Speaker 1: Energy is everywhere, but yet we struggle to extract.
Speaker 2: It and make use of it.
Speaker 1: It's not just stars burning with fusion or the vast
Speaker 1: amounts of energy locked up inside matter. Our current understanding
Speaker 1: of space indicates that empty space itself has energy.
Speaker 2: Is this real?
Speaker 1: Is this something we can harness on the fringes? There
Speaker 1: are people willing to sell you devices that extract energy
Speaker 1: from space to make your toast. Should you buy one?
Speaker 1: Could that possibly ever be real? Could we use it?
Speaker 1: Or might we be trapped like thirsty sailors?
Speaker 2: Energy everywhere, but not a drop to use.
Speaker 1: Today in the pod, we'll tackle the conspiracy magnet but
Speaker 1: fascinating physics of zero point energy. Welcome to Daniel and
Speaker 1: Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
Speaker 3: Hello. I'm Kelly water Smith.
Speaker 4: I study parasites and space, and there are just some
Speaker 4: points in the week where I have zero energy.
Speaker 3: That's what we're talking about today.
Speaker 2: Right, good point? Good point?
Speaker 1: Yes, Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I
Speaker 1: have zero energy for physics grifters.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, So on the topic of physics grifters today,
Speaker 4: do you have a like most outrageous grift that you
Speaker 4: have ever seen? That is physics related or is it
Speaker 4: the one we're talking about today?
Speaker 1: I think zero point energy has gotta be in my
Speaker 1: top five. There are actually folks out there who will
Speaker 1: sell you over unity machines for fifty thousand dollars that
Speaker 1: you know, produce energy from nothing, and obviously they're scam
Speaker 1: But the thing that really irks me is that the
Speaker 1: real physics here is so interesting, so fascinating, so cutting edge,
Speaker 1: and the grifters pollute all that to make a little
Speaker 1: bit of a buck. They could promote the actual science,
Speaker 1: the mysteries, the things we have figured out, the work
Speaker 1: that's going on, the excitement of future discoveries. But no,
Speaker 1: they got to pretend the government is hiding something and
Speaker 1: they're going to sell you the secrets.
Speaker 4: You're such a wonderful nerd. It's not they're taking people's money,
Speaker 4: it's they're missing out on the science. And I'm with you,
Speaker 4: I'm with you. It's a bummer. But you said it's
Speaker 4: in your top five. Can you give us one other
Speaker 4: that's in your top five? I know I'm pressing you.
Speaker 4: This is It's great the way I don't give you
Speaker 4: a heads up ahead of sign before asking you these questions.
Speaker 1: My other favorite one is the alleged grift that physicists
Speaker 1: are the grifters because we're just collecting grant money getting rich.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows how.
Speaker 2: Easy that is while doing nothing right. We just sit
Speaker 2: around all day.
Speaker 1: We could discover dark matter if we wanted to, but
Speaker 1: too lazy because we've been sucking off the government teat
Speaker 1: for so many years, when, of course, in reality, we're
Speaker 1: all like scrambling to get a small fraction of a
Speaker 1: dwindling amount of research money, and everybody in academia has overworked,
Speaker 1: if anything, and underpaid. So it's pretty frustrating to see
Speaker 1: people try to make a buck off of accusing academics
Speaker 1: of being grifters.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, or maybe y'all are just really bad at
Speaker 3: the grift, get bad at you know, getting money from
Speaker 3: the government. I can't bring myself to say the sucking
Speaker 3: on the government. We'll moving on, moving on.
Speaker 2: That was a farm reference. That was a farm reference.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, I know, I should be way more
Speaker 4: comfortable with that anyway, and my goat still hasn't given birth.
Speaker 2: Those were the farm update.
Speaker 4: No no, no, no, those were like Braxton Hicks contractions and
Speaker 4: goats or something. But she prolapsed and I had to
Speaker 4: deal with that, and it's been all kinds.
Speaker 3: Of fun on the farm. But she has not had
Speaker 3: her babies yet.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you won't say, but you will say prolapse
Speaker 1: on the air.
Speaker 2: Nice. Your standards are weird, Kelly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well you know that's right. That's right.
Speaker 1: Yay, biology, Welcome to Kelly's farm grift. I don't know
Speaker 1: how it works yet, but we'll find out.
Speaker 3: Okay, good luck.
Speaker 4: I am also working too hard and getting paid. Actually
Speaker 4: I'm losing money. I'm losing money on this grift. But anyway, Okay, today,
Speaker 4: today we are talking about zero point energy, and as
Speaker 4: Daniel pointed out, there is amazing physics happening here that
Speaker 4: really is, and a horrible grift.
Speaker 3: So we're going to get into both.
Speaker 1: Exactly, because my goal is to share with everyone the
Speaker 1: actual science going on on the cutting edge, which is
Speaker 1: so much more interesting than the nonsense being spread by
Speaker 1: the grifters. So let's share the reality with everyone, the
Speaker 1: joy of uncertainty, the excitement of future discovery, and zero
Speaker 1: point energy is right in the sweet spot because there
Speaker 1: is so much exciting science, so much we don't understand
Speaker 1: about how it works. But before we dig into this episode,
Speaker 1: I wanted to know if people out there thought it
Speaker 1: was possible to make use of zero point energy. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to join our group of volunteers to answer,
Speaker 1: without any preparation, tough physics questions for other people to hear,
Speaker 1: please write to us two questions at Danielankelly dot org.
Speaker 1: We'd love to have you. In the meantime, here's what
Speaker 1: people had to say when they asked them if they
Speaker 1: could make use of zero point energy.
Speaker 5: Zero point energy is the lowest energy state. The vacuum
Speaker 5: of the universe has some energy in it, and theoretically
Speaker 5: we could use this energy and convert it into useful work.
Speaker 1: It could possibly be useful in mechanical quantum systems.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure how we can utilize zero point energy,
Speaker 5: as I imagine is basically zero.
Speaker 2: Maybe we can pull some of it out from some
Speaker 2: of those hidden string theory dimensions.
Speaker 1: The lowest energy possible, so I would say we can
Speaker 1: use it.
Speaker 5: In the wonderful animated movie The Incredibles, the villain uses
Speaker 5: zero point energy to abduct a baby, so I'm pretty
Speaker 5: sure if it can be used, it can only be
Speaker 5: used for evil. We can use it to be super
Speaker 5: villains and freeze people.
Speaker 2: For inch. Science points to top secret research subject to secrecy.
Speaker 2: But in those places there are also menosteric goats.
Speaker 5: They might solve all of their energy problems, or maybe
Speaker 5: it would destroy the universe.
Speaker 4: Interesting answers like these always remind me that the Extraordinaries
Speaker 4: are not a random draw of the general public. They
Speaker 4: are a very specific group of wonderful human beings with
Speaker 4: very specific knowledge sets who have watched.
Speaker 1: The Incredibles, otherwise known as our favorite nerds.
Speaker 3: That's right, we love the Extraordinaries.
Speaker 1: It can only be used for evil. I love that
Speaker 1: one for Eve. Yeah, but otherwise there's some open mindedness
Speaker 1: and also a lot of doubt here that zero point
Speaker 1: energy could be used for powering your toaster and making
Speaker 1: your breakfast.
