Talk:Zero-point field

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

[edit] Talk moved from Talk:Zero-point field

[edit] ZPE vs. ZPF?

[edit] ZPF is not speculative while ZPE still is.

I've noticed a large amount of good physics on the ZPF has been tainted by peripheral ideas that are are still not on solid ground. For instance, it is known classically that at zero degrees Kelvin the spin state of all matter should radiate its energy away and collapse inward extremely fast. Yet it does not do so. We also know that the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle predicts a certain minimum energy of a quantum oscillator in space. So we know this field must exist and is simply refered to as the zero point field and it is a solid concept.

What is more controversial is the amount of energy that is contained in the zpf. From my understanding of most of the literature, physics continues to mix apples and oranges on this issue. For instance, the particle adherents suggest the energy accumulates for each frequency of oscillation, one in each of the 3 dimensions, up to the Plank level. And they rationalize this amount by saying there are invisible "virtual" particles flitting in and out of existance that we can't see.

The problem is that physics is mixing fields and particles in their construction of the zpf. A classical field in physics is the gravitational field. We know that as matter heats up or accelerates the gravitational field increases. But what is a gravitational field? It's probably just a electromagnetic energy gradient in the zpf field. Sort of like a low pressure area surrounding a tornado. That tornado is the spin of a particle. If the universe is to retain causality the total energy of the universe must always be finite and conserved. Is is not possible that when you accelerate or heat up a particle you are just increasing the "magnitude" of it spin angular momentum vector while simultaneously drawing in energy from the surrounding field?

There's no need to project astronomical energy levels to the zpf or to expect that energy to be able to be tapped in its pure form. It's no different than suddenly expecting to be able to tap ambient air pressure from one direction only. It doesn't happen.


Comments from Talk:Zero-point energy

Why aren't there pages on both Zero Point Energy [ZPE] and Zero Point Field [ZPF] in WP? Both of these topics are new to me; hence, I am wondering why I have to go "outside" of WP to find information on ZPF? Such as the following:

Can someone explain this to me?--Sadi Carnot 01:27, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

1) For whatever social/cultural reasons, the rate of participation by physicists in WP is considerably lower than the participation rate of mathematicians. Many articles haven't been written yet, or are in poor condition.
2) Articles on popular or general-interest topics are difficult to create and maintain (witness conversations above). The subject specialists are often overwhelmed by the onslaught of entropy, degeneration and decay, as well-meaning but ill-informed editors make detrimental edits. Its exhausting to monitor these and beat them back. (Its a lot more satisfying to write highly specialized articles; as so the unwashed masses leave one alone. This is why the WP articles on arcane topics are excellent, while those on high-school-level topics are a wasteland of misinformation.) linas 03:52, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree; however, a stub on Zero-point field would be nice if you have the time? I may be able to contribute a little if you start it. There are a lot of new age writers out there trying to make a ramshackle connection between the ZPF and concepts like Akashic field, Morphogenic field, The field, Quantum field, Electromagnetic field, etc. Hence, it would be nice to get some straight scoop on the essentials of the topic. Or are ZPE and ZPF the essentially same topic?--Sadi Carnot 18:54, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I redirected Zero-point field to Vacuum state, and gave it a brief definition there. It's a peculiar term, not widely used, but roughly it is the empty quantum field, of which the quantized Electromagnetic field would be an example. Although I admit that, like many, I get a lurid thrill from reading new age philosophy, spiritualism, ESP, UFO's and the rest, and its all quite fun, I'll also be hard-nosed and state that these topics, as well as Morphogenic field and Akashic field, are scientific hokum. Fun hokum, but still hokum. On the other hand, if there is one lesson from science, it is this: truth is stranger than fiction. linas 04:29, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
By the way, the two articles that you quote above, on halexandria.org, appear to be mostly correct, although I did not actually read them. (on second look, they seem to veer off-course a bit). Unfortunately, none of this stuff has any easy explanation, and you really do have to get a graduate degree in physics to understand it. That's just the way it is ... linas 04:34, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment by Pjacobi

Pls provide some rationale for not longer redirecting this lemma.

