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I removed But this raises the question of why the cosmological constant is many orders of magnitude smaller than even the electroweak scale (much less the GUT or Planck scale) — and if the the cosmological constant is so small, why is it not zero. Observations that the expanding Universe appears to be accelerating seem to support the cosmic inflation theory first proposed by Alan Guth (1981) — in which the nascent Universe passed through a phase of exponential expansion driven by a negative vacuum energy density (positive vacuum pressure).

-as it seems to have little to do with vacuum energy, and reads like original research, with no references. Dan100 09:35, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

"considers the vacuum ground state not to be completely empty, but to consist of a seething mass of virtual particles and fields"

Perhaps the term 'seething mass' is not ideal here? 'Seething plethora' or just a 'plethora' or something that does not involve the word mass may be more suitable.

Maybe add seething matter, using Einstein's definition of matter.

[edit] Merge to Zero-point energy

It seems that much of this article is in fact about Zero-point energy and duplicates the content of that article. I have proposed a merge. Sections about Zero-point energy should be removed and the material merged into Zero-point energy. (I do not know if we will have much more left than a disambiguation page.)

Petri Krohn 02:44, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

See Talk:Zero-point energy for a possible undisclosed conflict of interest in edits by Haisch (talk • contribs) as the pltn13.pacbell.net anon. These might represent a newbie who didn't realize how this would appear, but the situation bears monitoring. ---CH 08:43, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

134.193.168.236 (talk • contribs), aka the Kansas City library anon, has removed without comment the merge proposal. I have reverted this. I kept the change from Van der Vaals to Van der Waals. ---CH 00:45, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

My post on The ZPE talk page is as follows: "I'm going to assume that this argument is over (as the last message was in April, it's now July) - I'm going to remove the merge tag as the majority of posts disagree with the proposal. Furthermore, it's just plain silly!" ... so be it. Your one true god is David P. A. Hunter, esq. III ^{Talk to me!} 09:41, 1 July 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Introductory paragraph

As of 6 Jul 2006: The vacuum energy results in existence of most (if not all) fundamental forces - and thus in all effects involving these forces too - and is observed in various experiments (like spontaneous emission of light or gamma radiation, Casimir effect, Van-Der Waals bonds, Lamb shift, etc) and has consequences for the behavior of the Universe on cosmological scales.

This doesn't make any sense (gramatically or scientifically):

• results n existence of - do you mean "causes" or "is caused by"? I guess the latter.
• most (if not all) - incredibly woolly for a scientific note. If we assume GUT, then the three observed fundamental forces (gravity, electroweak, strong) are just different aspects of the same force. So just say "all".
• observed - we don't observe the vacuum energy directly (or we could make it do work and get a free lunch).
• spontaneous emission of light or gamma radiation - I guess you mean emission of photons from excited atomic states. "Light" to a layman is visible light, so that's a very narrow band of the spectrum. "Gamma" refers to electromagnetic radiation with energy above 10 keV that originates from nuclear processes (ie, not atomic transitions). Just say "spontaneous emission" then you cover everything from microwaves to hard K-shell X-rays.
• etc - Only use "etc." if it should be obvious to the reader how to continue the list, eg. the fruit salad contained apples, pears, grapes, etc. I don't think the average reader can guess the next experiment on this list, so just use "eg" at the front to indicate that these are just a few examples from many.

Lumping all that together, I'd propose the following rewrite:

The vaccuum energy arises from the field associated with all fundamental forces. Its effects can be observed in various phenomena (eg, spontaneous emission, Casimir effect, Van der Waals force, Lamb shift) and has consequences for the behavior of the Universe on cosmological scales. --Oscar Bravo 06:52, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] In a state

Don't know if this is the place to ask, but... I've heard about a scientist who, according to news reports, produced a "below ground state" state in hydrogen. Anybody know more? Trekphiler 20:34, 23 November 2006 (UTC)