Speaker 4: Yes, well, our audience is appropriately skeptical and good on them,
Speaker 4: and we will validate their concerns today.
Speaker 1: All right, So before we get into the details of
Speaker 1: how zero point energy could be used, I guess we
Speaker 1: should explain what is it and why do we think
Speaker 1: it's there?
Speaker 3: I need that, Yes, that would help me.
Speaker 1: So remember that physics operates basically two huge frameworks to
Speaker 1: describe the universe. General relativity to explain gravity and really
Speaker 1: big stuff, quantum mechanics to explain really small stuff, and
Speaker 1: we haven't unified them, so we don't really understand what's
Speaker 1: going on. But every time we do physics we have
Speaker 1: to pick one. We don't know how to bring them
Speaker 1: together and have like a unified description. And today we're
Speaker 1: playing in the quantum world. So put all thoughts of
Speaker 1: time dilation and spatial curvature aside for now and think
Speaker 1: just about how we describe the universe in terms of
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics. That means, look at the thing next to you.
Speaker 1: It's a cup, it's an apple, it's a remote control,
Speaker 1: it's the dishes, whatever, and think of what it's made
Speaker 1: out of. Tiny little particles. Right, You got upquarks and
Speaker 1: down quarks bound together to make nucleari. You have electrons
Speaker 1: whizzing around them. All that makes your elements. And that's
Speaker 1: the particle view of the universe. We don't know what's
Speaker 1: inside those particles yet. If anything, we think maybe there
Speaker 1: is something there, but that's our current most fundamental view
Speaker 1: of the universe from a quantum scale.
Speaker 4: Still with me, Yeah, I'm looking at a U spoon
Speaker 4: which you used to fix a prolapse.
Speaker 1: I'm glad it's not a me spoon, that's all I
Speaker 1: gotta say.
Speaker 3: I'm glad it doesn't hurt to laugh anymore. It's so
Speaker 3: much more fun recording with you when it doesn't hurt
Speaker 3: to laugh.
Speaker 1: And just for clarification, that's an ewe U spoon.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: I did use it on a goat, but it is
Speaker 4: meant for sheep.
Speaker 2: And was that the great experience of all time? Oh?
Speaker 3: Oh, I see what you did there? Yeah, I don no, No, it.
Speaker 4: Wasn't it was not. It wasn't great. It's kind of
Speaker 4: low on my list. But she seemed real happy when
Speaker 4: it was done.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Only podcast.
Speaker 1: Well, you'll mix quantum particles with farm references.
Speaker 4: That's right, Okay, all right, we're getting I am now
Speaker 4: imagining the particles in the U spoon and we are
Speaker 4: moving on.
Speaker 1: All right, So quantum mechanics can describe the universe in
Speaker 1: terms of these particles. But in the nineteen fifties we
Speaker 1: moved on from quantum mechanics of single particles to thinking
Speaker 1: about everything in terms of quantum fields. It turns out
Speaker 1: to be really hard to think about more than one
Speaker 1: particle of time and particle destruction and particle annihilation. The
Speaker 1: calculations were getting really complicated, and so instead of thinking
Speaker 1: about each individual particle and its Shroudinger equation, physicist said,
Speaker 1: let's weave it all together and think of it as
Speaker 1: part of one big field instead of having an individual particle.
Speaker 1: You know, have particles as excitations in a quantum field.
Speaker 1: So it's not that there's an electron here and an
Speaker 1: electron there. Instead, these electrons are both excitations in the
Speaker 1: same field that fills all of space. And for lots
Speaker 1: of people, fields are a weird concept.
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 1: Why can't I feel it? What does it look like?
Speaker 1: And the way to think about a field is that
Speaker 1: it's just a number everywhere in space, like temperature. If
Speaker 1: you say there's a temperature in Virginia, and there's a
Speaker 1: temperature in California, and there's a temperature in Brisbane, right,
Speaker 1: you're putting a number everywhere on the planet. That's a field.
Speaker 1: Quantum fields are just like that, except sometimes they have
Speaker 1: weird numbers like complex values, right, four plus seven I
Speaker 1: or something. But you can just put them everywhere in
Speaker 1: space and then use them to do calculations.
Speaker 3: Okay, but instead of referring to temperature four plus seven,
Speaker 3: I tells you what about the electron.
Speaker 1: Right, So it tells you how much energy there is
Speaker 1: in the electron field at one location. Okay, So as
Speaker 1: an electron moves through the universe. Instead, there's a ripple
Speaker 1: in the electron field. So a little pulse of energy
Speaker 1: that moves coherently through the electron field. That's what an
Speaker 1: electron is from a quantum field theory point of view.
Speaker 3: Okay. And so when you say ripple really just means
Speaker 3: how much energy is in one place, and like the
Speaker 3: difference between the energy at one place and the energy
Speaker 3: in the position next to it.
Speaker 1: Exactly when you're thinking about waves, you always have to
Speaker 1: think about what is doing the waving, and in this
Speaker 1: case it's the field strength, which takes energy. And so
Speaker 1: you can imagine like I have an electron here in California,
Speaker 1: which means, you know, the electron field is zero everywhere
Speaker 1: except for a little bubble in Irvine where has a
Speaker 1: little pulse of energy where those numbers are non zero.
Speaker 1: And then I send it to Virginia, and now my
Speaker 1: electron field is zero here and there's a little pulse
Speaker 1: of electron field strength in Virginia. So that's how you
Speaker 1: think about like one electron in the electron field. Okay,
Speaker 1: And one really fascinating philosophical question is are these fields real?
Speaker 1: Like is this the map of the universe that we
Speaker 1: use to describe things. It's helpful to do calculations, it
Speaker 1: works for predicting what's going to happen to the large
Speaker 1: hadron collider, et cetera, et cetera. Or are these things
Speaker 1: just like shortcuts in our mind. We come up with
Speaker 1: this concept and invent it and it's just useful for us.
Speaker 1: Or are they really out there? It's like a deep
Speaker 1: question in philosophy We're going to dig into a little
Speaker 1: bit later.
Speaker 3: I'm looking forward to that.
Speaker 2: And one really I didn't mean it.
Speaker 3: I do mean it.
Speaker 4: I'm interested in, you know, where metaphors break down?
Speaker 3: Okay, on that was.
Speaker 2: A look of pleasant surprise.
Speaker 3: It was a look of skepticism. I think anyway, go on.
Speaker 1: But to get there, we first need to think about
Speaker 1: what happens when you take all the particles out of
Speaker 1: the fields. So imagine, first you have a cubic kilogram
Speaker 1: of something, you know, like goat cubic kilogram of goat
Speaker 1: all right, and has lots of different particles in it.
Speaker 1: So the quark fields are buzzing. The electron fields are
Speaker 1: buzzing because you don't just have one quark or one
Speaker 1: electron gild like ten to the twenty nine, and they're
Speaker 1: buzzing everywhere. So lots of energy, right, all right, So
Speaker 1: now remove the goat from your cube of space.
Speaker 3: That sounds bad. Sorry, Kelly has.
