Energy from the Quantum Vacuum
This site discusses the possibility of a new form of nuclear energy, different from fission, fusion and decay.
April 2022
© Giorgio Fontana - ResearchGate - ScienceDirect
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The extraction of ElectroMagnetic Zero Point Fluctuations energy is a relevant and somehow unsolved approach to energy production. The energy density of EM ZPF is enormous, and tapping it would be a fundamental discovery. Many unsuccesful attempts have been made and new theoretical approaches often appear in the literature. Among them this one is probably the most complex, involving all fundamental forces of nature in a set on non-linearly coupled oscillators.
EM ZPFs are uniform everywhere so that it is difficult to find a "flow" and attach a sort of Carnot machine to this flow for useful energy generation.
We can induce a "flow" by converting EM ZPFs to "something else" that interfaces to this "something else" ZPF having a different energy density respect to EM ZPFs. What this "something else" could be?
We could look at the gravitational field. The gravitational field is well described by General Relativity, that is not a quantum theory, therefore its ZPF does not exist, it could possibly be zero.
A mathematical expression of EM ZPF, the "spectral energy density of the vacuum field", can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy and it is proportional to the cube of the frequency. It follows that it increases to a maximum at gamma ray frequencies.
The quantum noise of the electromagnetic field is experimentally observed and manipulated at microwave and optical frequencies, for instance in experiments and applications of quantum noise squeezing, confirming the theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeezed_states_of_light
Regarding ZPFs of the gravitational field, in 1983 Dr. Robert L. Forward reported about the possible use of ZPFs of various fields for space propulsion. In his report he cites John A. Wheeler "geometrodynamics" as a possible theoretical description of gravitational ZPF. Fluctuations of the gravitational field at scales of the Planck length are theoretically found, page 6.1 of https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADB088771.pdf . The Planck length is so small that it is inaccessible by any possible experiment now and in the future.
At this level of understanding EM ZPF and Gravitational ZPF have different energy densities.
Chapter 6 of Forward's report is quite elegant but fails to understand that the solution is converting (transducing) one quantum field to a different one....
How could we convert EM ZPF to (now real) Gravitational fluctuations (waves)?
A possible idea is to find a suitable nuclear species that has dineutrons floating near or at the surface of a core nucleus .
Dineutrons are nearly ideal emitters (and receivers) of gravitational waves at gamma ray frequencies because they have gravitational quadrupole moment, no electrical charge and have nuclear matter density, thus their gravitational wave emission impedance matches well with the gravitational characterstic impedance of free space. Dineutrons are pulled towards the core nucleus by the strong nuclear force and made to vibrate by EM ZPF induced vibration of the core nucleus. In this system the strong nuclear force operates like a flexible non-linear constraint keeping together the gears of a "gearbox". More generally we are dealing with oscillators coupled by a non linear force. What is extremely important is that the core nucleus is electrically charged and couples almost exclusively to the electromagnetic field in the long range, and the dineutron is not electrically charged and couples almost exclusively to the gravitational field in the long range. The "gearbox" is almost indifferent to both fields being it made using another kind of force in the short range, therefore it can properly operate increasing the frequency of the vibrations from the core nucleus to the dineutron. Increasing the frequency from the electromagnetic end to the gravitational end provides great advantages. For a given oscillator that generates only gravitational waves, a tenfold increase of the frequency will provide a 1000000 times increase in power generated, according to the well estabilished quadrupole formula.
This concept has been published here (2009):
and here (2012), where the device is called Dineutron Upconverting Transducer (DUT):
Dineutrons and the calculation of their binding energy have been proposed by the two times Nobel laureate Linus Pauling.
scarc.library.oregonstate.edu...
Some experimental evidence also exists. See for instance this paper, and this 1950 paper.
Recently the quantum states of dineutrons (in light nuclei) have been studied: the three-body calculations show that the component with a relative d-wave between the two neutrons and a relative s-wave between the α-particle and the dineutron is considered, s-wave dineutrons are also considered. Regarding p-wave, as mentioned in [8], the use of this p-wave potential, making it equal to zero, or even excluding the p-wave components from the calculations, do not produce significant changes in the description of the low-lying 8Li states. See this paper and related references.
In 1964 Halpern and Laurent determined that s-d transitions are gravitational wave transitions, see this paper, enforcing the concept that the emission of gravitational waves by the dineutron is possible, while the emission of electromagnetic waves should be obviously avoided by a dineutron with zero electric charge.
Be aware that isolated neutrons cannot exist outside atomic nuclei (they decay outside nuclei). Similarly, dineutrons have very short life outside nuclei.
