with a force stronger than horses could pull apart, he needed another 14 years to carry out this demonstration in 1657. His experiment brought the existence of air into the consciousness of everybody.

The analogy is obvious: My rotor will bring the existence of the ZPE energy of the space into the consciousness of everybody. It shall demonstrate that the vacuum is a real tangible medium. Torricelli used the pressure of the air for his demonstration, Otto von Guericke used the pressure of the air and the forces of horses for his demonstration.

I used electrostatic and magnetic forces for my demonstration.

Now the demonstration (of the vacuum) is performed. It is reported in the further course of this article. But before this is described, I want to put the question, whether it would have been possible to overcome the intellectual barrier with our every day experience. The answer is simply yes, namely as follows:

From our childhood most of us know, that two magnets exert forces on each other even without touching each other. It can be an attractive or repulsive force, depending on the orientation of the magnets. Later we learn that sun, earth and moon exert forces onto each other, and of course they do not touch each other. But how about the medium which does the transmission of all these forces?

This is mere space; which can now be recognized as a material which transmits the forces of the fundamental interaction, such as gravitation and electromagnetic interaction (maybe also other fundamental interactions of physic).

Even in modern particle physics, where the fundamental interactions are described by the interchange of special particles, those particles have to pass the space – or in other words: Space transmits these particles. The space does this transmission with a finite speed, namely the speed of light. However when we learn this (from the Theory of Relativity) we are already grown up, this means we have already lost our childish inquisitiveness, and so we forget to ask, which material properties of the vacuum are responsible for the transmission of the forces over distance.

As we do not ask this question, we do not have the chance to recognize, that the vacuum is a material. But when I now pose the unusual question, why the vacuum has the characteristic wave impedance of 376.6 Ohm for electromagnetic waves, maybe the childish inquisitiveness awakes not only in me, but also in those who read this article.

For me, this question was the activator to begin the investigation of the vacuum. And now – when I see the material properties of the vacuum, I recognize, that its energy is of great benefit to solve our energy problems.

But the very first step for a scientific approach to the understanding of the vacuum is coming from physical cosmology: The expansion of the universe. The speed of this expansion does not fit into the traditional theory, known as the standard model of cosmology.

Today's generally accepted explanation of the speed of this expansion is the following:

For every cubic meter of “empty“ space, a certain amount of energy can be ascribed.

According to Einstein’s mass-energy-equivalence (E=mc²) this energy corresponds to a certain amount of gravitating mass. This means the vacuum has certain mass and this mass leads to a certain amount of gravitation force – which should explain the speed of the expansion of the universe, but in reality it does not explain perfectly.

But how much is the weight of the vacuum?
The answer is given as mass per volume, which leads to value in kilograms per cubic meter. Unfortunately the answer is not known unambiguously today. There are several answers.

The discrepancies are tremendous. Some scientists speak about tiny fractions of grams, others speak about many many billions of tons. The discrepancy sometimes is said to be the largest discrepancy which ever occurred in physics. Mankind will solve this discrepancy, but I don’t want to speculate in which century we will do.

In any case, most of the natural scientists agree, that mere space is a real substance to be taken seriously, and that it has some certain mass and thus energy. Because the whole universe consists of space, it is already included into the General Theory of Relativity, namely as the cosmological constant (with the symbol  ).

When Einstein introduced this cosmological constant into his theory, he did it because of pure mathematical reasons, but he did not see that it really exists, so he said, it was the largest folly of his life, to introduce this  . But in the meantime mankind learned, that it really does exist, and that it has a real effect, namely to influence the speed of the expansion of the universe, and it has a real reason, namely the energy of the space. Thus today the cosmological constant is taken serious.

In consideration of the fact, that we have the whole universe completely full of energy, it is not understood why mankind laments about a deficit of energy.

Compromising and destroying our environment with our energy policy is not the way to go. It would be much better to take a small fraction of the energy of the universe, not polluting our environment at all, and satisfy our hunger for energy completely. A small fraction of the energy of the universe is more than mankind can consume.

We will, for sure, not be able to pump out the universe in a way that anybody would notice. This would be like drinking a mouthful of water from the ocean – nobody will see that the ocean will contain less water after drinking.

By the way, it should be mentioned, that two-thirds of the universe is vacuum energy. This is more than all visible matter, all galaxies, black holes, stars, planets, creatures and all the elementary particles not discovered until now. The prognosis is obvious: The universe gives us more energy than we ever can use.

And now let us tend our attention towards a possible technology, with which we can get this mouthful of sustainable energy, which is enough for all of us. This is what I developed, and what I describe in the further course of this article.

