Category:Zero Point Energy

This category collects work on zero-point energy — the energy remaining in a field at absolute zero, and in the vacuum itself — and on proposals to detect, harness or explain it.

Zero-point energy is not in dispute as a phenomenon: it is required by quantum field theory and shows up in the Lamb shift and the Casimir effect. What is disputed here is its magnitude, whether it constitutes an extractable energy reservoir, and what it implies about the vacuum. Researchers on this wiki argue variously that the vacuum field is a real physical medium continuous with the historic aether; that inertia and gravitation arise from interaction with it (stochastic electrodynamics and the Haisch–Rueda–Puthoff proposals); and that energy can be extracted from it by asymmetric or nonlinear devices.

The mainstream objection to extraction is thermodynamic: a ground state cannot by definition be drawn down. Related: Category:New Energy, Category:Propulsion, Category:Antigravity.