Hi Les,

Yes, the conventional scientists can drive all the way to the zero point, where things are still observable and MEASURABLE. But they risk their scientific reputation and their livelihood if they try to find some way to go on below that to the virtual state fluctuations of the vacuum, which are NOT individually observable and therefore not individually measurable. So to maintain their positions and not destroy their careers, they have to stop at the lowest end of the observable state – with Zero Point energy.

We observe CHANGES. That is what an instrument measures: a change in something, where that change is sufficiently large to generate an observable reaction in an instrumental system. There is a “minimum size” change required in order to evoke an instrumental response that is observable.

In physics, “physical reality as empirically observed ” is comprised of what is called “action”, which is energy x time, or angular momentum. So a change is a change in “action” or in “energy x time”.

Planck’s constant h, when divided by 2 pi, is fundamental. Half that size (1/2 of h/(2 pi) is the smallest anything can be and be a piece of something quantized and therefore observable. In short, that is the smallest change that is measurable or observable. And it is not just a change in energy or a change in time, but a change in the product of the two.

If the change E x T is equal to or greater than h/(4 pi), it is now large enough and persists long enough that the combination can be OBSERVED or measured.

Obviously, observable things and the observable world (i.e., its changes, which are all we observe) are thus comprised of such QUANTA, according to quantum mechanics.

The level of E x T = h/(4 pi) is said to be the QUANTUM Threshold (in some cases, as I remember, it is h/(2 pi). I would have to go back and check the niceties of that, for exactness. It’s been awhile!).

The “observable state” or “observable universe” is thus comprised of action changes of that magnitude and greater – and our instruments, if fine enough, can detect them.

But if a change occurs and its E x T < h/(4 pi), it is not observable. The instruments cannot detect it individually, even in theory, according to quantum mechanics. That real but nonobservable subquantal change is thus referred to as a VIRTUAL STATE change, and that entity is said to exist in the virtual state but not in the observable state. The virtual state becomes that state that is a “collection” of such ongoing subquantal changes where each change is less than a quantum and therefore is VIRTUAL rather than observable.

A virtual entity can have any energy magnitude, so long as the corresponding time of its existence remains sufficiently short that the product (E)(T) < a quantum.

The vacuum (empty space itself) is comprised of just such virtual changes – a seething, incredible cauldron of them. But not one is individually observable or measurable. If they were observable changes, then our instruments in free space would go bananas all the time and be absolutely useless, from their continual detections and incessant measurements of “active spacetime itself”. They do not do that, so we know that spacetime/vacuum is comprised of VIRTUAL STATE changes (subquantal changes) in a seething mess.

So space is not “nothing” (i.e., it is not “emptiness” as was classically believed). But it is comprised of VIRTUAL STATE CHANGES – INCREDIBLY SEETHING CAULDRONS OF THEM.

Now STATISTICALLY, that overall cauldron or any appreciable portion of it is both nonobservable (i.e., virtual) and also DISORDERED. After all, if these virtual changes were group-coherent and were thus to start coherently adding, they would incessantly and coherently add (integrate) above the quantum threshold, and our senses would be barraged and nullified by the thunderous bombardment and flashes of their continual observations.

A real particle or entity can thus only be observed to change by QUANTAL amounts. Its VIRTUAL changes are not individually observable, even though they are there with a vengeance.

ZERO POINT is used to describe the quantum mechanical fact that an observable particle at its “lowest rate of change – i.e., at absolute zero degrees temperature” is still violently dithering. You can cool it to “absolute zero degrees temperature” and it’s still dynamically shaking incredibly. And it has been shown experimentally that these changes are OBSERVABLE, although extremely minute in energy. But they are real. So one can speak of the “Zero Point” energy – where the Casimir effect and other work is already in the literature and has proven there is a “real, observable, known” effect there. In short, there is a tiny bit of real (observable) energy still going on there, and it is indeed possible to extract a bit of energy from it.

And so one can keep one’s scientific reputation if one studies that measurable and proven “zero point energy” and tries to gather it together and integrate it further, so as to get something “useful” out of it to big (macroscopic) systems. The problem is that so far only extremely minute amounts of energy can be obtained, even in theory. So if one tries to apply it (at least with what is presently known) to the Big World and to real electrical power units for homes etc., one is very far removed in one’s results from what is needed and required. But one can maintain one’s scientific reputation, and not get tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on an academic rail, so to speak.