Speaker 1: To put on those gloves that go all the way
Speaker 1: up past her elbow, and you know why to do
Speaker 1: this messy job. So she removes the goat from this
Speaker 1: chunk of space. And what's left, well, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: there's a few particles of cosmic race. You build some
Speaker 1: shielding so none of them come in the you have
Speaker 1: like a very well shielded box of space. What's left
Speaker 1: in there, well, the quantum fields are still there even
Speaker 1: if you remove all of the energy. In our description,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about whether they're real or not. In
Speaker 1: our mathematical description, the quantum fields are still there even
Speaker 1: when there's no particle. Right, there's like slots in a
Speaker 1: Connect four game, or they're like places to park even
Speaker 1: without a car, there's still a slot there. To put
Speaker 1: your car right. So, the way we think about the
Speaker 1: quantum fields, the framework is, you know, there's a lowest
Speaker 1: energy state with no particles. There's a one particle state,
Speaker 1: a two particle state, a three particle state. They can
Speaker 1: describe many particles at once, but they can also describe
Speaker 1: as zero particles.
Speaker 3: Okay, so now the value is zero at all of
Speaker 3: those locations asterisk there.
Speaker 1: Oh, there are zero particles there. We're going to get
Speaker 1: in a minute to whether that means there's zero energy
Speaker 1: there but there are no particles.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 4: But you know, I think in the future the example
Speaker 4: should start with there's maybe zero and then you get
Speaker 4: a goat, because then I'm more excited. But then you
Speaker 4: took a goat away, and now.
Speaker 3: I'm kind of sad.
Speaker 4: But all right, anyway, Okay, so I I see where
Speaker 4: we're going. I under I'm following you.
Speaker 1: Yes, I forgot to think about the complete arc of
Speaker 1: the goat as I'm telling my story. You know, the
Speaker 1: goat should have some adventures. You know, you should have
Speaker 1: some challenges it overcomes on its To explain in quantum.
Speaker 4: You need to think about the emotional journey that I
Speaker 4: go on during this explanation. But anyway, Okay, so I've
Speaker 4: lost a goat.
Speaker 1: Carl Jung would be very disappointed in my episode here,
Speaker 1: you've lost a goat.
Speaker 2: Don't worry. We'll end up restoring your goat somehow.
Speaker 3: Yes, don't forget to get back to that.
Speaker 1: So we have these quantum fields and they fill space,
Speaker 1: and we're saying that they're out there. They can describe particles,
Speaker 1: but they can also describe non particles, like they can
Speaker 1: describe the vacuum, and that's what we call the vacuum.
Speaker 1: When you remove all the particles, now the fields are
Speaker 1: down to their lowest energy state.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Having a particle requires energy, Having two particles more energy,
Speaker 1: Having zero particles less energy. So if you take a
Speaker 1: chunk of space and you remove all the goats and
Speaker 1: everything else, you have no particles left in there. You
Speaker 1: still have the fields. Okay, okay, and the fields have
Speaker 1: a really weird property, which is zero particles don't have
Speaker 1: zero energy.
Speaker 3: All right, that is weird.
Speaker 1: Why not because the quantum field itself is now the
Speaker 1: thing in the universe. Particles are just like a blob.
Speaker 1: They're an effect of the field, an emergent property of
Speaker 1: the field. The way that like a wave in a bathtub,
Speaker 1: is not a fundamental thing. It's an emergent property of
Speaker 1: water and the kinematics whatever. So now quantum mechanics, quantum
Speaker 1: field theory describes the field itself, and the equations of
Speaker 1: quantum field theory talk about how that field moves, what's
Speaker 1: its kinetic energy, what's its potential energy, And you have oscillations,
Speaker 1: and people who think about wave equations will recognize it's
Speaker 1: like a double differential equation there that tells you things
Speaker 1: oscillate back and forth between kinetic and potential energy. For example,
Speaker 1: when you have an electron, there this energy in the field.
Speaker 1: The field is vibrating, right, But because this is a
Speaker 1: quantum thing, it can't be perfectly determined, and if it
Speaker 1: had zero energy, it would be perfectly well known and
Speaker 1: to be crystal clear. States can have well defined energy
Speaker 1: without uncertainty in their energy. But when the energy is
Speaker 1: non zero, the field amplitude and momentum obeys the uncertainty principle.
Speaker 1: If the energy is exactly zero, the amplitude and momentum
Speaker 1: are both zero, which would violate the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
Speaker 1: So quantum mechanics demands that the lowest energy state, the
Speaker 1: no particle state, is not a zero energy state. So
Speaker 1: the field is still there, it's still vibrating, it still
Speaker 1: has some energy, right, but it doesn't correspond to a
Speaker 1: particle particles. A specific kind of vibration of the field
Speaker 1: requires a certain chunk of energy. You remove all the
Speaker 1: last particles, you get down to zero particles, not zero energy.
Speaker 1: It's baked into the very fabric of reality.
Speaker 4: So one thing that you said really kind of like
Speaker 4: stuck in my head, which may have caused me to
Speaker 4: miss some of the rest of it. So what's stuck
Speaker 4: in my head was surprisingly not the part about the goat, but.
Speaker 1: Was if something stuck, you can use a use spoon
Speaker 1: usually to pull it out.
Speaker 4: That's not what the U spoon does, Daniel, and then
Speaker 4: it holds them in place anyway.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Well I had all these beautiful mental images of Cornta
Speaker 1: feels I was going to convey, and now they're all
Speaker 1: just replaced with a prolapsed goat.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well she's not prolapsed anymore because I put the harness on,
Speaker 4: and then I put the spoon in and I tied
Speaker 4: it to the harness.
Speaker 2: And to put on those gloves.
Speaker 1: And what's the sound effect putting on really long latex gloves.
Speaker 1: I'm sure Matt has that somewhere in his library.
Speaker 4: Well, these were just the short black night trial gloves.
Speaker 4: Then they make the snapping noise.
Speaker 2: Anyway, what was your question?
Speaker 3: Okay? So my question?
Speaker 4: Okay, so you said it can't be zero because if
Speaker 4: it was zero, we would know exactly what the value is.
Speaker 4: And that feels so human centric like that, that feels
Speaker 4: like this revolt. You know that the humans would know
Speaker 4: exactly what the value was, so that can't be the answer,
Speaker 4: and like we can't matter that much, and like and so,
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, we believed that everything revolved around
Speaker 4: us and it turned out we were wrong, and so
Speaker 4: what is there more to it than that? Or it's
Speaker 4: like I'm putting too much emphasis on us in any
Speaker 4: classical object would have what am I getting caught up
Speaker 4: on here?
Speaker 3: That is incorrect.
Speaker 1: No, you're exactly right to put your finger on that,
Speaker 1: Thank you. I should have been more clear about that.
Speaker 1: It's not us at all. We are irrelevant. It's not
Speaker 1: about observers or conscious entities or anything mystical like that
Speaker 1: at all. It's just that quantum objects do not have
Speaker 1: a determined state, right. It's about the quantum object itself
Speaker 1: and the fundamental nature of the quantum world and what
Speaker 1: is real. So these things that are out there can
Speaker 1: be in a superposition of multiple states, right, which gives
Speaker 1: them an inherent fuzziness, just like any quantum particle out
Speaker 1: there can be in various states simultaneously. That's the quantum
Speaker 1: fuzziness of the world. It's not about us knowing something
Speaker 1: or us not knowing something, except in the sense that
Speaker 1: it's impossible for us to know certain things because those
Speaker 1: things are not determined. They're not part of the universe.