IMHO we may have too many, not too few articles on this topic, adding to the confusion:

Also, "Zero-point field", isn't much is used in physics. More than half of Google scholar hits go the specific theory of Haisch et al and should be discussed in a more specific article. Pjacobi 18:45, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with you, I barely see what the point of this topic is but the new-age crowd is attempting to bend this word into something is not. But, on the other hand, I came looking for this article as a reader wanting to find straight information on zero-point field, after reading about the word in multiple books; personally, I really don't care about the other terms (I assume other readers will feel the same?).
I've read the four books mentioned on the article page, plus a few more and they keep referring to the zero-point field by various names, e.g. A-field, zpf, The field, etc., but from a respectable electrical engineering point of view, are making a mockery of things for the average-joe. Some books such as McTaggart's 2001 The Field has been a top-500 Amazon book for several years running now. With multiple books now written on this topic justifies a short to-the-point article explaining the term technically and rigorously. I was the one who added the derivation to zero-point energy (history section). I also asked User talk:linas to chip in on this article. Maybe you can as well? --Sadi Carnot 20:38, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
You should better have read only 2 of the books mentioned on the article page plus two standard textbooks on quantum field theory. --Pjacobi 16:59, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Started stub on zero-point field

Disucssion from User talk:linas

Hi, can you pitch in a bit on this article I started. Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 17:45, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Um, sorry. My gut impression was "crank physics", and this is exactly what I was trying to avoid when I last went through this class of articles. There might be a valid article about "the sociology and psychology of zero point energy in crank physics", but that would be a sociology article, not a physics article. linas 01:21, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry, did you just revert an article sourced with four references, the first being a definition verbatim out an Encyclopedia of Quantum Physics? You just lost a lot of respect. Your actions are not to be commended. My intentions are to see a straight textbook article on the term "zero point field" as it is understood in modern physics. If you think you can do better than me, than please do; if not, take your concerns to Talk:Zero-point field where we can discuss this in the coming weeks. Doing a redirect-revert on my effort to write a short article on the topic was not at all nice. I will be posting rfc's on all of the science project pages if you do a redirect on my efforts again. --Sadi Carnot 14:41, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

The article is now up to 20 references. I most likely won’t be contacting your user page for help in the future. --Sadi Carnot 15:46, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I'd still vote for changing back to a redirect. The number of references isn't the ultimate measure of article quality. The historical excourse doesn't really fit.... --Pjacobi 16:37, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't known what you mean by "vote". Before I wrote up a short summary of this term, as best I could, using the 16 references shown, it was a redirect to vacuum state where, supposedly, one sentence, namely "the term "zero-point field" is sometimes used as a synonym for the vacuum state of an individual quantized field", written by user:linas, was supposed to explain this term. I’m not claiming that the article I wrote is robust, but it is definitely an improvement on linas’ one sentence. Please feel free to chip in to improve the article. Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 02:05, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
No. Adding nonsense to sense is not an improvement. --Pjacobi 10:13, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some trouble at Zero-point field

from Portal talk:Physics

which was and most likely should be again a redirect to vacuum state. Now it has become a strange mixture of history of QM, Haisch-cruft and worse. See talk page. --Pjacobi 16:40, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

As for this comment, I don’t know why you are shooting down my efforts to write up on a notable topic. A start page page is never perfect, that is the idea at Wikipedia. Second, as for your comment “Haisch-cruft and worse”, I didn’t know who “Haisch”, i.e. Bernard Haisch, was until just now, nor do I care. If you have a better reference, go ahead and put it in. As for your conditioner “and worse”, this term if very popular in the new-age book stores, hence the related section. Wikipedia is not about information censorship, even if it is a mis-application or mis-representation of basic science. Also, I don’t know why you seem to always be coincidently popping up on the talk page of articles that I start? --Sadi Carnot 02:35, 19 May 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Thoughts on Haisch and Stochastic Electrodynamics

I don't know how it comes to be that Bernard Haisch has come to be regarded with such venom. While stochastic electrodynamics may not be correct, for instance SE predicts the total energy of universe comeing out around 10^100 more than cosmological constant predicts, he at least is thinking out of the box. I personally think the biggest failing is to not include the lower radiation pressure surrounding particles we see as gravity into those calculations, which would change everything.

What he says otherwise connecting Zitterbewegung and Inertia makes perfect sense. Why is it that modern physics is accepting of the non-causality of virtual particles existing, colliding, and non-existing over and over again. It's just an excuse for results not adding up - bad physics. It makes much more sense to expect a "primordial" field, the ZPF, that shows up in Zitterbewegung action of electrons. Instead of the non-causality of virtual particles, one has instead infinitesmal lines of force that have existed forever causing the Zitterbewegung action, but which are "organized" though the process of acceleration into the various fields. While being imperfect in factual results, I consider him a hero for opening up the discussion into new ideas that have great potential, instead of the same old, same old that led to the monster we call string theory. I personally think there wouldn't be so much venom directed his way if some of his ideas, such as the ones I just mentioned, didn't actually make sense and didn't directly threaten the status quo.