This technology has an essential advantage in comparison with all conventional energy sources: It does not combust or change any visible matter ! “Not combusting visible matter” – this is the crucial condition for being free of environmental pollution. Only if we can handle energy without converting or manipulating visible matter, is it a source of sustainable energy.

This is not, what co-generation power stations do, neither nuclear power stations, not even fusion. All of them leave garbage on the earth, and all of them will end, as soon as the required material is exhausted. ZPE vacuum energy does not have this problem in principle.

This complexity of problems was understood by Nikolai Tesla more then hundred years ago. He expressed his hope, that mankind will learn earlier or later to handle energy without combusting matter. At his time he had no guess how to do that. The intellectual barrier was too large. But he was right: Mankind learned. Even if it was not earlier but later – time is ripe now, and we shall do it.

Alternative Technologies and current state of the art
The necessity not to combust matter does not stringently demand the use of ZPE-energy.

Alternative solutions to our energy-problem could be for example wind power stations, solar power, the use of geothermal energy, just to mention some possibilities. They all are sustainable. They are fine, as long their difficulties do not disturb. For instance tidal power stations are not possible everywhere, wind power stations depend on weather.

Thus it is worth considering the usage of ZPE-energy. “Space” is everywhere, permanently, steadily, constantly, to be used freely by all human societies, as long as the universe exists.

Up to now, only fundamental research about ZPE-energy has been done, which led to the prototype rotor, converting a few Microwatts of ZPE-energy into classical mechanical energy. This is a great advance, because we now know, how to use ZPE-energy, but the large-scale realization to construct and build power stations is still an open challenge.

The principle of the ZPE-energy conversion is rather simple and energy should be much less expensive then today when using ZPE-energy. This means that we can have much more energy, for a given amount of money, than we can have with conventional technologies.

The fundamental physical principle of the use of ZPE-energy is described in the following chapters.

Theory of the conversion of ZPE-space-energy into classical energy
Let us begin with the principle of the successfully tested conversion of ZPE-space-energy into classical mechanical energy. The setup of the apparatus is rather simple, as shown in Fig.1.

In the upper part of the drawing we see a disc (red), which we want to call “field source”, because it produces an electric field. Underneath there is a rotor (blue) which rotates around a vertical axis, as soon as electric field (produces by the field source) is strong enough.

Sketch of the principle of an engine converting ZPE-spaceenergy into classical mechanical energy.

The red field source is charged up electrically, the blue rotor is connected to ground.

This takes a very small amount of electrical energy, just to charge up the capacitor sufficiently. As soon as this is done, the rotor will endlessly rotate. The mechanical energy produced in the experiments carried out up to now are just even enough to surmount the friction of the bearings, so that the rotation can really be seen. This means that the rotation was really observed.

This is not a very complicated apparatus. In the experiments conducted up to now, I have built rotors from one to eighteen inches diameter.

Large-scale applications will require more energy and more machine power. This needs large-scale diameter of the rotor, because of the given energy-flux which space provides. Theoretical computations allow the estimation of the relationship between the size of the rotor and the produced power of the machine. For instance, a pile of rotors with 100 meters diameter and 20 meters height may produce a machine power of about 2-3 Megawatts.

Of course conventional nuclear power stations have much more energy density, but this is not a serious criticism, not only because of the environmental argument. The ZPE-space-energy rotor has a further important advantage: It can be used in a wide range of sizes to suite local energy demands. In other words: It is possible to build ZPE-space-energy rotors with adequate size, wherever energy is needed.

This will not only minimize energy losses during energy transportation, but it furthermore allows to set up ZPE-space-energy rotors without compromising the landscape. A power station is not the very best adornment of the landscape. ZPE-space-energy rotors could be placed below the cellar of houses. A rotor of 10 Meters of diameter below a family home can be estimated to produce an engine power of about 10 ... 20 ... 30 Kilowatts.

And because this power production is permanent, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, the power is much more than the house needs. By this means, it might be possible, to accommodate a large power supply below houses and buildings, not disturbing anybody at all. Industry with large power consumption could have a building dedicated for power supply.

Dimensions of ZPE-space-energy rotors are free scalable.

An often-heard question:

The logical next step of course is the idea, that we now want to extract some energy out of this permanent energy cycle inside space.

One possible way to get this energy is to use a ZPEspace-energy rotor. I do not want to say, that this will remain the only possible way forever, but up to now, I do not know any other way.