Speaker 1: Reality sort of incomplete in that sense, or our mental
Speaker 1: picture of reality, what we expect from reality comes into
Speaker 1: conflict with how reality actually works. So there's just sort
Speaker 1: of limitations to how these things can exist, regardless of
Speaker 1: whether we know them. Another example that's maybe similar and
Speaker 1: easier to access is the puzzle of the electron. When
Speaker 1: people were understanding to structure the atom, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: an electron, it kind of orbits a nucleus, And then
Speaker 1: they were wondering, well, why doesn't the electron fall into
Speaker 1: the nucleus Because electron has an electric charge, and it's
Speaker 1: going around in a circle, and if it's going around
Speaker 1: in a circle, that's acceleration. Acceleration means radiation. You know,
Speaker 1: how does the electron turn to go around the nucleus?
Speaker 2: They're wondering.
Speaker 1: It has to emit a photon to do that to
Speaker 1: balance conservation momentum. But if it's constantly emitting photons, it
Speaker 1: should lose energy. Basically, why don't electrons collapse into the
Speaker 1: nucleus was the big puzzle for many years, and the
Speaker 1: answer is that the electron is not really moving and
Speaker 1: orbiting and radiating. It's in its lowest stationary state.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It cannot go to a lower energy state because the
Speaker 1: lower energy state would have information about position and momentum,
Speaker 1: which exceeds the Heisenberg and certainty principle. It's impossible to
Speaker 1: have an electron just totally at rest because its location
Speaker 1: and its velocity would be perfectly known then not to us,
Speaker 1: but determined by the universe.
Speaker 2: So that's why.
Speaker 1: An electron doesn't fall into the nucleus because it has
Speaker 1: the lowest energy state. Right, The lowest energy solution to
Speaker 1: the quantum system at that point is not zero energy.
Speaker 1: It's non zero energy to be consistent with the Heisenberg
Speaker 1: and certainty principle. The same thing applies to quantum fields everywhere,
Speaker 1: because in the end, electrons are anyway just ripples in
Speaker 1: those quantum fields, and so all the fields out there
Speaker 1: cannot relax beyond a certain minimum energy. When you think
Speaker 1: about space and you take away all the particles, you
Speaker 1: still have fields in there, and those fields still are
Speaker 1: buzzing with this energy. That's just very basic tenet of
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics.
Speaker 3: All right, the verse and not chill.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're right, but it's pretty cold out there.
Speaker 1: But actually this energy is not like a tiny amount
Speaker 1: of energy.
Speaker 4: Let's take a break, and when we get back, Daniel
Speaker 4: tell us how much energy we're talking about. We're back,
Speaker 4: and Daniel was telling us that we are talking about
Speaker 4: a non zero amount of energy in our fields here.
Speaker 4: But Daniel, you were telling us that it's not zero
Speaker 4: because it can't be zero because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
Speaker 4: But it's small, I thought, And so if it's a
Speaker 4: small amount of energy, now I thought you said it's
Speaker 4: not a small amount of energy just a second ago.
Speaker 4: How much energy are we talking about here?
Speaker 1: Yes, So it sounds like it should be a tiny
Speaker 1: amount of energy, just a little bit of residual at
Speaker 1: the bottom. You can't quite scrape it out of the box,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like when you finish your juice box
Speaker 1: and it's a little bit left there and you're like slurping,
Speaker 1: and you're like, okay, I'm never gonna get all the
Speaker 1: juice out of the box.
Speaker 3: Right, Do you still have juice boxes?
Speaker 4: Dan?
Speaker 1: Yeall no, but I still remember that I love juice boxes.
Speaker 2: It really did, especially at the end.
Speaker 1: You're trying to get like the straw into that last
Speaker 1: distant corner to like really get out those last little
Speaker 1: bits of juice, and then you find an extra pocket
Speaker 1: and you get like, you know, a last little delivery
Speaker 1: of juice.
Speaker 2: It's wonderful, right, the little joys.
Speaker 1: Anyway you might be imagining it's like that, but it's
Speaker 1: not like that, not at all. It's more like you're
Speaker 1: drinking a juice box and you're floating in the Pacific
Speaker 1: Ocean of juice. Because if you add up all of
Speaker 1: these zero point energy contributions from all the quantum fields, right,
Speaker 1: you get a ridiculous number. You get ten to the
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirteen jewels every cubic meter of universe.
Speaker 3: What.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a big number. And let me give you
Speaker 1: some context. If you add up all the energy stored
Speaker 1: in all of the stars and planets and rotation and
Speaker 1: everything in the universe, the whole observable universe, you get
Speaker 1: ten to the seventy three jewels. Wait, okay, but now
Speaker 1: I'm telling you that the zero point energy and quantum
Speaker 1: fields is ten to the thirty bigger every cubic.
Speaker 2: Meter than all of the energy in the universe.
Speaker 4: So like, way more energy, way more next to me
Speaker 4: in a cubic meter than there is in the sun.
Speaker 3: Yes, Daniel, you're wrong.
Speaker 4: You recorded this incorrectly when you were taking your notes.
Speaker 3: How could that be possible?
Speaker 1: This is why I'm telling you the cutting edge of
Speaker 1: physics is much more exciting than the grift. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is crazy stuff, but this is what the numbers
Speaker 1: telling us. So of course nobody knows what to make
Speaker 1: of this. Nobody takes this seriously and is certain that
Speaker 1: it's correct. This is a deep problem in physics understanding
Speaker 1: what is the vacuum. You know, we have a model
Speaker 1: of quantum field theory. It seems to work really really well,
Speaker 1: and yet it has this Bonker's prediction. And this prediction
Speaker 1: also is in conflict with the other half of physics, right,
Speaker 1: general relativity, which describes the universe and its expansion and
Speaker 1: motion of stars and planets. Now we're talking about so
Speaker 1: much energy that it's going to have general relativistic consequences.
Speaker 1: You know, if you take all this energy and you
Speaker 1: put it in the universe, it's going to gravitate, it's
Speaker 1: going to change how the universe is curved. It's going
Speaker 1: to be very, very confusing. And so this is what's
Speaker 1: known as the cosmological constant problem, the fact that we
Speaker 1: observe an energy density in the universe that's very, very
Speaker 1: small compared to what we would calculate if we just
Speaker 1: sat down and said how much energy is there in
Speaker 1: all of our quantum fields. Our quantum fields have tendedy
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty too much energy compared to what
Speaker 1: we observe out there. So add this to the reasons
Speaker 1: why it's hard to do quantum and gravity, because we
Speaker 1: just don't know how to make a universe work with
Speaker 1: both of these theories.
Speaker 3: And well, I was going to say, so, do you
Speaker 3: think this is wrong.
Speaker 4: But then I guess something is wrong somewhere, and it's
Speaker 4: hard to know where exactly.
