Horace Heffner wrote:
OK - let's pile-it-on ... with ZPE
Well, Jones, I think you sure came up with a winner idea this time!
Well it seems we had the similar ideas almost simultaneously, but while
we are on-a-roll ... and before the free-world is thrown into utter
disarray on Tuesday ;-{
...there is one other route to ZPE involving H2 as a transport medium.
The answer to how to unify a Casimir M.O. (modus operandi) with an
underlying asymmetry - is this: as a Casimir heat pump for ZPE. We might
find that in a nano-engineered dry pile, without ZPE, the ambient heat
quickly is dissipated and the electron transport stops dead in its
tracks ... That is, without further heat introduction. Enter the Casimir
heat pump.
In this hypothetical process, the device is utilizing the energy
asymmetry of isomeric para-ortho-hydrogen to cohere the most universal
ZPE frequency (21 cm). This frequency is that associated with the
hydrogen line in the CMB (cosmic microwave background). This is low
energy non-ionizing radiation, but the universe is awash in it (even if
most of it can be said to exist in another dimension) and that could
be "how" ZPE is able to ultimately cohere some "extra heat" in our 3-space.
This is ortho-para oscillating conversion. It must be accomplished in
very rapid sequential order since the net energy available from the
flip-flop is a small fraction of one eV per oscillation - but
nevertheless, let me frame a rough scenario of how one would try to
engineer this in a dry pile.
With a highly mobile transport medium like H2 then a large proportion of
the kinetic vibration of blackbody ambient heat becomes available to
resonate the molecule, especially if the molecule can be constrained to
two dimensions by a magnetic field.
Hydrogen has the famous "line" of resonance at 21 cm or 1420 MHz
frequency. IOW, then the kinetic collision rate per molecule per second
of ambient heat is far above the collision rate which we would be trying
to engineer (for ZPE replenishment), so that is possibly doable. Of
course a kinetic collision rate and frequency of EM radiation are NOT
normally related in any form that could be said to be causal, but in
this case, we are trying to force causality, so to speak.
The Casimir heat engine has actually been forecast some time ago in a
different form (more like the Maxwell-Demon idea) - by Robert Forward.
Quantum mechanics requires that the wave function of a molecule must be
antisymmetric with respect to the interchange of the space coordinates
of two fermions (spin = 1/2), and symmetric for the interchange of
bosons (spin = 1). Consequently there are two kinds of hydrogen
molecules in the singlet state, namely, ortho-hydrogen (symmetric, with
parallel nuclear spins ) and para-hydrogen (antisymmetric, with
antiparallel nuclear spins). There is a small energy "gap" between the
two, indicative of the entropy.
Ok - suspend disbelief for a moment for this speculation on what happens
(outside of cosmology) when H2 is relatively isolated at 300 K. At low
temperature p-H2 will exist in a virtually pure state. The conversion of
o-H2 to p-H2 is exothermic and a function of temperature OR catalytic
contact. It is also a spin alignment issue which could be influenced by
a negative bias in the gas caused by current flow, or by near-fields at
the wall of the nano enclosure.
Perhaps a negative bias in the gas can serve the dual purpose of both
mass(charge)-transport and exotherm at the anode, but the isothermal
reversion of p-H2 to o-H2, in the gas itself, happens without the
"degenerate" electron giving up its own energy. The energy is recouped
by ZPE - most likely in the gas itself, which (not coincidentally) has a
collision rate alignment coincidentally near the 1.42 GHz resonance line
of H2, which can be assumed for these purposes to be a strong ZPE
frequency at the low end of the range.
Just getting back to the ortho state requires an energy input but not
necessarily kinetic energy - and that is the key. This involves a change
in quantum spin, which is not required to be a product of heat transfer.
This has ZPE written all over it, even if the details are not spelled
out yet. And there are probably at least two different thermodynamic
mechanisms taking place involving spin and kinetics.
When hydrogen is cooled from room temperature (300 K) the ortho-hydrogen
component converts from a negentropic equilibrium concentration of 75%
(3-1 ratio of ortho-to-para) down to 50% at 77K, which is never reached
in this putative situation, of course ... but there are catalytic
effects on the transfer surfaces (I am trying to avoid calling them
"electrodes", which can accomplish the conversion of o-H2 to p-H2 which
is exothermic, due to temporary hydride-formation-recombination.
When o-H2 approaches this interface there is something unusual poised to
happen as the interstitial spaces within the metal matrix are similar in
volume to the approaching molecule, but slightly smaller - plus this
mechanism probably also involves that singularity mentioned earlier - in
the case of gold: there are at least many "near" bonding states, even if
few elements actually can bond - and all of them have may have potential
energy-spreads. Most likely some of these potential bonding states can
catalytically induce the exotherm while not really allowing a stable
hydride bond to form. [admittedly a guess]
Then when the para-hydrogen, having given up its energy (at the rate of
over a billion times per second per molecule) reverts back into the
ortho state by the "virtual spin" of a kinetic rate which is
coincidently a possible ZPE frequency (the 1.42 billion times per second
per molecule frequency of the CMB). Even an extra (fractional) billionth
of an eV in spin energy, at this rate of collision will amount to a lot
of excess energy being available at the (e-) acceptor site. [admittedly
a guess]
The presence of a ZPF is of course predicted by QED (Quantum
Electrodynamics) and in the ZPE ground state, the equations indicate
that ordinary physical photons are not present, yet "potential
electromagnetic energy" is present - and vibration at that exact
frequency seems to be the stimulus that converts the potential into the
real. The presence of zero-point fluctuations have been verified
experimentally with the Lamb Shift, and in the magnetic moment of the
electron, so going a step up to earth-bound para-ortho-H2 and the
Casimir force cohering the CMB is not so huge a leap of faith.
I realize that there will be many errors in the draft above, but I am
going to send this anyway, and correct it later. Which is par for the
course (the par three ;-) here at Vo....
Jones
