Gravitational Waves Directly Detected

How Were Gravitational Waves detected?

By two detectors in the USA, one in Washington State, the other in Louisiana (detecting in one place would have been enough; in two places at the same time, the finding is overwhelming certain; the National Science Foundation of the USA had spent $1.1 billion, over 40 years, on that research). The detectors were simplicity themselves in concept: just a light interferometer to measure the distance between mirrors: light is split, sent in two perpendicular directions, and then re-united with itself. If one of the branches vary slightly in length relative to the other as a gravitational waves passes, an interference will show up. However mirrors hanging from pendulum hanging from pendulums five times, the whole thing in an anti-vibration machine had to be realized in half a dozen places in a chain of reflections and interference.

What are these Gravitational Waves?

As far as existing gravitation theory has it, distortion in space (and, thus time: time and space are related by the speed of light, c).

A Field Carries Away A Wave Just As A Whip Does

What Was Detected:

Einstein’s Gravitation Theory says that gravitation “is” the deformation of space(time) it brings. It is this deformation which was directly detected: a part of space in one direction was made shorter than in another direction. That meant a huge gravitational wave had passed.

The formidable event that caused it was the crash and collapse of two black holes into each other, each around 30 solar masses (much more details are known).

Gravitational Waves Were Certain Theoretically, & Already Detected:

We already had evidence for the existence of gravitational waves, both theoretical and experimental. Einstein’s name was rolled out, naturally enough. Because Einstein contributed to the present Theory of Gravitation (I am not anti-Einstein, far from it, but he closely worked with a number of other people, including the towering mathematician David Hilbert, who published his own approach to gravity within weeks of Einstein).

Einstein tends to appear as the cherry on many a cake. Those who celebrate the photogenic cherry, and ignore the cake, will go hungry.

WAVES ARE PREDICTED BY FINITE SPEED FIELD THEORY:

Actually, once one has hypothesized that gravitation is a field propagating at a finite speed, the apparition of waves is automatic.

The reasoning was made first by British and French Eighteenth Century physicists, in the framework of electromagnetic force; the mathematics is exactly the same with gravitation, as both fields vary with the inverse square of the distance. This is what happens in a radio antenna, with electrons going back and forth: the electric field that those electrons create is deformed in such a way that it moves other electron at a distance, back and forth.

The Gravitational Energy Loss Detection Method:

Thus, how do the waves show up? By shaking things at a distance. Using conservation of energy, it means that the field creating system, by moving just so, loses energy to its waves. An obvious case is two neutron stars (“pulsars”) rotating around each other: as they move back and forth, because of said rotation, they create gravitational waves which carry energy away from their system, As this happens, their system loses energy, the two stars should spiral into each other, thus rotate ever faster, and this should be observable, and computable exactly. This, indeed, was thoroughly observed, so we knew the waves were there.

Einstein’s Gravitation Theory is a sleight of hand:

It affects to identify space(time) deformations with gravitation. The idea actually originated with the awesome German mathematician Bernard Riemann, who invented manifold theory in part to point out that any force could be viewed as convergence, or divergence of geodesics (this is an idea that physics has been milking ever since).

This, though, does not answer Newton’s deeper query about the nature of gravitation (see below). It’s a bit as if a creature asked:’What is an arm?’ And one answered:’An arm is what pushes things, and we can detect the deformation the arm brought.’

What is the discovery good for?

Well, first, one has to make sure. Science is about making 100% sure. The present experiment improved some technology far out what anything else required (but then it does open some possibilities!) Just an importantly, now we will be able to check the details of the Gravitation Theory (the big picture was not in doubt; the details are). Ultimately it may be possible to communicate through gravitational waves, etc (although right now the deformation are only of the size of the fraction of a nucleus, and we could detect them!)

Who were the originators of that idea? First Newton himself pointed out that his own theory of gravitation was grotesque (I am paraphrasing). Newton:

“that one body may act upon another at a distance thro’ a Vacuum, without the Mediation of any thing else, by and through which their Action and Force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an Absurdity that I believe no Man who has in philosophical Matters a competent Faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.”

There were actually two problems: that the action was instantaneous, and that it was at a distance without intermediaries. Newton paid attention to the second one, physics, in the last two centuries, solved the first (which was implicit in Newton’s observations).

As I mentioned in passing above, part of Newton’s worries were addressed by the invention of the concept of field. And then by the realization that fields carried energy away in waves. At that point, gravitational waves were automatic… Riemann’s introduction of manifolds, and how to conceptualize forces in them gave the manifestation of its nature to gravitation we presently have, a distortion of space metric (once again, time follows automatically).

It’s important to know who invented what, and contributed most. Because it unveils how ideas appear and evolve. Then, in turn, one can make theories of that, accelerating innovation (don’t forget there is a horse race between innovation and oblivion, on the scale of the entire biosphere!)

Curiously, this is all very useful; GPS with a precision of 30 centimeters has allowed to find out that baboon society is more democratic than ours, in fundamental ways. “General Relativistic” effects (the fact clocks run slow in a gravitational field) make crucial corrections to the GPS computations (otherwise GPS would be pretty useless). So this is not all academic. GPS will soon allow robotic agriculture… among other things.

We still don’t know what gravitation is. However, we can predict more things than Newton did… Even if he did not suspect they were there. This is just the beginning of what could be revealed, if our satanic impulses are kept in check.

Patrice Ayme’

Quantum Fluctuates (Not That Much)

The Multiverse fanatics use “Quantum Fluctuations” to justify the existence of the… Universe. Their logic rests on the famous, and deep, inequality:

(Time Uncertainty) (Energy Uncertainty) > (Planck Constant).

I have an accompanying drawing of sorts which relates the preceding to the better known inequality called the “Uncertainty Principle”:

(Uncertainty Position) (Uncertainty Momentum) > (Planck Constant = h).

Uncertainty actually is not as much a “Principle” as a theorem (both inequalities are demonstrated below). The entire subject is very interesting philosophically, as we will see. The lessons are far-ranging, and all over. Yet recent physics textbooks have been eschewing the philosophical character of what is done, within the logic of physics, and stick to soulless formalism. The result has been an entire generation ill-equipped to handle philosophical questions (and yet, they are now forced to do so). Before I get into the philosophy, which appear later, let me roll out the basic physics.

Time And Energy Are Entangled, And This Is The Easiest Proof

OK, let’s give a few more details (hidden by implication arrows above). The Position-Momentum inequality is rather obvious, once one has got the basic quantum picture of the photon as a wave, and how it relates to energy.