Speaker 1: This feels wrong, it feels very wrong, but you know,
Speaker 1: just because it feels wrong doesn't mean that it is.
Speaker 1: There's so much about the universe which is bizarre and
Speaker 1: surprising and confusing and yet real. And that's the joy
Speaker 1: of physics. That's why we do experimental science, because we
Speaker 1: want to discover the universe and not just speculate about
Speaker 1: what it might be like. And that's why we follow
Speaker 1: the math and we look for evidence, and we don't
Speaker 1: just dismiss things because they smell weird, right, because sometimes
Speaker 1: reality is much weirder than any human could imagine. That's
Speaker 1: the whole reason we're doing this. Those are the best moments.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So we have this calculation that says there's one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirteen jewels of energy every cubic meter, right, and
Speaker 1: again that's every cubic meter. So if the universe is infinite,
Speaker 1: that means that the vacuum has infinite energy, like literally
Speaker 1: infinite energy, Like how do you even think about this stuff?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we should have no energy problem. We just
Speaker 4: need to harness this and now I'm the grifter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 1: So let's tap into this right power our goats with
Speaker 1: the quantum fields. I'm sure somehow goats. Maybe goats know
Speaker 1: how to do it. Actually, I just realized that maybe
Speaker 1: that's why they are the greatest of all time.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, amazing, amazing. What I kind of appreciate
Speaker 4: about farm life is that like, there's a prolapse and
Speaker 4: then you've solved it and it's gone, and you're like
Speaker 4: problem solved, Whereas you're like, oh, we're off by one
Speaker 4: hundred and twenty orders of magnitude. Who knows how to
Speaker 4: solve this problem? I mean, there's something nice about problems
Speaker 4: you can solve in an afternoon. But on the other hand,
Speaker 4: it is exciting to have these big, unsolved problems that
Speaker 4: you need, you know, you need to work on.
Speaker 1: There's that probably apocryphal story about Einstein spending an afternoon
Speaker 1: chopping wood and being like, wow, this is so satisfying.
Speaker 1: You spend time, you make progress, how rewarding, Whereas we
Speaker 1: all know that, like research, you know, there's no correlation
Speaker 1: between time spent and progress made. It could be like
Speaker 1: six months of banging your head against the wall and
Speaker 1: then suddenly one afternoon it all comes together or not ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I like having a mix of those things in my life.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, So this brings into sharp focus the question
Speaker 1: we asked earlier, which was, like, you know, an abstract
Speaker 1: philosophical question.
Speaker 2: Our fields real, man, you know, past this kind.
Speaker 3: Of stuff, past banana that's.
Speaker 1: The banana peels exactly. You know, does it really matter anyway? Well,
Speaker 1: now it seems like it really kind of does matter
Speaker 1: because the fields are real and they're bursting with energy,
Speaker 1: and our whole existence is just like this tiny juice
Speaker 1: box on the Pacific Ocean. Right, it matters because our
Speaker 1: lives are limited by energy. I mean, we're literally at
Speaker 1: war right now over energy.
Speaker 2: It's crazy.
Speaker 1: If energy was freely available, you don't think we're at
Speaker 1: war of energy? Is this going to turn into a
Speaker 1: political podcast? We have quantum fields, we have goats, we
Speaker 1: have politics.
Speaker 3: We have it all today.
Speaker 4: I think that energy is playing an important role in
Speaker 4: how this war is playing out.
Speaker 3: Let's maybe we can go there, all right.
Speaker 1: Definitely, energy is important to our lives, right and if
Speaker 1: energy was freely available, infinite energy, freely available to everybody,
Speaker 1: it would change what it means to be human on
Speaker 1: this planet, right, Yes, so if we are surrounded by
Speaker 1: nearly infinite energy, we should figure that out. It's no
Speaker 1: longer just a question for the halls of philosophy.
Speaker 2: It's like, is this real? Right?
Speaker 1: And sometimes people describe the quantum vacuum in terms that
Speaker 1: make it sound more real than it is. You know,
Speaker 1: people sometimes describe this in terms of virtual particles, and
Speaker 1: you'll hear lots of popular science descriptions that the vacuum
Speaker 1: has particles popping in and out all the time. And
Speaker 1: I think this is a little bit misleading, and I
Speaker 1: think it's worth digging into.
Speaker 2: Why that is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, what does that even mean?
Speaker 1: Like lots of popular science, it has its origins in
Speaker 1: the truth, but there's a fundamental misunderstanding there. The issue
Speaker 1: is that there's two ways to tell.
Speaker 2: The quantum story of the universe.
Speaker 1: One way is the way we've done today, which is
Speaker 1: say fields are the fundamental thing. Particles are ripples in
Speaker 1: those fields, right, and there are special ripples that move
Speaker 1: in a coherent way. Everything's nice, but in that sense,
Speaker 1: particles are not fundamental. Fields are the fundamental thing at
Speaker 1: the heart of the universe. The foundation of the universe.
Speaker 1: Is fields. Right, that's cool and that works. Some people
Speaker 1: don't like that because they say, you know, how do
Speaker 1: we know the fields are real? We never observe a field, right.
Speaker 1: You can only see a field effect on particles. You
Speaker 1: want to know is the magnetic field there, you put
Speaker 1: a particle in it, You see the bend on the particle.
Speaker 1: Why are we using fields at the foundation. Let's use
Speaker 1: particles at the foundation. And you can do that mathematically.
Speaker 1: You can say I'm not interested in when two electrons
Speaker 1: want to interact with each other, they don't do it
Speaker 1: through the electromagnetic field. I'm going to say they do
Speaker 1: it through a virtual particle. And you often hear this
Speaker 1: description in popular science that two electrons exchange a photon
Speaker 1: when they interact. Right, That electromagnetism, for example, is mediated
Speaker 1: by a photon exchange. That's really a very different way
Speaker 1: of describing the universe. It's saying particles are the foundation.
Speaker 1: Everything is particles, Get rid of fields, don't talk about fields,
Speaker 1: and that works too. You can use the particle picture
Speaker 1: to say particles aren't the foundation of everything. But then
Speaker 1: these particles that are being exchanged between the two electrons,
Speaker 1: they're not real particles. They're virtual particles, and they're not
Speaker 1: really the same as real particles. We have a whole
Speaker 1: other episode about what virtual particles are. But in a sense,
Speaker 1: they're just another way to think of the same mathematics,
Speaker 1: Like if two electrons exchange a bunch of virtual particles,
Speaker 1: or if there's a ripple in the field, it doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter mathematically, it makes all the same predictions, just
Speaker 1: a question of like what's your interpretation. But these are
Speaker 1: not real particles, and so you can think about the
Speaker 1: universe either as being filled with fields or having an
Speaker 1: infinite number of virtual particles. Either one works, and so
Speaker 1: that's where this notion comes from, that the vacuum is
Speaker 1: filled with particles, but it's not filled with real particles.