Now in particle physics, all forces in and on particulate matter are generated by the exchange of virtual particles, oddly. So obviously, since these are OBSERVABLE forces on OBSERVABLE particles and matter, even in big systems, then there has to be some kind of mechanism for (1) absorbing ordered virtual energy from the disordered virtual state (hey, that’s a Maxwell’s Demon!), and (2) coherently integrating (adding) consecutive absorptions of these little virtual state additions into quantal size, resulting in real, observable, quantized change (hey, that’s a Feynman ratchet!).

But that implies that a particle such as an electron can absorb ordered virtual energy from the disordered virtual state vacuum, and integrate it to quantum size. This violates the present (sad old) second law of macroscopic electrodynamics, because it involves a NEGATIVE ENTROPY production process.

Well, lots of things violate the dickens out of the hoary old second law; to see a few of these areas that permit second law violation, see Dilip Kondepudi and Ilya Prigogine, Modern Thermodynamics: From Heat Engines to Dissipative Structures, Wiley, New York, 1998, reprinted with corrections 1999. Areas known to violate the old second law are given on p. 459. One area is strong gradients (as used in the MEG) and another is memory of materials (as used in the MEG in the nanocrystalline core materials and structure to freely obtain the Aharonov-Bohm effect). We strongly comment that these known, recognized mechanisms allow macroscopic and significant violations of the Second Law that are directly usable in real systems and circuits.

"Entropy ...cannot in general be expressed in terms of observables such as temperature and density. This is only possible in the neighbourhood of equilibrium... It is only then that both entropy and entropy production acquire a macroscopic meaning." [Ilya Prigogine, "Irreversibility as a symmetry-breaking process," Nature, Vol. 246, Nov. 9, 1973, p. 70.].

Our instruments can show that any charge (e.g., any electron in the universe) even when confined in one position, just sits there and continually emits real, observable photons (real light quanta) in a steady and unceasing stream, at light speed in all directions. And yet no instrument known to man can measure any OBSERVABLE energy input to that source charge (the electron). Scientists were (and are) so terribly conditioned to never suggest coherent integration of virtual changes that they dared not to even consider integrating a steady stream of ORDERED virtual state absorptions (e.g., continual virtual photon absorptions). Thus – being ordered – these virtual energy changes of the source charge (actually to its mass-energy) would add repeatedly to the quantal level and be emitted as a quantum of EM radiation (a real observable photon). So this “source charge problem” was acknowledged as the greatest problem in all electrodynamics, and it was just pushed out of all the textbooks so the young students coming along would never realize the problem. Most of the students are never even introduced to the “foundations” literature, where such problems are pondered and puzzled over. As Bunge put it:

“…it is not usually acknowledged that electrodynamics, both classical and quantal, are in a sad state." [Mario Bunge, Foundations of Physics, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1967, p. 176].

For one thing, the standard CEM/EE model used in electrical engineering implicitly assumes that the source charge freely creates – from nothing – all that energy it freely pours out to form and continually replenish its external fields and potentials at light speed.

Sen put it nicely:

"The connection between the field and its source has always been and still is the most difficult problem in classical and quantum electrodynamics." [D. K. Sen, Fields and/or Particles, Academic Press, London and New York, 1968, p. viii].

Kosyakov stated it bluntly:

"A generally acceptable, rigorous definition of radiation has not as yet been formulated." …. "The recurring question has been: Why is it that an electric charge radiates but does not absorb light waves despite the fact that the Maxwell equations are invariant under time reversal?" [B. P. Kosyakov, “Radiation in electrodynamics and in Yang-Mills theory,” Soviet Phys. Usp., 35(2), Feb. 1992, p. 135, 141].

We solved that source charge problem (albeit a bit crudely) in 1999, and published it in Russia. See T. E. Bearden, "Giant Negentropy from the Common Dipole," Proceedings of Congress 2000, St. Petersburg, Russia, Vol. 1, July 2000 , p. 86-98. Also published in Journal of New Energy, 5(1), Summer 2000, p. 11-23. Also carried on website www.cheniere.org and published in Energy from the Vacuum: Concepts and Principles, Chapter 3, 2002. It is also discussed in M. W. Evans, T. E. Bearden, and A. Labounsky, "The Most General Form of the Vector Potential in Electrodynamics," Foundations of Physics Letters, 15(3), June 2002, p. 245-261. We have also slightly improved the solution since then.

The secret to solving the problem is in the way we have to represent a “statistically disordered vacuum”. Maxwell was a thermodynamicist as well as an electrodynamicist. Quoting Maxwell in 1878:

"The truth of the second law is … a statistical, not a mathematical, truth, for it depends on the fact that the bodies we deal with consist of millions of molecules… Hence the second law of thermodynamics is continually being violated, and that to a considerable extent, in any sufficiently small group of molecules belonging to a real body." [Maxwell, J. C., “Tait's Thermodynamics II,” Nature 17, 278–280 (7 February 1878)].

