Re: re: Re: starship-design: Zero Point Energy

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@efn.org>]

Connor writes:
 > > Is this separation you mention the same as what happens with Hawking
 > > radiation? A virtual particle pair pops into existence very close to the
 > > event horizon of a black hole. One of the particles escapes and the other
 > > doesn't, thereby contributing negative energy to the black hole.
 > 
 > I think that the energy still rounds out to zero, because for every particle that gets trapped 
 > inside the event horizon most likely a corrisponding anti particle has gotten trapped in 
 > there too. The same goes for the anti particle that got left behind. At most you'd have an 
 > imbalance of one or two particles, and personally I doubtthat becuase of all those 
 > conservation laws and whatnot.

The energy that creates the virtual particle pair comes from the black
hole's gravitational field, so if one of the pair escapes the black
hole, the black hole loses its energy.  The conservation laws still
hold.