Speaker 1: It's not like there are electrons popping out of the
Speaker 1: vacuum that you could like capture and use. It's just
Speaker 1: another mathematical way to describe the same thing. Right, that
Speaker 1: you can't access this lowest energy state either it's the
Speaker 1: lowest buzz that the field can do, or it's a
Speaker 1: minimum number of virtual particles. But virtual particles are not observable,
Speaker 1: so it's just it's a mathematical trick and because they
Speaker 1: use the word particle, it sort of pumps your intuition
Speaker 1: in certain confusing and misleading ways. And so it's not
Speaker 1: that the vacuum is like popping out particles that you
Speaker 1: can collect and treat as real particles.
Speaker 3: Got it, okay?
Speaker 1: However, there are ways to probe this quantum vacuum.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: If the field is there and it's real, possibly we
Speaker 1: can interact with it, right, And so people have done
Speaker 1: experiments to see like can we see if the quantum
Speaker 1: vacuum is real? And these experiments are fascinating. Maybe the
Speaker 1: most important one is called the Casimir effect.
Speaker 4: It's a good name, I mean, not as good as
Speaker 4: like the Wienersmith effect, which I hope to one day
Speaker 4: you know create.
Speaker 1: I mean for most things that you think about, like
Speaker 1: the most of physics, the large Hadron collider or you know,
Speaker 1: super conductivity, none of this matters. We just think about
Speaker 1: relative energy, not like the absolute Like are we you know,
Speaker 1: seven jewels on top of zero or seven jewels on
Speaker 1: top of ten to the one thirteen? Doesn't matter because
Speaker 1: we only think about energy differences usually, But you can
Speaker 1: sometimes create experiments that are sensitive to the absolute scale.
Speaker 1: And so the Casimere effect is super cool. You take
Speaker 1: two mirrors, basically two sheets of metal, and you put
Speaker 1: them really close to each other. Okay, because these two
Speaker 1: sheets of metal are conductors. Conductors have this property that
Speaker 1: they can't have electric fields inside of them. If you
Speaker 1: have an electric field inside a conductor, the electrons just
Speaker 1: move around and rearrange to cancel it out. That's why,
Speaker 1: for example, you can't get a cell phone call when
Speaker 1: you're inside an elevator because an elevator is made of metal,
Speaker 1: and the metal inside the walls moves to basically cancel
Speaker 1: out your cell phone signal. Right, because if there's an
Speaker 1: electric field and there's electrons just hanging out, it's gonna
Speaker 1: push those electrons and exactly the way to cancel it out. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you have two sheets of metal and they can't
Speaker 1: have electric fields in them. What that does is it
Speaker 1: suppresses certain kinds of frequencies between the two sheets of metal. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you're gonna have fluctuations in your quantum field,
Speaker 1: think of them as waves. Right now, you can only
Speaker 1: have waves that happen to have zeros right at your
Speaker 1: two sheets of metal. If you were gonna have waves
Speaker 1: that would be non zero inside your sheets of metal,
Speaker 1: those are canceled out. So when you put these two
Speaker 1: sheets of metal really really close together, then you change
Speaker 1: which frequencies can exist between those sheets and which frequencies
Speaker 1: can't exist between those sheets. It's sort of the same
Speaker 1: reason why having a mesh in front of your microwave
Speaker 1: protects you from those microwaves, because it insists the electric
Speaker 1: fields the zero and all the places on the mesh,
Speaker 1: which means that there's no solution for the waves to
Speaker 1: be on both sides of the mesh, and so it
Speaker 1: protects you. In the same sense. Having these two conductors
Speaker 1: really really close to each other means that there's no
Speaker 1: solutions even for the quantum vacuum in certain frequencies between
Speaker 1: the conductors.
Speaker 3: But that does not break the Heisenberg uncertainty principle because why,
Speaker 3: oh great question.
Speaker 1: So outside of these plates, you can't have modes below
Speaker 1: a certain energy because it would violate the Heisenberg and
Speaker 1: certainty principle. Right, What happens between the plates is that
Speaker 1: those modes are just disallowed. So it's not that the
Speaker 1: modes have lower energy, they just don't exist. And so
Speaker 1: between the plates you have only some frequencies of the
Speaker 1: vacuum are allowed. Outside of the plates, all frequencies are allowed,
Speaker 1: So you end up with lower energy between the plates
Speaker 1: because some of the frequencies of the vacuum are not allowed.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like you've changed the conditions and
Speaker 1: now the vacuum is different. Not that the vacuum is
Speaker 1: now violating the Heisenberg and certainty principle. It's just that
Speaker 1: there are only some modes in there, some frequency modes.
Speaker 1: All those modes obey the Heisenbergen certainty principle, but some
Speaker 1: of them are disallowed because of the conductor. So the
Speaker 1: nature of the vacuum has changed essentially.
Speaker 4: But it is the case that now at every spot
Speaker 4: in the field, you know, the value is zero.
Speaker 2: You're right.
Speaker 1: If the value of the field would be zero, that
Speaker 1: would violate the Heisenbergen certainty principle. But at those frequencies
Speaker 1: there is no field there. It's not that it's zero,
Speaker 1: is that there is no field because that field is
Speaker 1: no longer compatible with this configuration. Okay, so between the
Speaker 1: two sheets you have certain number of modes of the vacuum.
Speaker 1: Outside the sheets you have all those same modes plus more.
Speaker 1: The vacuum can do more outside. Cool, right, very clever
Speaker 1: trick to sort of change the nature of the vacuum.
Speaker 1: And you might think, all right, that sounds cool, but
Speaker 1: we're still in banana peels mode.
Speaker 3: Right, No, that's this whole episode on are the goats going.
Speaker 2: To eat the banana piels? At the end?
Speaker 1: Is that that's gonna be the emotional arc for the goats.
Speaker 1: Goats will eat banana peels.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, you've got to get back to bring in
Speaker 4: my goat back from the abyss, and so maybe the
Speaker 4: banana peels.
Speaker 3: What will bring it back.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sell the machine that generates goats from the
Speaker 1: quantum vacuum.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes to farmers, great, okay, love it all right.
Speaker 1: So what happens now is you have a greater energy
Speaker 1: density outside these two sheets than inside, right, because you
Speaker 1: have more quantum modes accessible to the vacuum now, because
Speaker 1: you haven't changed the vacuum on the outside, only on
Speaker 1: the inside. What that means is that there's a pressure.
Speaker 1: You have a greater energy density on the outside, lower
Speaker 1: energy density on the inside is a pressure on these
Speaker 1: two sheets. So if this is really happening, then you
Speaker 1: should be able to measure this, You should put two
Speaker 1: sheets together and you should be able to see them
Speaker 1: get squeezed, not by any other force, just by like
Speaker 1: the energy density gradient of the vacuum itself.
Speaker 4: And we're gonna take a break, and when we get back,
Speaker 4: we're gonna find out does that really happen?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 4: We are back, and we have been enjoying our banana
Speaker 4: peels during the break, And we now have two plates.
Speaker 4: And in the middle of the plate there is fewer frequencies,
Speaker 4: less energy. Outside the plates there are more frequencies, more energy,
Speaker 4: and that should make the plates smash together or at
Speaker 4: least move closer to each other, being a hyperbolic But
Speaker 4: is that what happens, Daniel?
Speaker 1: So for a long time nobody knew. This was predicted
Speaker 1: by Casimir in nineteen forty eight. Very cool idea. I
Speaker 1: love when physicists come up with like clever ways to
Speaker 1: trick the universe to reveal what's actually happening. Right, that's
Speaker 1: like the real genius of experimental physics.