1. To locate an object V, one needs to see it. That means ricochet a photon of it (we have nothing better than photons to see… Although some French guy got the Nobel for seeing photons with atomic phase changes, but that’s another story).
2. So throw photon P on V. To hit V, P needs a smaller wavelength W than L, the diameter of V. Otherwise, P being a wave when it moves, or, more exactly, explores space supraluminally, it will turn around V.
3. The momentum of the photon P is inverse to W. [This is Energy = h (Frequency)]
4. So the smaller L, the harder the photon P will hit the object V. That is, the smaller the localization of V, the greater the momentum of V.

So localizing a particle kicks it. How do we get to Energy-Time Uncertainty from there? The Standard Model (which is proven and consistent in its present very restricted domain: no gravity, etc.) has three classes of particles, one of them the class of force carriers. Force carriers go at the speed of light, c, and (thus) have zero mass (the Higgs gives them the appearance of mass as an afterthought).

So what do I do? Well momentum is basically energy (make c = 1), and time is space (thanks to c, measuring time is measuring space and reciprocally). Thus Position-Momentum becomes Time-Energy (the “real” proof as found in Messiah’s basic QM textbook involves functional analytic manipulations, but I doubt it really says more!)

[There are slick derivations of Time-Energy relationship using functional analysis. I am not so sure they make sense… As time is not really an observable in Quantum Physics. My primitive derivation found in the drawing is extremely basic, thus much more powerful. Their main advantage would be to mesmerize undergraduate.]

How Quantum Field Theory (QFT) Blossomed:

Philosophically, the rise of QFT is all about inventing new weird logics. Modern logic comprises Classical Logic, but has gone much further (multivalued logic, fuzzy logic, paradoxal logic, to quote just a few). Basically it has gone in realms where all the rules of classical logic fail. And physics has not come short, but made equally impressive contributions in weirdness.

Let me hasten to add that I find all this very valuable. De Broglie made reasonings I still do not understand. Dirac got the idea that the wave (equation) should be the primary axiom (getting spinor space, where electrons roam, from it, and then spin, anti-matter, etc.).

In QFT the Time-Energy Uncertainty plays a central role, and what is done is actually philosophically fascinating, and should inform the rest of philosophy:

1. Time-Energy Uncertainty prevents to know fundamental processes if the product of uncertainty in Time, multiplied by the uncertainty in Energy is less than a constant (h).
2. Thus, should such HIDDEN Fundamental Processes (HFP) occur, we won’t be able to detect them directly.
3. Hence let’s suppose such HFP happen. Then let’s compute. We discover renormalization, and find end results which are different from those without the HFP.
4. Check experimentally. What is found is that physics with HFP is correct, and physics without HFP is not.
5. Einstein tried, but gave up on all this, after his friend Ehrenfest tried to teach them to him for three weeks at Princeton.

Philosophical lesson? Something can be hidden, in principle, and still have indirect, observable effects. (Application in politics? Think of the plutocrats’ most vicious ways, unobservable, in principle, as the media they control make sure of it. Yet, indirectly they are poisoning the world, and the world is dying.)

Some of Today’s Physicists Are Easily Philosophically Confused:

But let’s go back to pataphysics, it’s lot of fun. In the so-called Big Boom, time is supposed to go to zero. Pataphysicists reason that, then, as the uncertainty in time goes down to zero, the uncertainty in energy has got to tend to infinity. First problem: it’s not because the uncertainty on something goes to infinity, that this thing goes to infinity.

But the main problem is the easy way in which the time-energy uncertainty was derived above. If only that reasoning makes sense, it applies to particles, and even virtual particles (although some fully active physicists consider those virtual particles do not exist, only fields do, and Feynman himself was not sure, private conversation). Thus the reasoning above justifies Quantum Fluctuations as they are used in Quantum Field Theory… and, indeed, they are clearly a safe and effective theory there. They work so well that, according to EFFECTIVE ONTOLOGY, those virtual particles ought to exist (I am aware of the arguments against them, more on that another time).

Thus that particles can flicker in and out of existence because of Quantum Fluctuations, I have not only demonstrated in my very primitive (and thus very safe and effective) way, but nobody in the know can deny it happens, since QFT works, and proves the concept . During their brief existence, those virtual particles (or field fluctuations represented by particles, some sophists will insist) affect charge, mass, etc. and these renormalizations have been observed.

Notice that I said: flicker in and OUT of existence. Why OUT of existence?  These particles flicker OUT of existence because of ENERGY CONSERVATION. Notice also that the universe does not flicker out of existence.

Pataphysicists Throw The Baby Out, And Drink The Dirty Water:

Physics is the search of basic axioms and the logic to bring them to life. One of these basic axioms is energy conservation.

This is what the pataphysicists propose to violate, as if they were Saudi paedophiles. Now violations can be justified in extraordinary circumstances (after all Aisha, who Muhammad married when she was six, came to love the Prophet more than any of his followers, and defended his work with her life, after His passing).

However the Big Boom theory of the creation of the universe is not such a great miracle, that it has to be preserved at all cost.

One should not throw the baby with the bath. Nor should one throw the baby out to preserve the dirty bath water. The precious baby is the principle of energy conservation. The dirty bath water is the Big Boom theory. That Big Bang already requires space to expand at zillion of times the speed of light. I have nothing against it, except it looks ad hoc. Pataphysicists have also smelled a rotten rat there, with that one and only, ad hoc  inflation, too, so they say:

“Look at a blade of grass. What do you see? A blade of grass. But look beyond: here is another one blade of grass, and another, and another. Zillions of blades of grass. Then look at planets: zillions, And at stars: zillions, and galaxies too: zillions. Thus universes? Zillions too!”

It reminds me of the fable of the frog who wanted to make itself bigger than an ox. It was doing well, inflating itself, until it exploded in a Big Bang. Pataphysicists can inflate their minds as much as they want, it’s still all wind inside. Time-Energy uncertainty applies to Quantum Fields, inasmuch as it respects energy conservation. Agreed, it is only natural that those who got reputations out of nothing, feel now confident that they can get a universe out of nothing. After all, it’s what their existence is all about.

And the weirdest thing? There is a simple, a simpler, alternative to all the madness: the 100 billion years universe. We will see who wins. This is going to be fun.

Patrice Ayme’

Under Water

A Maui Native told me something stunning: when he was a teenager, the West Coast of West Maui was a wide continuous golden sand beach. Now that beach is gone, only small patches survive, between small rocky capes. He accuses sea level rise. The Native works for a taxi service, and he is scared that the sea level will take out the road which is the lifeline to West Maui. He is even scared sea level rise will soon cut Maui in two.

