Terry: As most every vortician appreciates, it is not OU if you can only do it one time. Even a few hundred times is not enough if it is say: a magmo that spins down more slowly than expected. Continuing to add ballast at the top eats up all the gain - unless the "ballast" is itself a phase of water and "free" .
I think the point about the Casimir not having a proper heat-sink for iterative operation is a good one, but it may overlook "non-obvious" sink arrangements. In fact the proper operation of ZPE may involve a ladder of emission levels and depletion levels, resulting in what is, in effect, step-wise heat sinks; up to where blackbody radiation (and ambient heat or cold), can be employed at the top layer. I posted on a hypothetical ZPE heat sink years ago but cannot find it in the archives. My recollection is that the important dynamic is "semi-coherence" (superradiance). Instead I found this, which is "pretty cool" in its own way - i.e. the implications for finding "hidden" heat-sinks: http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg07965.html From: Terry Blanton Hmmm, suppose you have an accordion device that you drop into the ocean with a rock. The device pressurizes air as it sinks and locks into place, then you drop the ballast and it floats to the top. You use the pressurized air to do work. Is possible? If so, is it OU? Terry Chris Zell wrote: Every time the subject of zero point energy comes up, I wanna ask, where's the 'drain', the 'cold side', the 'pressure release'? At the bottom of the ocean, you have tons of pressure per square inch but what good is that? You need an area of reduced pressure to get a flow going. Likewise, hot to cold and uphill to downhill. If zero point energy is squishing everything everywhere, what good is it and furthermore, how can it be measured? Relative to what hole in the cosmic vacuum? I suppose the Casimir force is suggestive (like a bubble underwater relative to surrounding pressure) but how can a continuous action be created?
