Assuming the casimir force is the best explanation of the observed force on the plates, wouldn't the vacuum energy produce a drag on all moving bodies?
Harry On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 1:22 PM, MarkI-ZeroPoint <zeropo...@charter.net>wrote: > Ed: > Two things... > > 1. I don't think Fran's explanation adequately explained the Casimir > effect... (sorry Fran). > Theory posits that the vacuum is made up of almost an infinite range of > frequencies (some have proposed a cutoff frequency, probably approaching > the > Plank frequency). Closely spaced, parallel conducting plates will ONLY > exclude vacuum frequencies LARGER than the spacing between the plates. > This > is what creates the unbalanced forces which want to push the plates > together. All vacuum frequencies are pushing on the outside surfaces of > the > plates, but a limited range of frequencies are between the plates, so > forces > pushing plates apart is less than outside forces pushing plates together. > This effect only becomes significant for very small plate separation. > > 2. Empirical evidence for the Casimir effect is now fairly well > established, > and has been tested by several groups, including Steve Lamoreaux from your > old stomping ground of Los Alamos. It has also become a practical issue > now > that nanotechnology has reached the commercialization stage. The following > is from the Wikipedia article: > ------------- > One of the first experimental tests was conducted by Marcus Sparnaay at > Philips in Eindhoven, in 1958, in a delicate and difficult experiment with > parallel plates, obtaining results not in contradiction with the Casimir > theory,[22][23] but with large experimental errors. Some of the > experimental > details as well as some background information on how Casimir, Polder and > Sparnaay arrived at this point[24] are highlighted in a 2007 interview with > Marcus Sparnaay. > > The Casimir effect was measured more accurately in 1997 by Steve K. > Lamoreaux of Los Alamos National Laboratory,[25] and by Umar Mohideen and > Anushree Roy of the University of California at Riverside.[26] In practice, > rather than using two parallel plates, which would require phenomenally > accurate alignment to ensure they were parallel, the experiments use one > plate that is flat and another plate that is a part of a sphere with a > large > radius. > > In 2001, a group (Giacomo Bressi, Gianni Carugno, Roberto Onofrio and > Giuseppe Ruoso) at the University of Padua (Italy) finally succeeded in > measuring the Casimir force between parallel plates using > microresonators.[27] > --------------- > > -Mark > >