He showed me where the road was cut by the waves, during high tide, and I could see the makeshift barriers the government had installed, pathetically. He says the cutting of the road has become the principal threat to his employment (and to the massive tourist sector of West Maui). Traffic crawls at 5 miles an hour when the waves come in.

Sea level is very hard to estimate: it varies continuously. Yet, as I saw in Maui, and as I have seen in other coast, full grown trees of deciduous species are not capable to grow where waves batter. Seeing tree roots exposed by waves, as I found on the French Cote d’Azur, on a particular beach which I knew, but is now under a meter of water, demonstrate clearly that sea level rise is grossly underestimated.

All This Was A Golden Beach, Now It IS Under Water. West Maui Coast, Facing Lanai.

A Qatari emits 33 tons of CO2 per inhabitant per year. The average Earth citizen emits 4.5 tons of CO2. Switzerland, 5.1 tons. The average in China is 6.5 tons, and 6.6 tons for a citizen of the European Union. Citizens of the USA emit, in the average, 16.1 tons (Canada and Australia do significantly worse).

48% of world CO2 emission is to produce energy and electricity. Transportation is only 23%, Industry 19%, and the rest, including home heating, only 10%.

Coal burning creates half of the world’s CO2 emission.

The inability to cut on greenhouse gases emissions is striking: they are still going up. One problem has been the crackdown on nuclear energy: for perhaps half the planet, right now, only nuclear energy can provide clean energy. Even Switzerland, full of mountains and thus endowed with vast amounts of hydro power, gets its good number from massive usage of nuclear energy (even though some of the reactors have been installed in locations which should have been completely excluded: where are the ecologists when needed?)

Yes, I said clean, when depicting nuclear power, and let no Fukushima or Chernobyl be brandished by the morally dubious, shrilly PC. Both nuclear accidents were caused by demented risks taken by foolish operators, and derelict surveillance authorities. Both situations were deeply insane, from putting reactors where super giant tsunamis have already struck, and not being ready after that happened, to using, in the case of the Soviet built reactor, hyper dangerous technology (graphite-gas), which should never have been built (such reactors are unstable under low power).

Not to do anything about the CO2 catastrophe is incomparably more demented than building nuclear reactors in every city (not that I recommend this!). It’s more demented, not just by orders of magnitude. One cannot compare the evacuations of a few zones left to wild animals (who are very happy), to the assured destruction of the biosphere. Once again, Fukushima happened because Japanese ecologists were out to lunch, and so was the government and the Tokyo Power company. And Chernobyl was the product of a dictatorship which had at least one way worse accident, and kept it hush hush.

Pseudo-ecologists have blocked stridently nuclear power (instead of insisting that it should be made safe, and how). Result? Sea Level rise has now doubled in rate relative to what it was 20 years ago.

United Nations predict a catastrophic rise of one meter by 2100. However that does not take into account the possible catastrophic collapse of Antarctica’s WAIS, Wilkes, and Aurora basins… which I anticipate. And melt massively they will, soon.

Some will smirk, and will suggest to wait until average of sea level rise are much higher than the recently registered 3.3 mm per year average. Yes, whatever. My little theory of sea level rise by catastrophic melting of Antarctica just got a timid support in the first official academic study of the subject. They admit that, instead of taking 10,000 years, catastrophic melting is only a few decades away. (I persist, and sign, that this is a ridiculous underestimate!)

Qatar is at 33 tons of CO2 per person per year. Let’s meditate what it means. That’s evil. And one evil leads to another: a consortium of British journalists just evaluated that the number of workers killed on the world cup stadiums in Qatar was in excess of 900 (yes, nearly a thousand). As we can see, enabling evil here, make it sprout all over (and yes, Qatar enables the Islamist State). Not doing anything impactful against sea level rise is enabling that rise. Thus, it is enabling evil. As average citizens are powerless, it’s our great leaders who are evil. They wanted the job, they got it, they give us hell, surely they won’t mind be called by their names?

The president of Ecuador, triumphantly re-elected, and a professional (USA PhD) economist, says that the climate catastrophe is NOT a technical problem, it is a political problem. The president of Senegal, a country at sea level, points out that there is no plan B, so the Paris Conference cannot fail.

And you know what the political problem is, at the deepest level of analysis? It’s the ultimate, the will to have evil rule. In one word: plutocracy. The will to have evil rule has no better friend than the CO2 catastrophe. As, first of all, it teaches people to live with catastrophe, and love it (as, earlier they were made to live with the bomb, and love it!)

And yes, it’s not as urgent, but even worse than the war against fascism in World War Two. Because there is a non-human operator involves, physics itself. As it is not as urgent, the frogs feel sleepy, instead of anxious. But they will get barbecued all the same.

Patrice Ayme’

Non-Conservation Of Energy & Multiverse Madness

Before unreason took over physics, one of the major principles was energy conservation. However, this was before. Now Sean Carroll, following other Multiversists (as I call them insolently) crucially depend upon nonconservation of energy.

Sean wrote an article, short and to the point: “Energy is not conserved.”

Well written, indeed. Carroll glibly asserts that “see, it was not so hard” (to throw away the most fundamental principle of physics, energy conservation).

Galactic Cluster Focuses Blue Galaxy Light

All the blue blotches are images of a far-away galaxy, which are focused by the cluster of galaxies in front. By the way, both Newtonian Theory and Einstein Theory predict the deviation of light by matter (more so with Einstein, as time slows down, allowing for more time to deviate).

The Universe we have, and can see, is so immense, we can’t comprehend it. There is no need to claim there are more of them than atoms. Except if there is a need to go completely crazy (something Putin and other plutocrats are all for!)

That energy is NOT conserved is essential to enable the creation of universes at the drop of a hat.

Nothing is really true anymore, even energy is not conserved. It costs nothing to create a universe.

Next we will all be led to believe plutocrats create not just jobs, but universes.

It’s probably related. Thanks, Sean.

So take two galaxies clusters, G1 and G2. Suppose they separate from the expansion of the universe. Sean Carroll, following the Multiverse fashion, asserts that it cost no energy to separate said galaxies.

Then he has a photon P travelling from G1 to G2, and he sees it has lost energy, so energy is not conserved. Multiversists repeat this argument ad nauseam.