So we want to look at what the ZPE-spaceenergy rotor does: The rotor-blades consist of metallic surfaces. Metallic surfaces shield electric fields, in the following way: If there is an electric field going from one side onto the surface of the metallic surface, the field will not pass, so there will not be any part of this field on the other side of the metallic surface.

From the point of view of the field-energy this means: From one side, the energy reaches the surface, but this energy never arrives at the other side of the metallic surface. If you believe in energy-conservation ( I do), the metallic surface is the device taking up the energy which is transported by the field. This is a logic consequence, because there is no other pathway for the energy to go. This is the way in which metallic surfaces intervene into the energy-cycle between the electric charge and the space. Thus we understand how the ZPE-space-energy rotor is driven:

An electric charge gets energy from the ZPE-oscillations of space (which are part the space-energy) and converts this energy into electric field energy.

This electric field energy propagates into space, but while it propagates meter by meter, part of it is re-converted into space energy. If this propagation is interrupted by a metallic rotor-blade, the metallic surface takes the complete remainder of the field energy, namely this field energy which was not absorbed by the space on its way from the field source to the rotor.

This force can be calculated by Maxwell’s Electrodynamics with the use of the so called image-charge-method.

This is a well-established method of calculation. Thus the result of this calculation is not surprising. By the way, it should be reminded, that most of us know these electrostatic forces acting on surfaces, from childhood, where our parents demonstrated that an electrically charged plastic ruler or an air balloon attracts small paper-confetti.

The reason is clear now: The field cannot pass the surface of the paper, and thus the paper is attracted.

If the metallic rotor-blades are mounted in a way that they can follow a rotation, we will directly see this type of movement as soon as field source (see Fig.1) is charged up electrically. This is also possible if the field source is a charged air balloon. This is also experimentally proven. The essential difference between the paper confetti and the ZPE-space-energy-rotor is the fact, that the rotor does not alter its distance from the field source.

Yes: It rotated, but it does not alter its distance. This means that the driving energy is not simply the energy from the electrostatic potential, because the rotor does not alter its position within this potential. By the way: If the electric field is not very homogeneous and there is some gradient in the potential, this will disturb the rotation remarkably.

The intellectual barrier, which prevented mankind from discovering this simple principle before the 21st century, was the fact, that there was no expectation of such a rotation. There is no classical (visible) energy driving the rotor, so nobody could imagine, it might happen.

Thus nobody tried. In 2008 time was ripe to understand the ZPE-space-energy as a source of rotation, so the rotor could be discovered.

Successful experimental proof of the conversion of ZPE-space-energy
It is a matter of fact, that a new theoretical model can be only accepted after it is proven experimentally. Experiment decides, whether a theory is right or not.

Consequently several ZPE-space-energy rotors have been built, mounted underneath a field source of appropriate diameter – and they rotated as soon as a sufficient amount of electrical charge was brought onto the surface of the field source. Well, some experimental parameters had to be adjusted in an appropriate way. I described how to do this within several scientific publications.

The very first trials had been conducted in a normal room containing air. This lead to critical questions from scientific colleagues, whether this very special type of visible matter, the air, might allow an explanation of the observed rotation. The underlying mechanism would be the ionization of some molecules of the air. The ions might be accelerated by the electrostatic field, causing a recoil which might drive the rotor-blades.

Such a mechanism has been known for many decades (two patents by Biefeld and Brown in 1928 and in 1965), and it works completely on the basis of classical electrical energy without any connection to ZPE-space-energy.

The consequence is obvious:

It was performed in the vacuum and it was successful. The ZPE-space-energy rotor works in the vacuum. Since I published this, the doubtful colleagues became silent.

For the sake of completeness it has to be said, that the rotor spins remarkably slower in vacuum than in air. This means that the ionization mechanism of the air molecules causes some driving force.

So the critical questions of some colleagues had justification. But the main result of the vacuum-experiment, performed with different rotors of different shape, using different vacuum chambers, is: The ZPE-space-energy rotor rotates inside space without visible matter.

On the one hand this confirms the conversion of ZPE-space-energy into classical mechanical energy, but on the other hand, there is a further aspect: A large-scale technical application shall be done inside a vacuum chamber (or in the universe) in order to be profitable. This is necessary to avoid isolation losses due to the movement of ions, which transport electric charge between the field source and the rotor-blades.

Additional notice: There is a magnetic principle driving a magnetic rotor in very close analogy to the electric principle. But up to now, the magnetic principle is only in the state of planning. The theory is developed and an experimental design is constructed, but the magnetic conversion of ZPEspace-energy is still to be done.

