Re: starship-design: Re: Aliens

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@efn.org>]

kyle writes:
 > Why doesn't ZPE deplete? Your guess is as good as mine.

Who says it doesn't?  I've never seen even the physicists who propose
extracting energy from it claim that zero-point energy won't be depleted
by extraction.  At best, given the rather impressive energy densities
quoted for it (i.e. billions of kilograms of mass equivalent per cubic
centimeter of space) it would be sort of hard to notice, but if anything
conservation laws are more sacred than relativity and quantum mechanics
in physics.  "You can't get something for nothing" is one of the most
fundamental principles of physics.