In truth, what they stumbled upon is that the definition of mass-energy in the Theory of Gravitation is not clear. That’s all. The difficulty has been known for generations of mathematicians (behind closed doors). However, it does not mean that physics reduces to dust.

It just means one has to go back to Riemann’s intuition of the 1860s, and reconsider it carefully. Riemann tried to reduce force to geodesic separation. I would suggest to reduce energy to a function related to geodesics density. As geodesics separate, energy is put in the system. With this notion, the fact that it costs nothing to create a universe disappear. https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/quantum-trumps-spacetime/

Physicists can’t reduce the universe just to physics, physics has to reduce to mathematics, too, at least in part.

One may wonder what the Multiversists reduce physics to. Apparently, having done away with energy conservation, a fundamental axiom, they replace it by universe creation. They reduce all of physics to the creation of universes.

Dark Energy, the accelerated expansion of the universe, questions the entire scheme of present day cosmology, let alone physics. Starting the conversation (logos) by throwing out the most sacred principle of physics (energy conservation), and replacing it with instant karma is as glib as glib gets.

Instant karma? Thanks to the alleged non-conservation of energy, the creation of trillions of universes per second per cubic meter is eminently reasonable.

Does that makes Middle –Age theology sitting angels on pinheads a plausible outcome? This is reductio ad absurdum, if I ever saw it.

Quantum Field Theorists may smirk, and accuse me of not knowing that energy is not conserved in QFT

The time-energy uncertainty relation seems indeed to allow for large energy excursions, if they happened in a short time. But that’s related to “virtual particles”, which admittedly are neither virtual, nor particles… Just resting on that would allow a universe in a length of time so short it has no meaning (because it has no clock).

Agreed, physics is hard. Agreed, today’s “Standard Model” of High Energy Physics explains only 4% of the universe.

But that’s no excuse to go crazy, and see gazillion universes on every pinhead.

That only help the crazies.

Crazy like foxes, crazy like plutocrats.

Patrice Ayme

(Thermo)Nuclear Base Load Energy Soon?

As you unwittingly wait to board Ebola Air, let me distract you with a more palatable, albeit philosophically related, subject.

Sustainable energy means wind and PV (Photo Voltaic). Other possibilities don’t work enough to make a global dent. (At least not yet, by a long shot.)

Except maybe for tidal and current power, used in Europe since the Middle Ages (exploitation of sea currents is tested on a grand scale in Europe presently; a related possibility would be to use thermal differences in the ocean; but barnacles are a problem).

Solar thermal is controversial: it occupies so much space, zap birds, insects, etc.. Its one advantage is that the energy, heat, can be stored overnight. Geothermal works only in very few, small places (elsewhere it generates earthquakes for reasons similar to fracking).

Hydroelectric is sustainable only in conjunction with nuclear (to refill the reservoirs… Although don’t tell that to California’s empty dams).

The riddle of wind and PV, is that they work only occasionally: one needs base load power. When the sky is black grey with little wind, and it’s very cold, and it lasts for weeks, in a typical Euro weather in winter, a marais barometrique, one needs power. This is the so called “base power” (it’s supposed to be around 40% of peak demand).

Dishonest pseudo-ecologists have, in practice, pushed for fossil fuels base power (because they hate “nuclear energy”… not that they know what it is). All too many (pseudo) ecologists claim one can fight the CO2 built-up catastrophe, while having a fossil fuel base load.

That cannot work: any fossil fuel infrastructure added to the grid cost a fortune, billions of Euros and, or Dollars, for just one plant (typically with a cost around 3 billion). So one cannot add such a plant to not use it. Once built, it will be used (especially if a third of the grid capacity is made of them!)

And there is no, nor can there be, for theoretical reasons, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). CCS is another lie. Herds of noisy pseudo-ecologists have been lying about the coming of CCS. (CCS works only in half a dozen very special places: it’s typically re-injected right away where it came from, a gas field.)

Real ecologists such as yours truly, know that there is just one ecologically correct possibility for base load energy that can be imagined at this point: nuclear power, new nuclear power. That’s what has to be developed to replace fossil fuel base energy. As I said many times, second (or the identical third) generation nuclear power plants were, are, military in disguise (they produce Plutonium, crucial for bombs). So, just on non-military-nuclear-proliferation grounds, they should be shut down.

There are plenty of fission techs that could be made safe and fruitful (including some burning nuclear waste).

And then there is thermonuclear fusion.

In nuclear fusion, light atoms combine into stable forms (mostly Helium 4) and release excess energy. There no nasty waste (as this comes from heavy nuclei). However 80% of the power is as a neutron flux. In the 1920s, it was guessed that fusion generated the power of stars.

In the 1950s, tricks were found to use the X ray light of a plutonium bomb to compress thermonuclear fuel, and heat it up to get a short, but mighty fusion: the H bomb. The first one was much more powerful than expected.

The old joke is that controlled, sustainable thermonuclear fusion has always been, and always will be, the energy of the future. However, we generate roughly 10,000 times more fusion (per unit of fuel) as we did in the 1950s (this is roughly as good a progress as the famous “Moore Law” of the doubling of the power of computer chips, every two years, but at a tiny fraction of the cost: it cost trillions to develop computer chips).

Table top sustainable thermonuclear reactors are for sale. Nuclei are accelerated, using electric attraction, collide, and fuse. Those reactors generate neutrons (neutron beams can be used for all sorts of application, including medical). At this point the efficiency of these reactors is insufficient for gainful power generation (but it’s imaginable that tweaks  to this tech could generate much more energy than it uses).

Numerous fusion concepts are being developed (although not enough). The giant ITER uses the safest technology, where a thermonuclear fuel plasma is confined by exterior magnetism. But numerous alternatives are studied.

The University of Washington, and others, claim to have made a breakthrough: computers studies would show that one can tweak the geometry of the thermonuclear fuel plasma chamber in such a way that the plasma itself would generate the magnetic field bottling it away from the walls.

That does not mean that ITER is useless. Just the opposite: ITER is developing new materials to resist the mighty thermonuclear fire… which all thermonuclear reactors will have to use.

Even the famous Skunk Works of Lockheed Martin is working in the aptly named “Revolutionary Technology Programs unit” on what it calls the compact fusion reactor (CFR). At this point, it’s a containment vessel the size of a business-jet engine.

Lockheed believes it will be small and practical enough for interplanetary spaceships, transoceanic ships and city power stations… Or even fusion power aircraft (fission nuclear-powered aircraft were tested 50 years ago). It speaks of a very quick development program, with a new proto-reactor type every year.