Speaker 4: But this is not like a complicated experiment. Why why
Speaker 4: does nobody know?
Speaker 3: Why not just do it?
Speaker 1: Not a complicated experiment? You have to have mirrors separated
Speaker 1: by like microns. This thing is going to be a
Speaker 1: small effect, and so it wasn't measured until nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: Steve Lamoureau at University of Washington pulled this off. He
Speaker 1: didn't have two sheets, he had a plate and then
Speaker 1: a The idea being bring the sphere really gently close
Speaker 1: to the plate and see if you can measure any
Speaker 1: force between them. So he has a sphere of a
Speaker 1: plate and he's shining a laser onto the sphere and
Speaker 1: then measuring to see, like does the angle of the
Speaker 1: laser change. The key is to set it up really
Speaker 1: clean so you can measure really small effects. Because you know,
Speaker 1: if you have two mirrors with an area of like
Speaker 1: a centimeter squared and you're able to put them within
Speaker 1: a micron of each other, not easy, right, then they're
Speaker 1: going to have the attractive Casimir force of about ten
Speaker 1: to the negative seven newtons. That's like the weight of
Speaker 1: a water drop that's half a millimeter in diameter. So
Speaker 1: this is a really really small effect.
Speaker 4: And then the idea would be that that effect would
Speaker 4: ever so slightly bend to the laser, and they'd be
Speaker 4: able to measure the bend in the laser.
Speaker 1: That effect would move the sphere and the laser is
Speaker 1: bouncing off the sphere, and so it would change the
Speaker 1: path of the laser. Okay, to hear they're using a
Speaker 1: laser just to tell where is the sphere?
Speaker 3: Got it?
Speaker 1: Okay, It's sort of like in torsion experiments when you
Speaker 1: want to see, like is my pendulum bending at all?
Speaker 1: And so you have a mirrorun you shine. A laser
Speaker 1: just amplifies a small effect into a measurable effect. It's
Speaker 1: part of the experimental cleverness. Yes, yeah, anyway, so this
Speaker 1: was finally seen in nineteen ninety seven. It was confirmed
Speaker 1: at just the size that Casimir predicted. Right, So not
Speaker 1: only does it happen, it happens exactly the rate predicted
Speaker 1: by the calculation. So you're like, whoa, that's awesome. What
Speaker 1: does that mean? Does that mean the vacuum is real,
Speaker 1: that we're actually sitting on a Pacific ocean of juice
Speaker 1: slurping out the last details?
Speaker 4: But then doesn't that make all of the like space
Speaker 4: time stuff not work, like shouldn't Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, it definitely breaks everything about the cosmological model
Speaker 1: if it's real, right, And so there's a raging debate
Speaker 1: about this. People say, yes, it's real. Other people say, actually,
Speaker 1: there are other ways to explain it. So Bob Jaffe
Speaker 1: a mite, not like a fringe, like a very well
Speaker 1: known physicist. After this experiment came out, he was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, this is crazy.
Speaker 3: I'm my team Bob.
Speaker 1: He came out with this paper called Casimir effect and
Speaker 1: the quantum Vacuum in two thousand and five and it
Speaker 1: argues that what you're seeing there is not necessarily the
Speaker 1: quantum vacuum. He was able to derive the same effect
Speaker 1: just using Vanderwall's interactions, just saying like, look, I know
Speaker 1: what the charges are in these conducting plates. Can I
Speaker 1: use my knowledge of nuclear forces to predict the same thing?
Speaker 1: And it comes out to be an effect of the
Speaker 1: retarded Vanderwall's forces, basically the fact that information doesn't flow
Speaker 1: at infinite speed and so there's like a time delay
Speaker 1: based on where things are, and this adds up in
Speaker 1: a certain way. And so that's fascinating because he doesn't
Speaker 1: ever reference a quantum vacuum in his derivation and gets
Speaker 1: exactly the same numbers. But then philosophers weigh in and
Speaker 1: they say, okay, you can calculate that in this context,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of a pedagogical point saying that this
Speaker 1: effect is due to the materials we have there in space,
Speaker 1: when that's also what Casimir was saying. He's saying, you
Speaker 1: put these materials in space, you change the nature of
Speaker 1: the quantum vacuum. This goes to the heart of the
Speaker 1: question you were asking earlier, Right, We've changed the nature
Speaker 1: of the vacuum by putting those plates there. So there's
Speaker 1: still a raging philosophical debate about does this show that
Speaker 1: it's real? Is it just vanderwals? Does that mean the
Speaker 1: same thing anyway? And in fact, these are two different
Speaker 1: ways of computing the same thing, which makes it philosophically
Speaker 1: very confusing about.
Speaker 2: What it means. M H.
Speaker 3: So, I guess being on team Bob's the same thing
Speaker 3: as being on team Casimir.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly in the end.
Speaker 1: Or a better way to say is that there's some
Speaker 1: philosophers who say, actually, you guys agree, okay, But there
Speaker 1: are other ways to see the effects of the quantum vacuum.
Speaker 1: There's like the Lamb shift in the hydrogen atom. There
Speaker 1: are energy levels that, according to the direct equation, should
Speaker 1: be totally identic energies but they're slightly different because they
Speaker 1: are interacting with the vacuum. Vacuum fluctuations of the electric
Speaker 1: magnetic field nudge the electron slightly shifting its energy. And
Speaker 1: this has been measured and it's totally accurate. The Lamb
Speaker 1: shift is a real thing. And again this comes down
Speaker 1: to a philosophical question like, Okay, it's not like they're
Speaker 1: particles popping out of the vacuum that you're interacting with
Speaker 1: the field. Is there the field has this energy, you
Speaker 1: can interact with the field, And so this is another
Speaker 1: piece of evidence that it's out there, right, it's real.
Speaker 1: So I think in the end, the weight is in
Speaker 1: the direction of the quantum vacuum is out there.
Speaker 2: It's real.
Speaker 1: We don't know what that means from a cosmological point
Speaker 1: of view, but it certainly seems like all our predictions
Speaker 1: are saying that we're sitting on this massive ocean of energy.
Speaker 1: But the question of the episode is not is the
Speaker 1: quantum vacuum field with energy or where does Kelly have
Speaker 1: to put her hand inside a goat? It's can we
Speaker 1: make use of the quantum vacuum?
Speaker 4: And when you brought up the Lamb shift, I thought
Speaker 4: you were going to bring us back to prolapses.
Speaker 3: But I guess you didn't.
Speaker 1: But how did I miss that obvious connection? I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of Willis Lamb and wasn't at all prepared to make
Speaker 1: that joke.
Speaker 2: I apologize to all the listeners.
Speaker 4: I'm a little disappointed in you, but that's okay. Sorry,
Speaker 4: we're gonna move on. We're gonna move on, okay. So
Speaker 4: it might be a real thing. Is it a thing
Speaker 4: that we can use? And should you be paying fifty
Speaker 4: thousand dollars to buy it to make energy to cook
Speaker 4: your toast?
