Casimir Effect as space drive?

[thnkrx]

<p>Ok...so a few weeks ago, I was reading a moderately old thriller I picked up out of a used book store.&nbsp; Well, it was called a thriller, but an awful lot of it revolved around advanced physics, particularly zero point energy.&nbsp; Towards the end, the author revealed an idea screwy enough that a varient of it might actually work...</p><p>The Casimir effect involves two plates in a vacuum very very close together.&nbsp; At a certain point, they are drawn together, releasing a definite amount of energy for a very short period.&nbsp; As I understand it, along with some of the more essoteric aspects of cavitation, this is&nbsp;nearly the only legit manifestation of zero point or vacuum point energy.&nbsp; It usually gets dismissed because the energy release is very short, and purportedly not that impressive as such things go...but the people claiming this are thinking in terms of only a single set of plates, or maybe just a couple&nbsp;sets.</p><p>But suppose instead of just two pairs of plates you had thousands or pairs, or better yet, millions of pairs, all set up so that the energy is released in a synchronized fashion? (as in an internal combustion engine).&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp;</p>

 

[Stewie_Griffin]

Sounds interesting but it would probably require much more advanced tech then we have now or that we will have in the near future. &nbsp;I suggest moving this to the 'physics' section,&nbsp;you will probably get more responses. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[tomnackid]

I believe the late Dr. Robert Foward actually patented a device that would use multiple plates to extract usable energy from the Casimir effect. The engineering would be formidable and the amount of energy produced woould be rather small, but this "Casimir battery" could theoretically produce detectable levels of energy for a brief period.