The world economy is faltering, in great part because the global Return On Investment (ROI) of fossil fuels is quickly getting worse.

The subsidies for fossil fuels are enormous: up to a trillion dollars, worldwide, each year.

Ecologists should push to have a small fraction of this directed towards clean, safe nuclear energy. There is no doubt that a crash program on Thorium could give efficient plants within ten years (China will have a plant next year; the problem with Thorium is not whether it can work, but simply a question of regulation and ROI; understandably private industry is leery to launch itself without governmental support).

It increasingly looks that thermonuclear fusion is a plausible alternative for base load energy, sooner than one expected even six months ago.

And now please immediately board Ebola Air. Although it does not look like it, the same mindset that will help fix Ebola, is the exact same one which calls for thermonuclear fusion. The virus, indeed, has probably mutated, to become more easily transmissible. That is pure selection of the fittest (virus) at work.

In the matter of Ebola, as in all the big issues regarding civilization, there is only one optimal way out, the same as for the European Union construction: think, solve, progress, up, up and away!

Patrice Ayme’

Axiom of Choice: Crazy Math

A way to improve thinking is to imagine more, and be more rigorous. What a better place to exert these skills than in mathematics and logic? Things are clearer there.

The crucial Axiom Of Choice (AC) in mathematics has crazy consequences. After describing what it is, and evoking some of its insufferable consequences, I will expose why it ought to be rejected, and why the lack of a similar rejection, at the time, in a somewhat similar situation, may have help in the decay of Greco-Roman antiquity.

This is part of my general, Non-Aristotelian campaign against infinity in mathematics and beyond. The nature of mathematics, long pondered, is touched upon. A 25 centuries old “proof” is mauled, and not just because it’s fun. There is deep philosophy behind. Call it the philosophy of sustainability, or of finite energy.

Intolerably Crazy Math From Axiom of Choice

The Axiom of Choice makes you believe you can multiply not just wine, fish and bread, but space itself: AC corresponds, one can say, to a wasteful mentality.

The Axiom of Choice says that, given a collection C of subsets inside a set S, one can consider that a set exists, made of elements, each one of them is an element in exactly one of the subsets. That sounds innocuous enough, and obvious. And obvious it is, if one thinks of finite sets. However, if C is infinite, it gets boringly complicated.

Moreover, AC has a consequence: given a unit sphere, one can cut it in disjoint pieces, and reassemble those pieces to build two unit spheres. Banach and Tarski, both Polish mathematicians working in what’s now Western Ukraine, the object of Putin’s envy and greed, demonstrated this Banach-Tarski paradox. It’s viewed as an object of wonder in General Topology.

I prefer to view it as an object of horror. (The pieces are not Lebesgue measurable, that means not physical objects. Such non measurable objects had been found earlier by Vitali and Hausdorff)

Punch line? The Axiom Of Choice (AC) is central to all of modern mathematics. Position of conventional mathematicians? The fact that AC is so useful, all over mathematics, proves that AC can be fruitfully considered to be true.

My retort? Maybe what you view as fruitful mathematics is just resting on a false axiom, or, at least one against nature, and thus, is just plain false, or against nature. One may be better off, studying mathematics that is not against nature..

As I showed earlier, calculus survives the outlawing of infinity in mathematics. That pretty much means that useful mathematics survives.

You see a problem with mathematics, even the simplest arithmetic, is that, once one has admitted the infinity postulate, thanks to the Cantor Diagonal process, one can always find undecidable propositions (this is part of the Incompleteness Theorems of mathematical logic: Gödel, etc.).

That means a field such as Euclidean geometry is infinite, in the sense that it has an infinite number of non-provable theorems. Each can be decided both ways: false, or true. Each gives rise to two mathematics.

Yet, even modern mathematicians will admit that studying Euclidean geometry for an infinite amount of time is of little interest. Proof? They don’t do it.

Yet, what’s the difference with what they are doing?

Mathematics is neurology, and neurology can be anything, but infinite. Think about what it means. Yes, mathematics is even cephalopod neurology, with the octopus’ nine brains. Fractals, for example, are part of math, but far from the tradition of equating angles or algebraic expressions.

It’s a big universe out there. The number one consequence to draw from the history of science, is that scientists make tribes. Quite often those tribes go astray… for more than 1,000 years (see notes). Worse: my making science, and, or mathematics, uninteresting, they may lead to a weakening of public intelligence.

I would suggest that effect, making science, and mathematics priestly and narrow minded, contributed to the powerful anti-intellectual tsunami that struck the Roman empire.

Greek mathematicians had excluded all mathematics as unworthy of consideration, but for a strict subset of “Euclid’s Elements” (some of the present Euclid Elements were added later). The implementation of those discoveries were made by others (Indians, and to some extent, Iranians and Arabs).

It turned out that these more practical mathematics, excluded by Euclid, because they were viewed as non rigorous and primitive, led to deeper and more powerful insights.

The irony was that Euclid’s Elements, in the guise of rigor, were using an axiom that was not needed, in general, the parallel axiom. That axiom, by supposing too much, killed the imagination.

I suggest nothing less happening nowadays, with the Axiom of Choice: it’s one axiom too far.

Patrice Aymé

Technical notes:

Up to a recent time, if one was not a Supersymmetric (SUSY) physicist, it was impossible to find a job, except as a taxi cab driver. There was a practical axiom ruling physics: the world had got to be supersymmetric.

Now the whole SUSY business seems to be imploding as the CERN’s LHC came up empty, and it dawned on participants that there was no reason for an experimental confrontation in the imaginable future… I have studied SUSY, and I have a competitive theory, where there are two hints of experimental proofs imaginable (namely Dark Energy and Dark Matter).

I said the AC was one axiom too far, but actually I think infinity itself is an axiom too far. I exposed earlier what’s wrong with the 25 centuries old proof of infinity (it assumes one can use a symbol one cannot actually evoke, because there is no energy to do so!).

The geocentric astronomy ruled from Aristarchus of Samos (who proposed the heliocentric system, 3C BCE) until Buridan (who used inertia, that he had discovered to make the heliocentric system more reasonable; ~1320 CE; Copernic learned Buridan in Cracow, Poland). It could be viewed as an axiom.

Hidden axioms are found even in arithmetic, for example the Archimedean Axiom was used by all mathematicians implicitly, before Model Theory logicians detected it around 1950 (it says, given two integers, A and B, a third one can be found, D, such that: AD > B; if not fulfilled one gets non-standard integers).

Which Parts of the Big Bang Theory are Reliable, and Why?