We now move from physics to system theory.
In the field of electronics there exists the self-quenched super-regenerative receiver. An unstable (but initially inoperative) oscillator is kick-started by an external signal or by noise, then the amplitude of the oscillations will increase exponentially. Then it will start dissipating energy through quenching channels, that are the electrical load and the limited couplig to the power source. Because of that it will stop oscillating, still remaining unstable. Then the process may repeat.
By analogy a dynamically unstable nuclear oscillator with dineutrons (the positive charged core is powered by EM ZPF) might be kick-started by a proton (it could transfer enough energy to the atom/nucleus without causing fission), then the amplitude of the oscillations will increase until the gravitational wave emission associated to the coupled dineutron will quench the oscillator. The proton represents the input signal. In principle this controlled cycle might be excited an unlimited number of times. Noise may also kick-start the energy conversion cycle randomly.
This hypothesis may offer an explanation on why there may exist stable isotopes of super heavy elements outside the supposed island of stability: quenching of nuclear dynamics by gravitational wave emission from dineutrons may stop spontaneous fission and nuclear decay. Therefore, in principle, the required nuclear species could be identified by the following properties: it must be stable, it could continuously emit gravitational waves, it must increase its emission of gravitational waves by bombardment with non fission inducing particles capable to kick the nuclei: protons AND/OR gravitational waves at frequency capable to interact with dineutrons. As explained above, the dineutron is an excellent transmitter and receiver of gravitational waves because it has nuclear mass-density. The "initially periodic" energy transfer between the core nucleus and the dineutron is "bidirectional" therefore the core nucleus can be kick started this way.
In this case we would have a sort of traveling wave amplification, as we have in optical lasers, but in a four phases process:
GWs->dineutron->core nucleus kick start->EM ZPFpowered amplification->dineutron (quenching)->GWs.
Summarizing, with the correct geometry, protons could kick start the active material locally and then let the process proceed gravitationally with the four phases process.
In this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U39RMUzCjiU (A short animated gif below.)
You can observe a classical analogy for non-linearly coupled oscillators with different resonant frequencies. Remember that a pendulum is a non linear oscillator for large angles. Following the video you will see that energy (amplitude of the oscillations) will move from one pendulum to the other and back. This behavior is a common behavior for non-linear coupled oscillators (NOTE A). Our core/dineutron model will enter a similar dynamics where the core will transfer energy to the dineutron and vice-versa, in the half cycle when energy is on the dineutron side the discharged core will be recharged by EM ZPF, at some point the dineutron will spin fast enough and will radiate the energy as gravitational waves, so that vibrational energy will not come back to the core, then the core will restore its zero point energy state. This is an energy cycle.
The classical sistem shown in the video is obviously affected by air friction and classical damping and after some time all movements end, this is not the case for a quantum system.
Finally what is the order of magnitude (upper limit !) of the emitted power in gravitational waves? According to Pauling the dineutron binding energy is of the order of 1.3 MeV. Let's say that we have a suitable nuclear species with half-life of the order of 1 second and we put a dineutron on every atom for stabilizing it the way we have just described. It follows that every atom must release the excess energy as gravitational wave pulses with period less than a second (average), let's say 0.1 second and the element with the dineutron added will not decay. Obviously the dineutron must not lose its integrity too, so we expect the energy of the emitted gravitational wave pulse of the order of 0.1 MeV (that is quite less than the 1.3 MeV binding energy). 0.1 MeV is 1.6 x 10^-14 WattSecond, the frequency is 1/ (0.1s) = 10 Hz, the number of atoms per kg is about 2 x 10^24. The expected upper limit of the emitted power per kg in gravitational waves is of the order of 2 x 10^24 times 10 times 1.6 x 10^-14 = 320 GigaWatt/kg.
Is this potential power flow really available in EM ZPF in the range from soft to hard X-rays that we expect to power a suitable nucleus? Using the formula of the first link (Wikipedia) for the energy density, we find about 5 x 10^18 J/liter = 5 x 10^18 WattSecond/liter. With 1 liter of volume (containing our DUT) at 10 Hz potential extraction rate the power is 5 x 10^19 watt = 50000000000 GigaWatt, clearly the DUT will not deplete the EM ZPF field. In addition, the 2009 AIP reference above (at page 530) reports gravitational wave emission of about 10^20 W/kg of dineutrons using the quadrupole formula under continuous coherent emission of gravitational waves. This is about 10^18 W/kg (of matter), to be considered an upper limit for this classical approximation of spinning dineutrons.