The analogy of a metallic surface shielding the electric field is a superconducting surface shielding the magnetic field, because superconductors act as ideal diamagnets. Similar as metallic surfaces interrupt electric fields, diamagnetic surfaces interrupt magnetic fields. But there is one important difference between the electric forces and the magnetic forces: The electric forces are attractive, but the magnetic forces are repulsive.

From the theory point of view, this would cause the magnetic ZPE-rotor to rotate in the other direction than the electric ZPE-rotor. But in the real experiment, this difference causes several technical difficulties with the bearing of the axis of the superconducting rotor. These technical difficulties are the reason, why the verification experiment of the magnetic ZPE-rotor is not yet ready.

One of the technical difficulties is the extreme homogeneity of the magnetic field necessary for the rotation of the magnetic ZPE-rotor, which is much more difficult than minor requirements to the homogeneity of the electric field for the electric ZPE-rotor. Nevertheless the magnetic rotor is an interesting alternative because of its energy density.

The field strength within an electric ZPE-rotor is restricted by the breakthrough of the electric field, but the magnetic field does not experience such a restriction of breakthrough, and therefore a restriction of energy density.

Further remark: Up to now, there are several electric ZPE-rotors converting machine power of a few Microwatts. This is known from reliable measurements of the produced machine power and it confirms the theoretical expectations for the small rotors that have, up till now, been under investigation. This makes clear: The principle of the electric conversion of ZPE-spaceenergy is successfully verified.

Now the time is ripe to begin a large-scale development to establish electric ZPE-rotors converting machine power of Kilowatts and Megawatts.

The measurement of actual power, generated by the machine, refutes the very last objections that have been made. Some colleagues presented the counter-argument, that there might be some unknown way, along which some electric power from the field-source finds its way to the rotor in order to drive the rotor. In that scenario, the rotor would not be driven by ZPEspace-energy but would be driven by classical electrical energy.

Skeptics have been united in one argument, which has a clear logic: All doubts could be certainly removed if it would be possible to optimize the isolation to the extent, that the electric power loss due to imperfections of the isolation, [which is necessary to keep the electric field of the field-source constant], would be smaller than the mechanical engine power, which the rotor produces.

In other words: The mechanical engine power output of the machine has to be larger than the electrical power input. This argument is based on fundamental logic and is impossible to disprove. I accepted the argument and provided the requested proof: I built a rotor and did the power measurement, finding a 2.9 Nanowatt loss of electrical power input (being due to isolation losses), but the mechanical power output was 150 Nanowatt.

The power was not very large, because this was only an experiment of fundamental physics (I did not have the money to build a rotor producing more power), but the point is that doubts, from counter-arguments are now removed by principle. The construction of large-scale ZPE-energy-rotors with large power is not a fundamental problem. I wrote several scientific publications with detailed explanation as to how to build such large-scale ZPE-energy-rotors.

The consequence is encouraging: The suitability of the ZPE-energy-rotor for the conversion of ZPE-energy into mechanical energy is proven and since I did this energy measurement, I did not hear any further doubts from any colleagues.

The calculations of the ZPE-space-energy and the produced machine power finally go back to Quantum electrodynamics. The very first references of literature, long before anybody knew about space energy or a connection with it, go back to Werner Heisenberg (one of the founders of Quantum mechanics), who found out theoretically and published already in 1935 together with Euler, that the speed of propagation of electromagnetic waves can be influenced by electric and/or magnetic fields.

This means that light propagates in space with a field slower than in space without field. The speed of light in a vacuum as used in the Theory of Relativity is valid for a vacuum without field. If Heisenberg’s conception is applied to the electromagnetic zero-point-oscillations of the vacuum, it is possible, to find out the speed of propagation of electrostatic and of magnetic fields in a space being influenced already by an electric and/or magnetic field.

If this consideration is put into a calculation (into theory of renormalization and into Feynman’s calculus), it is possible to find out the energy density of zero-point-oscillations of the electromagnetic waves of the vacuum.

The value is surprisingly large, namely of about 10²⁹ Joule per cubic meter, this 30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilowatt hour in each single cubic meter of space.

Although it is only possible to get a rather small part of this energy (as can be seen from Lagrangeian according to Werner Heisenberg anno 1935), it makes plausible, why the universe consists mainly of (ZPE-)space-energy. Maybe one lucky day, one intelligent colleague will be able to enhance the energy density and the power density of the real working ZPE-space-energy rotor.

First of all, we see, that the energy within the universe is for sure enough, that mankind will never be able to pump it out.