I long held that there was no proof whatsoever that the universe was 13.7 billion year old, as all too many Big Bang theorists have long claimed, all over the Main Stream Media that they have exclusive access to.

Now I am happy to report that a main stream physicist, the very honorable professor Matt Strassler, supports this point of view in an excellent article:

http://profmattstrassler.com/2014/03/26/which-parts-of-the-big-bang-theory-are-reliable/

Professor Strassler’s broad reasoning is exactly the one I long put forward: the equations and the experiments we have break down at very high energies, so we cannot use them to extrapolate logic at such energies (something similar happens with gravitation: we have no proof that this force as usually described holds beyond the Solar System… and some hints that it does not).

To be doubtful about the simplistic Big Bang model holds, even in light of the interpretation of the latest data, which supposedly shows gravitational wave ripples consecutive to cosmic inflation. Yet, as professor Strassler says: “BICEP2 can really only tell us about the late stage and exit from inflation”.

I sent a comment: I guess I will have to get more subtle with my own, much older “Universe: 100-billion years old?”. After this allusion of dubious taste, for someone who is not officially one of the great priests of physics, I proceeded to thank professor Strassler:

“In any case, thank you for this detailed analysis on how certain we are of the various elements of the concept of Big Bang. This is the sort of subtlety that needs to be taught to the public: that there are degrees of certainty in science. And even in physics.

By preaching the Big Bang as if it were a religion, as many scientists have done in popular shows (latest on “Cosmos”, complete with multiverse, presented as part of our “address”!) one did a disservice to science, or even to reason itself… And there could be a backlash, if the public discovers that they were lied to. So the earlier the subtleties are taught, the better.”

Here is professor Strassler’s excellent post, which demonstrates, in fascinating detail, the broad point I made previously, as an iconoclast philosopher:

Of Particular Significance

Familiar throughout our international culture, the “Big Bang” is well-known as the theory that scientists use to describe and explain the history of the universe. But the theory is not a single conceptual unit, and there are parts that are more reliable than others.

It’s important to understand that the theory — a set of equations describing how the universe (more precisely, the observable patch of our universe, which may be a tiny fraction of the universe) changes over time, and leading to sometimes precise predictions for what should, if the theory is right, be observed by humans in the sky — actually consists of different periods, some of which are far more speculative than others.  In the more speculative early periods, we must use equations in which we have limited confidence at best; moreover, data relevant to these periods, from observations of the cosmos and from particle physics experiments…

View original post 3,319 more words

Philosophia Naturalis I

Philosophy is what inquiring minds have to do when we don’t know for sure, and before we know for sure. The latter is called science (OK, sometimes we have to revise our opinions drastically, as new axioms supersede the old ones).

I have sharply differed with professor Strassler in the past (he wrote at some point that physics was strictly defined by equations, and I sharply debunked that myth: it is obviously not even the case of mathematics; to his honor, he published my brutal objection).

My position, same as Archimedes,  Newton or Descartes, is that philosophy comes first. When a dashing scientific advance does not require new philosophy, it means it’s not that deep.

New Physics Principles Are Always Born From Philosophy

I have my own possible insights to propose in physics, but before I get there, let Matt Strassler expose the problem. I have done so myself in similar terms, but it’s refreshing to read a top professional do it so well, and to the point.

In a magnificent essay, “What if the Large Hadron Collider Finds Nothing Else?”, wonderfully philosophical, for a professional physicist, Mr. Strassler ponders how future science is guessed by exploring how we established our beliefs. That’s my kind of science:

“What will it mean, for the 100 TeV collider project and more generally, if the LHC, having made possible the discovery of the Higgs particle, provides us with no more clues?…

Before we go any further, let’s keep in mind that we already know that the Standard Model isn’t all there is to nature. The Standard Model does not provide a consistent theory of gravity, nor does it explain neutrino masses, dark matter or “dark energy” (also known as the cosmological constant). Moreover, many of its features are just things we have to accept without explanation, such as the strengths of the forces, the existence of “three generations” (i.e., that there are two heavier cousins of the electron, two for the up quark and two for the down quark), the values of the masses of the various particles, etc. However, even though the Standard Model has its limitations, it is possible that everything that can actually be measured at the LHC — which cannot measure neutrino masses or directly observe dark matter or dark energy — will be well-described by the Standard Model. What if this is the case?

Michelson and Morley, and What They Discovered

In science, giving strong evidence that something isn’t there can be as important as discovering something that is there — and it’s often harder to do, because you have to thoroughly exclude all possibilities. [It’s very hard to show that your lost keys are nowhere in the house — you have to convince yourself that you looked everywhere.] A famous example is the case of Albert Michelson, in his two experiments (one in 1881, a second with Edward Morley in 1887) trying to detect the “ether wind”.

Light had been shown to be a wave in the 1800s; and like all waves known at the time, it was assumed to be a wave in something material, just as sound waves are waves in air, and ocean waves are waves in water. This material was termed the “luminiferous ether”. As we can detect our motion through air or through water in various ways, it seemed that it should be possible to detect our motion through the ether, specifically by looking for the possibility that light traveling in different directions travels at slightly different speeds.  This is what Michelson and Morley were trying to do: detect the movement of the Earth through the luminiferous ether.

Both of Michelson’s measurements failed to detect any ether wind, and did so expertly and convincingly. And for the convincing method that he invented — an experimental device called an interferometer, which had many other uses too — Michelson won the Nobel Prize in 1907. Meanwhile the failure to detect the ether drove both FitzGerald and Lorentz to consider radical new ideas about how matter might be deformed as it moves through the ether.”

So far so good. Then Strassler deviates from reality with a bout of Einstein religion (attributing Relativity to Einstein, because the real discoverer was French)

It’s Poincare’ who invented and named the “Principle of Relativity”, and insisted that Lorentz get the Nobel  for the Lorentz transformation-Poincare’ Group; the only reason Poincare’ did not get the physics Nobel for Relativity is that he died in 1911: no Nobel was given for Relativity, as a result: it could not be given for the parrot because he parroted!

It’s not just a question of anti-French hatred, or scientific priority, but of logical causality (thus Poincare’ versus Einstein is a scientific problem of the most subtle type!).

Strassler: “In Michelson’s case, the failure to discover the ether was itself a discovery, recognized only in retrospect: a discovery that the ether did not exist. (Or, if you’d like to say that it does exist, which some people do, then what was discovered is that the ether is utterly unlike any normal material substance in which waves are observed; no matter how fast or in what direction you are moving relative to me, both of us are at rest relative to the ether.) So one must not be too quick to assume that a lack of discovery is actually a step backwards; it may actually be a huge step forward.”