In other words – and this is extremely important – the individual totally ordered pieces of the greater statistical disordered medium are usually continually violating the old second law of thermodynamics.

So one turns to modern quantum field theory to get at the interaction of virtual quanta interaction of the vacuum with a real particle. As Aitchison points out:

"...the concept of a 'single particle' actually breaks down in relativistic quantum field theory with interactions, because the interactions between 'the particle' and the vacuum fluctuations (or virtual quanta) cannot be ignored." [I. J. R. Aitchison, "Nothing's Plenty: The Vacuum in Modern Quantum Field Theory," Contemporary Physics, 26(4), 1985, p. 57.].

Davies states it very nicely:

"What might appear to be empty space is, therefore, a seething ferment of virtual particles. A vacuum is not inert and featureless, but alive with throbbing energy and vitality. A 'real' particle such as an electron must always be viewed against this background of frenetic activity. When an electron moves through space, it is actually swimming in a sea of ghost particles of all varieties – virtual leptons, quarks, and messengers, entangled in a complex mêlée. The presence of the electron will distort this irreducible vacuum activity, and the distortion in turn reacts back on the electron. Even at rest, an electron is not at rest: it is being continually assaulted by all manner of other particles from the vacuum." [Paul Davies, Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1984, p. 105].

Here’s the key as to how to get a source charge can produce “real” observable energy from its incessant interaction with the “virtual” state vacuum.

When we “conceive” the seething virtual state vacuum, filled with particles appearing and disappearing so fast that they are virtual state entities and not observable entities, we have already conceived of “momentary order appearing incessantly in that statistically disordered medium”. That is, each single virtual particle (as, e.g., a virtual photon) is totally ordered while it briefly exists as such a particle (as just such order!). So we have an analogy to Maxwell’s statement: The entire virtual state medium is quite statistically disordered, but it is also filled with momentary bubbling “individual particles”, each of which exists briefly and is also briefly totally ordered. So the “virtual bubbling entities” of the virtual state vacuum are -- individually – totally ordered!

Thus when the source charge (electron) absorbs virtual photon after observable photon from the vacuum interaction, it is absorbing totally ordered virtual bits of EM energy from the seething disordered vacuum. In short, this process provides a true “Maxwell’s Demon”. It is already inherent in the very notion of an observable charge absorbing a virtual photon from the vacuum.

So these coherent bits of virtual energy change are also changed individually to virtual bits of virtual mass-energy change of the electron. As change after change occurs, these ordered virtual changes of virtual mass-energy of the absorbing observable charge coherently integrate until sufficient “energy x time” is reached to comprise a quantum of change. Whereupon the incessant zitterbewegung (buffeting) of the vacuum on the electron will “knock out” the emission of a real, observable photon. So the charge also acts as a true “Feynman Ratchet”, coherently integrating virtual state energy up to quantal level energy.

With the abrupt emission of an observable photon, the excitation of the source charge abruptly decays to zero again, and the cycle repeats – over and over, incessantly. Hence the charge can sit there and spew out real, observable EM energy – real observable photons – continually. Every charge in the original universe has been doing it for some 13 billion years, and it will do it for 13 billion more years if the universe lasts that long.

The charge functions as both a true Maxwell’s Demon and a true Feynman Ratchet.

And suddenly we have solved the long-vexing source charge problem. And we have dramatically changed our notion of entropy and such in doing so.

As an example, a rigorous thermodynamics proof that real physical systems can in theory produce continuous negative entropy, in total violation of the sad old second law of thermodynamics – is given by D. J. Evans and Lamberto Rondoni, "Comments on the Entropy of Nonequilibrium Steady States," J. Stat. Phys., 109(3-4), Nov. 2002, p. 895-920. Startled by their results, the authors suggested that, well, physical systems might not do this (since none seem to be known at present), but “the problem remained” for deterministic systems.

Well, the energy densities of the fields and potentials from a source charge are deterministic as a function of radial distance from the source charge. So I nominated the source charge (and any source dipolarity) as the first physical systems found to be actually producing continuous negative entropy by the Evans-Rondoni criterion.