This awesome energy source can be used by everyone, when researchers working in collaboration, can develop and then apply the technology.

Everything in the entire universe, everything that you and I perceive to be solid matter, is actually not matter at all. All the space around us, is pure energy which we will call vacuum energy. Not only that, but this vacuum energy is infinitely dense.

The reality that you and I have been led to believe in is a lie.

The only truly dense thing in this universe is the apparent empty space all around us, and whenever we see objects, hold them, touch them, or otherwise… that is most likely due to a gradient within the infinite density of the vacuum energy which gives off a little oscillation of energy slow enough for our senses to perceive it.

Here is the proof.

This is fundamental to the accepted physics paradigms of quantum theory which deal specifically with the level of the universe where all things are energy, or at least where they oscillate between energy and form.

As quoted in one of the most fundamental physics textbooks, Gravitation, by three of the most highly influential physicists of the 20^th Century, Charles Misner, Kip Thorne, and John Archibald Wheeler:

In other words, they accept that the vacuum structure - allegedly empty space - is infinitely dense, but instead of dealing with infinity directly they attempt to renormalize this value.

On the one hand it is logical to attempt to renormalize infinity, because after all, it is easier to plug a definite number into an equation than it is to use infinity.

But on the other hand, in the world outside of mathematics, to not accept the infinite density of vacuum energy is to avoid a truthful perceptual experience and understanding of reality.

On the topic of re-normalization, Nassim Haramein can add to this conversation:

The irony of the situation is that when they tried to renormalize the "energy density in the vacuum that would formerly be infinite" they came up with a value that was not much better.

Using the Planck's distance they decided to calculate the vacuum energy density by counting the number of Planck's distances they could fit into a centimeter cube of space by stacking them like subatomic bricks, fitting as many as possible into that area.

Then they calculated the total amount of energy that was available in that space by multiplying the energy of a single Planck's distance with the total number of Planck's distances they packed into that centimeter cubed of space so that they could have a definite value for the density of vacuum energy (and remember, all of this is being done in order to get a value that wasn't infinite).

The resulting "renormalized" value that they got for the vacuum energy density was 10⁹³ grams per centimeter cube of space. That is 10 with 93 zeroes after it, an enormous number.

But to put the true enormity of this number in perspective, if the entire known universe was compacted into a centimeter cube of space, it would only reach a density of 10⁵⁵ grams/centimeter cubed!

In other words, the renormalized density for vacuum energy exceeds the mass of the entire known universe… compacted into a centimeter cubed of space (from 'Crossing the Event Horizon' - below video).

The Casimir Effect

The existence of vacuum energy has also been verified by the Casimir Effect.

In 1948, Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir devised a test that would either prove or disprove the existence of vacuum energy.

He theorized that if you could put two extremely thin metal plates together at an absurdly small distance from one another (we are taking about a distance of mere microns apart), then if there was vacuum energy you would create an imbalance within vacuum energy (or 'an imbalance in the quantum fluctuations' as vacuum energy is more technically called) that would exert a force on the plates.

By putting these metal plates so close together you would have isolated all but the smallest wavelengths within the vacuum thus creating pressure on the outside of the plates which would have pushed them together, proving the existence of vacuum energy.

In 1948 when Hendrik Casimir came up with this idea the technology was not around to test his theory. But a few decades later scientist where able to carry out this experiment and prove conclusively that Hendrik Casimir was correct, and that there is an energy density to the vacuum.

Since then this experiment has been validated many times by many scientists, and it has become known as 'The Casimir Effect'. This is conclusive and undeniable proof of the existence of vacuum energy which is free energy.

(For more information on the Casimir Effect and on Free Energy check out this great article: Multiple Scientists Confirm the Existence of Free Energy)

Conclusion - Moving Forwards

We are swimming within an infinitely dense sea of energy.

It has been proven not only that everything is energy, but also that each and every centimeter cube of space contains infinite energy. If we used our resources as individual nations and as a planet searching for ways to tap into this energy, instead of suppressing new research that has already done so, then in a few short years we could be powering our planet with free vacuum energy extracted directly from the structure of space-time.

No more oil. No more pollution. No more wars over energy. No more needing to work to heat our homes. We could all quite our jobs and have unlimited free time to pursue our passions and contribute our knowledge and creativity to society.

We would have time to build gardens that maintain themselves, and collectively produce natural food to feed our planet while we spend our days in nature, following our passions, and doing what we love to do.

By tapping into vacuum energy with our technology and with perception, we can change the world.

Spread the word.