After he published the proof of E = mcc in 1900, Poincare’ pondered a lot about the part in parenthesis above. So did I. My conclusion? Particles create space, that’s why they are always at rest relative to it. (This is a glimpse to a possible future explanation, I do not claim it’s obvious.)

Strassler: “Epicycles or a Revolution?

There were various attempts to make sense of Michelson and Morley’s experiment.

Some interpretations involved  tweaks of the notion of the ether.  Tweaks of this type, in which some original idea (here, the ether) is retained, but adjusted somehow to explain the data, are often referred to as “epicycles” by scientists.   (This is analogous to the way an epicycle was used by Ptolemy to explain the complex motions of the planets in the sky, in order to retain an earth-centered universe; the sun-centered solar system requires no such epicycles.) A tweak of this sort could have been the right direction to explain Michelson and Morley’s data, but as it turned out, it was not. Instead, the non-detection of the ether wind required something more dramatic — for it turned out that waves of light, though at first glance very similar to other types of waves, were in fact extraordinarily different. There simply was no ether wind for Michelson and Morley to detect.

If the LHC discovers nothing beyond the Standard Model, we will face what I see as a similar mystery. ”

The reason why Ptolemy could get away with epicycles is that any periodic motion can be decomposed in a sum of circular motions. The mathematician Fourier, born in Grenoble, proved this, and used it to solve a lot of things.

Notice that the problem with Ptolemy was philosophical implausibility: the Greeks knew that the Sun was very far (say more than 30 million kilometers). Thus the Sun had to be enormous.

Sitiing on their bottoms, Greeks astronomers could have been asked the following question: “Hey guys, do you think it’s more likely that something as enormous as the Sun turns around tiny Earth once a day, at an enormous speed, or that the Earth rotates around itself, once a day, and around Sol, at a much more sedate way?”

Of course the latter.

To get an even stronger feeling that way, one had to have a feeling for inertia, which Buridan, contradicting Aristotle, discovered around 1320 CE. This is exactly the reasoning Buridan made when he published his heliocentric theory (misattributed to Copernic, because Buridan was French, and the Church mighty).

Amusingly a mathematician, Steward, published a list of “the 17 equations that changed the world”. He shows his ugly pro-plutocratic face, by mentioning an equation about the pricing of derivatives in the financial markets, as one of the 17.

Steward claims Newton found two of the 17 equations. The first one, the definition of a derivative, was found by Fermat (a Frenchman, thus incapable of science). The second one, that of the gravitational force was, according to Isaac Newton himself, discovered by another Frenchman (Newton wrote this under oath, in his fight about that equation, with Hooke… a physicist still famous for the elastic force law).

Mr. Steward forgot, among his equations, to mention the Quantum equation: E = hf (Planck-Einstein-De Broglie). There is more money in flattering hedge fund managers, than in remembering Quantum Physics.

In the next essay, why Matt Strassler feels one needs to think out of the box, and I will roll out my own type of experiments to keep on pushing, until we get a different worldview. Whereas nobody can be sure about the Standard Model approach giving birth to something interesting, I will explain my proposed approach is guaranteed to be fruitful (at least at some point).

Patrice Aymé

LIFE Giving NUCLEAR EARTH Reactor

It’s fashionable among pseudo-progressives to be rabidly anti-nuclear, pleasing hydrocarbon tyrants and the fossil fuel lobby. Much better to burn coal, and frack rocks, they say, and they smoke pot, to accelerate the waning of their brain power. Who are those ingrates? Assuredly ignorant of the fact that all this coal they love so much was generated thanks to… nuclear power! Let me explain. It’s called science.

It is very likely that there will be much more habitable worlds in the galaxy than worlds with even the simplest animals having evolved there. Life is fragile, our life on Earth had many close calls. Moreover Earth is characterized by many very special traits: a large, stabilizing moon, a vast liquid ocean, a strong magnetic field shielding Earth surface with its magnetic armor, plate tectonics, volcanoes, etc… I argued this at length in:

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/40-billion-earths-yes-no/

All these phenomena come from just one cause: the CENTRAL EARTH FISSION NUCLEAR REACTOR. It certainly played a crucial role in the rise of life, as did fission reactors all over and around.

Where Do You Think All This Magma Comes From? Nuclear Fission!

The Core Nuclear Reactor turns much of the mass of the planet into a giant iron ocean below our feet.

The electromagnet comes from a dynamo effect caused by a ferociously dynamic iron ocean rotating furiously about… Said ocean is melted by the central nuclear fission reactor at the core of Earth, which is as hot as the sun’s surface.

I long had this theory, and made terrible enemies in geophysics, promulgating it more than a decade ago (I’m not a geophysicist, so I did belong to that church; to make matters worse, my arguments, if true, implied that my math and physics were better… and they were!). Now, though, the theory I long defended with relish, is basically proven.

How? Nuclear fission generates neutrinos, and we have neutrino detectors. The proven flux of neutrino from the core corresponds to fission generating more than half the Earth’s heat flux.

Most of it comes from Uranium 238 and Thorium 232 fission. Ten percent of the heat flux also comes from radioactive Potassium 40 decay.

None of this is surprising: natural nuclear fission reactors existed in Africa up to about a billion years ago, on the surface. They self-moderated with heat, steam, water flow. When French geologists discovered this, the world was astounded.

The iron ocean heated by giant nuke below our feet is the difference of Earth with Venus. Venus is within the habitable zone, just barely, but it lost its water, while its atmosphere got stuffed with CO2, generating a ferocious greenhouse, hot enough to melt lead.

Probes sent there held at most one hour. Why all this CO2? Why not the same on Earth? Because on Earth the C of CO2 is sent by plate tectonics deep inside. Venus does not seem to have plate tectonics. So the C stays in the atmosphere.

Having no nuke inside, Venus got no furious iron ocean, hence no planet-wide electromagnet, hence no magnetic field, hence lost the H2O in its atmosphere: it was robbed by the solar wind. Something similar happened to Mars: no nuke, no iron ocean, no dynamo, no magnetosphere, loss of atmosphere from solar wind, desiccation, loss of greenhouse, etc.

The iron ocean heated by a giant nuke is the difference between Earth and Venus.

Having no nuke inside, Venus got no furious iron ocean, hence no electromagnet, hence no magnetic field, hence lost the H2O in its atmosphere, robbed by the solar wind (hyper velocity protons travelling at 400 kilometers per second from the sun literally knock-off hydrogen atoms into outer space).