Anyway, it can be experimentally established that a source charge does this, as does any dipole. In modern physics, a source charge also polarizes its surrounding vacuum, and hence the charge and its altered vacuum form a dipolar ensemble. Further, that dipolarity is comprised of two infinite charges of opposite sign, each having infinite energy also, and where the two have a finite difference (both in energy and in charge). Or as Nobelist Weinberg puts it:

"[The total energy of the atom] depends on the bare mass and bare charge of the electron, the mass and charge that appear in the equations of the theory before we start worrying about photon emissions and reabsorptions. But free electrons as well as electrons in atoms are always emitting and reabsorbing photons that affect the electron's mass and electric charge, and so the bare mass and charge are not the same as the measured electron mass and charge that are listed in tables of elementary particles. In fact, in order to account for the observed values (which of course are finite) of the mass and charge of the electron, the bare mass and charge must themselves be infinite. The total energy of the atom is thus the sum of two terms, both infinite: the bare energy that is infinite because it depends on the infinite bare mass and charge, and the energy shift … that is infinite because it receives contributions from virtual photons of unlimited energy." [Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory, Vintage Books, Random House, 1993, p. 109-110.].

So the “finite classical charge” in electrical engineering is actually the finite difference observed by our instruments, between TWO INTERACTING INFINITE CHARGES, EACH OF INFINITE ENERGY ALSO. And that includes both the vacuum charge (alteration of the vacuum by its polarization) and the bare charge (infinite) of the particle. Each of those charges also has infinite energy.

So a dipolarity – being two infinite entities – can furnish any FINITE amount of energy, no matter how large, for any FINITE amount of time, no matter how long.

EM energy is free, free, free, anywhere in the universe, at any time, for peanuts! Just make a little assembly of charge and pay for it once, thereby making two infinite charges each with infinite energies. Then leave it alone and do not allow anything to scatter and destroy it. And that source dipole will continuously exhibit “broken symmetry”, for which Lee and Yang were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1957. And broken symmetry means that “something virtual has become observable”, as Lee himself pointed out.

But the implications of modern quantum field theory and broken symmetry have not made it across the university campus from the physics department to the electrical engineering department, in the nearly half century they have been with us.

Now to complete the story, recall that the standard Heaviside-Maxwell used in electrical engineering was put together in the 1880s, and sharply curtailed from Maxwell’s true 1865 theory [see James Clerk Maxwell, The Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, edited by Thomas F. Torrance, Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, 1996. Contains Maxwell’s original dynamical theory paper and commentaries. Or to see the original, see James Clerk Maxwell, "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field," Royal Society Transactions, Vol. CLV, 1865, p 459. Read Dec. 8, 1864. Also in The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, 2 vols. bound as one, edited by W. D. Niven, Dover, New York, 1952, Vol. 1, p. 526-597. Two errata are given on the unnumbered page prior to page 1 of Vol. 1. In this paper Maxwell presents his seminal theory of electromagnetism, containing 20 equations in 20 unknowns. His general equations of the electromagnetic field are given in Part III, General Equations of the Electromagnetic Field, p. 554-564. On p. 561, he lists his 20 variables. On p. 562, he summarizes the different subjects of the 20 equations, being three equations each for magnetic force, electric currents, electromotive force, electric elasticity, electric resistance, total currents; and one equation each for free electricity and continuity. In the paper, Maxwell adopts the approach of first arriving at the laws of induction and then deducing the mechanical attractions and repulsions.

But even worse. In 1892, Lorentz also symmetrized (and further greatly simplified) the already-curtailed Heaviside equations, thereby arbitrarily discarding all asymmetrical Maxwellian systems. Nature does not discard those systems; Lorentz did and every EE department, professor, and textbook still arbitrarily discards them. If that Lorentz symmetry is again discarded, one recovers those long-neglected asymmetrical Maxwellian systems – the very class of systems that includes energy-from-the-vacuum systems, which are asymmetric a priori! For rigorous proof, see M. W. Evans et al., “Classical Electrodynamics without the Lorentz Condition: Extracting Energy from the Vacuum,” Physica Scripta, Vol. 61, 2000, p. 513-517.

So today, the energy problem is solvable very quickly and permanently – and cheaply and cleanly – if our scientific community will just fund some of the sharp young doctoral candidates and post doctoral scientists to correct the sadly flawed old CEM/EE model and go after collecting and using free EM energy extracted continuously from the vacuum by any and every charge and dipole in the universe. For a listing gathered together of these grave falsities in the standard electrical engineering model, as pointed out by eminent scientists such as Feynman, Wheeler, Bunge, Margenau and many others, see my “Errors and Omissions in the CEM/EE Model”, available freely from my website.

That paper was reviewed by the National Science Foundation last year, and – miracle of miracles! – it passed their review! Now if we can just get the NSF to fund those grad students and post docs to correct the CEM/EE model and to work in “energy from the vacuum” systems, the universities will permit the work, but only if they receive the extra money to do it. But if such funding can be established, the entire energy crisis can be corrected in two to three years, and forever. It will also dramatically clean up our environment, reduce the present contribution of energy system byproducts to global warming, etc. as well.

Best wishes,