Re: starship-design: ZPE generators

[kyle <stk@sunherald.infi.net>]

Steve VanDevender wrote:
> 
> jimaclem@juno.com writes:
>  > Kyle,
>  >
>  >      What is a ZPE generator.  I'm just a poor engineer and have never
>  > heard of such a thing.
>  >
>  > Thanks,
>  > jimaclem@juno.com

A ZPE generator is a device (a REAL device) that draws energy from a
vacuum. The vacuum is actually not empty, but, as steve says, a sea of
energy fluctuations. The desity of this energy is thought to be
negative, and studies seem to support this. The energy can be tapped by
two closely >.1nm placed conductive plates. Several people have built
working devices to extract ZPE, one of which produces up to 100,000
times the energy input. Its very expirimental, but more realistic than
using antimatter, which doesn't pack nearly the same punch, and costs
$100 Billion per milligram. Most scientist doubt that it exists, but
this is simply because it would require revision of current theories,
and humans like to think they know it all. Be warned, however, there are
scientists that are too far out, and will believe anything. I'm in
between, a good standing point. ZPE may be replenished by special
circumstances (theoretically).

> There are some theories being floated around the physics community about
> vacuum not being really completely empty, but a sea of sub-particle
> energy fluctuations calculated to have a rather surprisingly high energy
> density.  This energy is supposedly what virtual particle formation
> draws from.  Kyle is subscribing to an even more radical belief that if
> this zero-point energy exists, it's possible to extract energy from it
> permanently, which I'm rather dubious about (as you might guess from my
> responses).  

Sorry you feel this way, but ZPE has been tapped already. Heard of
Hyde's machine? But most scientists don't listen to amatuers, since we
don't have PhD degrees to show.

> I'd rather work with plausibly exotic energy-generation
> methods like antimatter.

Antimatter is too expensive, where ZPE is cheap. Besides, antimatter is
only 100% conversion. O/U is better.

Kyle Mcallister