Something similar happened to Mars: no nuke, no iron ocean, no dynamo, no magnetosphere, loss of atmosphere from solar wind, desiccation, loss of greenhouse, etc.

Outside of Hollywood scenarios, and publicity hungry scientists, there is no evidence that an impact “almost completely eradicated life on this planet” (see the first comment). But sure it could happen in other systems. The little impact at the end of the Jurassic is much ado about nothing. The Dekkan Traps were the real problem: they caused a dramatic cooling, over millions of years.

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/trapped-by-super-traps/

Near complete eradication of life happened because of the rise of life itself, when oxygenation meant the loss of the methane greenhouse, and thus the numerous terrible episode of snow ball Earths… Once again recovered from by CO2 building above the ice from overactive volcanoes (see nuclear reactor above).

Near eradication of life also happened probably from hyper giant core volcanism, which tends to happen every 200 million years or so.

This  also shows that, whereas the central nuke monster reactor, the largest known fission reactor in the universe (so far…), gives energy and protection to life, it’s never very far from eradicating it…

This idea has been gaining momentum. One may even suspect that it’s a nuke explosion that gave burp to the moon, so to speak… Atomic propelled geysers and hot baths were found extensively in the first billion years of the planet (because radioactivity decays, so there were much more then).

Few planets will be lucky enough to thread a way through these perils. Let alone the fact that we are protected from comets by Jupiter… Although many systems seem to have Jupiters, or super Jupiters, migrating in, towards the central star, destroying all rocky planets in their wake…

All this makes Earth incredibly improbable. Although there are probably many planets we could seed with Earth’s life, few would have anything approaching animals and plants. They will just crawl with methane-friendly bacteria.

It took nearly three billion years of a goldilocks environment for busy bacteria to start creating something approaching the atmosphere we have now… And the sun’s output cooperated, augmenting just so, to keep the planet at perfect incubating temperature…

It was a miracle. Enjoy it while it lasts. Glaciers are melting in Antarctica at an ever accelerating pace, baffling specialists… But not conspiratorial catastrophists with enough mettle, such as yours truly.

Conclusion: to sustain long term evolution of life on a planet, one needs the right massive amounts of long lived radionuclides and iron (perhaps with enough power to create a moon). Water is not enough to create an habitable world.

Patrice Aymé

Zero Point Energy Machine

Are there science fiction technologies nobody expects, over the horizon? Yes. Let me present the CASIMIR FORCE. And suggest, with my characteristic generosity, how to make an energy producing machine from it.

To understand what I propose to make, one has to visualize this: fundamentally, there are no particles, nor fields, only waves. (De Broglie’s) Matter Waves (invented in 2013). Those matter waves are also all over. In particular, the waves are in between two electrically conducting plates, and outside them, too.

Between the plates there are fewer waves. Why? Those waves basically die when they touch an electrically conductive surface. So the only waves present, between the plates, are basically like strings attached on both sides (the exact same picture as the “harmonic oscillator”) Thus the frequencies permitted in between plates are few. But outside the plates, the frequencies can be anything.

The waves are related to the phenomenon known as “particles”: particles carry momentum. As they bounce around, they push. But they are fewer pushing from inside. Hence there is a force that forces the plates to come closer.

Fewer Quantum Matter Waves Inside = Less Pressure, So Plates Squeeze Until More Photons Are Trapped Inside

Basically, one can say that the vacuum is more vacuous inside, between the plates than outside. The vacuum gap was measured, and it’s called the Casimir Force, after his discoverer (Casimir was a Dutch physicist).

This is often (a bit abusively) described as the “Zero Point Energy”. (Einstein and a colleague introduced the notion of “nullpunktenergie” in 1913.) I used the term, though, because it makes an excellent slogan.

Can one generate energy from Zero Point Energy? Yes. Even gecko lizards do it.

How to go to the stars with ZPE? By generating motion. Motions will allow to move magnets, hence generate electricity. To generate motion, connect the plates to springs keeping them apart (but not so far that the Casimir force would disappear). Suppose the plates are made of semiconductor material. Plug in a base current turning them conductive. At that point, the Casimir force turns on, and the plates come closer. When they are close enough, cut the base current: the springs pull back the plates, unleashing an escape interrupter, repeating the process. So it repeats.

The rest, ladies and gentleman, is just technological details, like building tiny enough magnets… But that could take a while, as it would require mastery of constructing nanoscale devices. Technology can take a long time to develop: it took 150 years to go from discovery of the photovoltaic effect until the first practical photocells. The example of controlled thermonuclear fusion shows the same: it took 60 years to reach breakeven pure thermonuclear fusion controlled energy production in 2013… although poorly controlled thermonuclear fusion was demonstrated by spectacular explosions, in the early 1950s (it was so poorly controlled that, because of a conceptual mistake, not understanding that Lithium 7 would turn into Li6 during the explosion, and then fuse, the Castle Bravo explosion released 15 megatons of TNT, instead of the expected maximum of 5 Megatons).

In any case, progress is being made in harnessing the Casimir Force.

This, in truth, the Casimir Effect is nothing new. It’s all about waves. The Casimir Force, in a sense was well-known to mariners of old. Two tall ships in a long swell, but without wind, parallel to each other, would be invincibly attracted to each other, and crash, with catastrophic consequences.

Old Mariners Knew The Casimir Force All Too Well, as an indisputable danger.

The mathematics, and even the physics are exactly the same. This is a clue that, after all, Quantum Physics may be more natural than usually depicted. And it’s all very natural: geckos, the famous lizards who can run upside down along ceilings, actually use (a variant of) the Casimir Force.

In the title, I used “Zero Point Energy” (ZPE). This is a bit dishonest. Einstein himself so strongly disagreed with some forms of ZPE, that he refused to learn Quantum Electro-Dynamics (QED; although he had the best, most dedicated and patient, professor). However, the basic form, as displayed here, is completely uncontroversial (and an experimental fact).

Waves: Little Understood Yet

The only question is this: as the Casimir Force, following the recipe above, would provide with enormous amounts of energy, with no pollution whatsoever, even in interstellar space, and as it looks just to be a question of precision nanotechnological construction to make it work, why are no massive technological ZPE program in evidence in the most advanced countries?

It’s not like the CO2 is not building up, and the methane not exuding the permafrost in humongous quantities. And it’s not like the Chinese are not catching up, multiplying Jade Rabbits on the Moon, either…

Patrice Aymé