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't buy an over unity machine. The issue is
Speaker 1: that to make use of energy, you need an energy difference, right,
Speaker 1: You need a gradient. You need a high and a low.
Speaker 1: You know, like if you have water on a mountain,
Speaker 1: you can't use the potential energy of the water being
Speaker 1: up on the mountain unless you can flow down somewhere
Speaker 1: and then you can extract that energy. It turns into
Speaker 1: kinetic energy, it spins your water wheel, et cetera. Or
Speaker 1: if you have like a voltage difference inside of a battery,
Speaker 1: you can take advantage of that. So what you need
Speaker 1: is a difference. But this quantum vacuum energy, this zero
Speaker 1: point energy. This is the lowest energy of the field. Right,
Speaker 1: you can't go lower. And so if you can't go lower,
Speaker 1: not only can you not extract any energy because it
Speaker 1: can't go lower, right, but also there's no gradient there,
Speaker 1: there's no difference, there's nothing to use.
Speaker 3: But there's all that energy there.
Speaker 1: There's all that energy there, and it feels like, but
Speaker 1: didn't we figure out how to use it? I mean,
Speaker 1: we have the Casimir effect. It applies to pressure. Can't
Speaker 1: you somehow extract that energy? You can turn Casimir pressure
Speaker 1: into energy. Like you know, you have a little pzo
Speaker 1: electric device which creates electricity when you squeeze it. You
Speaker 1: can put it between Casimir plates, right, Casimir plates, squeeze it,
Speaker 1: you get electricity. Oh my gosh, have we built a
Speaker 1: Casimir over unity machine? Should we be selling these to
Speaker 1: our listeners for fifty thousand dollars? Well, you know this
Speaker 1: works once, right, the plates get pulled together, they generate energy,
Speaker 1: but then you have to reset them and so in effect,
Speaker 1: all the energy comes from the configuration that you built.
Speaker 1: It cost energy to put the Casimir plates in that
Speaker 1: setup and set everything up, and then you recover that
Speaker 1: energy when they collapse, which is like carrying water up
Speaker 1: a mountain and then saying, look, free energy, it flows
Speaker 1: down the mountain. Cool, but now you got to carry
Speaker 1: it back up the mountain, and the original energy came
Speaker 1: from you carrying it up the mountain. So the Casimir
Speaker 1: batteries are not useful, right, it's the configuration of the
Speaker 1: plates which cost energy. You're not really mining the vacuum.
Speaker 3: Do you think there's any chance that we could figure
Speaker 3: out a design where you could extract energy?
Speaker 1: All right, So here's what Daniel sounds like a grifter, right, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: because we clearly don't know what's going on here, Like
Speaker 1: we have this bizarre situation where we have a very
Speaker 1: accurate theory of physics, like quantum field theory predicted up
Speaker 1: the wazoo and down the wazoo twelve decimal places. It works, folks,
Speaker 1: It's amazing. It works so well that I almost had
Speaker 1: a spiritual experience when I first saw these calculations, and
Speaker 1: I thought, this is like, you know, not the hand
Speaker 1: of God, but like this is the underlying mechanism of
Speaker 1: the universe itself.
Speaker 2: This is the territory, not the map. Right.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it makes this bizarre prediction which
Speaker 1: is deeply at odds with our knowledge of the expanding
Speaker 1: and accelerating universe and everything we know about gravity and cosmology.
Speaker 1: So something is clearly wrong, and the best part of
Speaker 1: being on the cutting cut of physics is the humility
Speaker 1: it requires. Right, something we know is fundamentally wrong, and
Speaker 1: in fifty years people are going to look back and
Speaker 1: be like, wow, how did they not see it? It
Speaker 1: was so obvious, like they just had these two things
Speaker 1: in their head at all times. It's nuts, right, And
Speaker 1: so something here is wrong, which means that everything we've
Speaker 1: said today could be totally wrong. And it could be
Speaker 1: that we discover the quantum vacuum is very different from
Speaker 1: what we thought it was, and the theory of quantum
Speaker 1: gravity gives us new insight as to what's going on.
Speaker 1: And there isn't an energy out there in these fields,
Speaker 1: or there really is, and quantum gravity shows us that
Speaker 1: these rules we think are hard and fast about quantum
Speaker 1: field theory, that there's a minimum of zero energy you
Speaker 1: can't go below, maybe that can be broken sometimes right.
Speaker 1: Maybe quantum field theory is emergent, it's not exact, And
Speaker 1: so there's some situations in which it doesn't apply. And
Speaker 1: in those situations you can do crazy things and you know,
Speaker 1: get to negative energy to stabilize wormholes and all sorts
Speaker 1: of crazy stuff. So yeah, it's definitely possible that in
Speaker 1: the future we're going to be extracting energy from the
Speaker 1: vacuum due to an improved theory of physics. But with
Speaker 1: our current obviously flawed and in complete understanding of physics,
Speaker 1: there's no way to get energy out of the vacuum.
Speaker 1: And so if somebody out there is trying to sell
Speaker 1: you a machine, ask yourself. Has this person invented quantum gravity?
Speaker 1: And yet I've never heard of them? And now they're
Speaker 1: on the internet selling devices for fifty thousand dollars instead
Speaker 1: of collecting Nobel prizes. Hmmm, ask yourself if that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, so that's exciting.
Speaker 4: We're either going to like have a Nobel Prize winning
Speaker 4: discovery in physics where that like absolutely changes the way
Speaker 4: we look at the universe, yes, or we're going to
Speaker 4: be able to extract almost infinite energy or both.
Speaker 1: Who knows exactly, Yeah, and nobody knows where that discovery
Speaker 1: is going to come from or who is going to
Speaker 1: make it. These grand revelations sometimes come in the most unusual, unexpected.
Speaker 4: Places, probably not from prolapsed goats. And you never brought
Speaker 4: my goat back, Daniel.
Speaker 1: No, that's what I was about to do. You never
Speaker 1: know where you're going to find it, so sometimes you
Speaker 1: got to pull on those gloves up to your elbows
Speaker 1: and you've got to dig around inside the weirdest of
Speaker 1: places and keep an open mind for what's in there.
Speaker 1: It could be quantum gravity, Kelly, Wow, when your goat
Speaker 1: gives birth in a couple of weeks, who knows what's
Speaker 1: going to come out. Could be secrets of the universe.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 4: Ada said, we're going to name the first goat Sprinkles,
Speaker 4: but maybe we should name a quantum gravity because Casimir.
Speaker 4: That's right, the Casimir effect in quantum gravity.
Speaker 3: Will we'll see what happens, all right, Well, I've got
Speaker 3: high hopes.
Speaker 1: It's too bad there's not a kid effect in physics,
Speaker 1: because that would be a great name for lotties babies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, anyway, all right, Well, we covered a lot
Speaker 4: of ground today, probably a surprising amount of ground today.
Speaker 4: But we had a lot of fun and we ran
Speaker 4: away from politics as fast as we could, and thank
Speaker 4: you for joining us on Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
Speaker 2: Thanks everybody for listening.
Speaker 1: Please go and do us a favor and rate the
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Speaker 4: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing
Speaker 4: Matt Kesselman.
Speaker 1: He really is a wizard. You can also find us
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