The expected power density of 320 GigaWatt/kg is astonishingly high, anyway we are indeed dealing with nuclear energy and we optimistically suppose that all nuclei per kg operate continuously at full power. The actual side effects of this enormous power density in gravitational waves is still far from being understood, anyway it is an upper limit and possible initial experiments will be very far from it. With 320 GW = 320 GJ/s and using E=1/2 mv^2 it is possible to accelerate m = 10 metric tons = 10000 kg from 0 km/h to 28800 km/h in one second.
An additional EM ZPF introductory paper (pages 55 and 56):
NOTE about the simplest toy model Double Pendulum:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_pendulum
Equations can be written, but no closed form solution can be derived, Numerical solutions can be found, but they are strongly dependant on initial conditions and are generally chaotic.
contact: quant.det@gmail.com
A point of view:
EM ZPFs may "reside" in the quantum vacuum or be a property of particles, it makes no difference for the approach.
Anyway if we use an electromagnetic theory (QED - QM) "that works perfectly" and that says that it is not possible to go below the lowest energy state for electron orbitals (this is what makes all atoms electromagnetically stable...) , it means that no "electromagnetic" radiation can be emitted. This is what indeed happens in reality.
BUT if turn our attention to the nucleus and we have a magical trick that is able to increase the frequencies and make the emission of gravitational waves possible, and we "believe" (GR) that gravity is not quantized (this is a simplification...), what will possibly happen is that gravitational waves will be emitted and the ground energy level (electromagnetic) of the system will be immediately replenisced electromagnetically. So we cannot extract electromagnetic energy from this system, but we could extract real gravitational waves in a NON traditional sense.
Regarding space propulsion schemes we observe that:
Because Gravitons (quanta of gravitational waves) are NOT photons, the general conclusions applicable to the photon rocket are not applicable to gravitons if not for some special configurations).
Gravitons can aquire mass:
From the Abstract of the above paper we read:
-----------An exact solution of Einstein's equations........The ultimate result of the collision is the development of a space-time singularity, ...... The solution obtained in this paper provides the first example of an induced transformation of a massless into a massive particle.------------
Now cosider that the above cited singularity generates a gravitational field, but in this case it is NOT "matter" or "energy" that curves spacetime, instead it is "pure" curvature... It is simply a direct rectification of gravitational waves into an almost "static" gravitational coulomb like field.
Specifically, according to Einstein, the gravitational field that accelerates massive particles and bends light is spacetime "curvature". Mass and "energy density" generate curvature, on the other hand curvature may exist by itself and can be also created by the rectification of gravitational waves (that are propagating fluctuations of curvature) by a non-linear process. Fortunately spacetime itself is non-linear, therefore no physical device is needed to perform such rectification, just focus gravitationals wave to the required intensity.
Using Chandrasekhar's analysis for creating curvature near a spacecraft for accelerating it, is fundamentally a variant of the well known technique called "gravity assist". At very slow speeds (respect to the speed of light) Chandrasekhar's singularity affects the spacecraft and all the remaining bodies of the universe and, according to Newton's mechanics, conservation of momentum must apply to the full set of massive bodies of the universe. Instead if the spacecraft enters a region of space with higher curvature created by Chandrasekhar's singularity or different forms of his solution, full General Relativity applies, like wormholes, FTL, etc, that are known theoretical solutions that only ask for an engine with enough power to become a reality: maybe this one.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar is a coautor of the above cited paper. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 (for other discoveries).
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1983/chandrasekhar/facts/
How much mass the graviton can acquire is written here (for some special configurations).
Most importantly, EM ZPFs will be directly converted to gravitational waves by the DUT, bypassing thermodynamics and electrodynamics without radiation and nuclear waste. Propulsion applications will be characterized by unprecedented efficiency.
NOTE A: Coupled oscillators are widely used in engineering, for instance for oscillation damping of very tall buildings and also for applications at microscopic scales (MEMS), etc. This paper, entitled Experimental investigation of targeted energy transfers in strongly and nonlinearly coupled oscillators, offers some insight into this phenomenology and possible implications in future studies of the DUT. The abstract is: "Our focus in this study is on experimental investigation of the transient dynamics of an impulsively loaded linear oscillator coupled to a lightweight nonlinear energy sink. It is shown that this seemingly simple system exhibits complicated dynamics, including nonlinear beating phenomena and resonance captures. It is also demonstrated that, by facilitating targeted energy transfers to the nonlinear energy sink, a significant portion of the total input energy can be absorbed and dissipated in this oscillator."
NOTE B: In experimental physics the concepts and potential conclusions here presented are still unexplored.
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