The other stuff, such as UFOs, extracting energy from the vacuum, can all be considered personal opinions. But there is no reason to attack "everything" he's come up with because one disagrees with other parts. That's more of a visceral reaction and not logical or useful.

[edit] Zero-point field redirects here (again)

For being severely misleading and the much less used term, I've made Zero-point field and redirect to this article (again). Compare the last version before redirecting: Zero-point field. Stuff like According to recent 2005 theoretical considerations, the source free vacuum electromagnetic field can be considered to be a composite of a neutrino and an anti neutrino IMHO speaks for itself. The opinions of Bernard Haisch should be presented at Stochastic electrodynamics as they are considered fringe. Pjacobi 10:38, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

You just deleted an entire article with 16 references, because you don't like one reference? Your behavior is very unbecoming and will be reported if it continues. If you have a problem with that reference, feel free to find a better one and replace it. --Sadi Carnot 11:11, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
As I've already tried to get as much expert attention for this sad topic by posting an the respective project and portal talk pages, I'm more than willing to to endure any amout of reporting.
The only thing you've demonstrated by your article attempt was, that almost anything can be sourced. Without a knowledge of the standard textbooks of the fields, you will never have the ability to weight the sources.
Pjacobi 17:09, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article critique

The article states:

The electromagnetic zero-point field is loosely considered as a sea of background electromagnetic energy that fills the vacuum of space, and is often regarded merely as a curious outcome of the quantum mechanical requirement...

This sentence is strange/misleading. 1) why single out the electromagnetic field? There is a vacuum state for all fields not just this one.

2) The assertion that its "merely a curious outcome" blatently contradicts the sentence right before it (which talks about the Casimir effect), and completely ignores things like Lamb shift, which was awarded with a Nobel prize, I believe.

linas 13:41, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More non-sense

The article states:

It is believed that an electromagnetic field exists in a vacuum even when the temperature of the surrounding material is reduced towards zero so that the thermal field tends to zero.[3]

Two problemms:

1)True but insane/misleading. The vacuum state has nothing to do with thermal effects.

2) Again, a focus on the electromagnetic field; the phenomenon holds for all fields.

The existence of such a zero-point field has been confirmed experimentally by the Casimir experiment, i.e. the measurement of the attractive force between two parallel plates in an evacuated, near-zero temperature enclosure.[3]

Temperature has nothing to do with it. The Casimir effect is now regularly seen in nanotech devices, and is sometimes taken account of during the engineering phase.

That force is found to be proportional to the inverse fourth power of the distance apart of the plates; it has been shown that such a result can only be produced by a zero-point field whose spectral energy density has a frequency dependence of ρ(ν) = kν3.[3]

Half-true, half-bullshit. The article on the Casimir effect gives a better derivation. The actual effect depends not only on the bulk contribution, but also on the boundary conditions.

According to recent 2005 theoretical considerations, the source free vacuum electromagnetic field can be considered to be a composite of a neutrino and an anti neutrino and that the zero-point field may have a relation to the ubiquitous dark energy.[4]

This is utter and total crack-smoking insanity. linas 13:53, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Yet more nonsense

So far, every sentence in this article has contained either minor or major errors, or has been nonsense. The history section is particularly almost completely irrelevent to the concept. It attempts to recap half a century of development of QM and QFT into a focus on black body radiation and the quantization of the simple harmonic oscillator. This whole section should be deleted.

Its conclusion is insane:

In recent years, it has been suggested that the electromagnetic zero-point field is not merely an artifact of quantum mechanics, but a real entity with major implications for gravity, astrophysics and technology. This view is shared by a number of researchers, including Boyer (1980), McCrea (1986), Puthoff (1987) and Rueda and Haisch (1998).[8][9][10][11]

A long list of notable cranks. I too, had the mis-pleasure of dining with someone who was going put the dirty petroleum industry out of business by mining clean energy from the zero-point field. That does not mean my dinner guest was not a crank, despite his illustrious publications on this topic. linas 14:02, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal: Make this an article on the pseudoscience effects only.

I have a proposal. Given that this article got just about every aspect of the actual physics wrong, and given that actual physicists call it the "vacuum state" and not "zero-point energy", I suggest turning this article into an article about the pseudoscience only. This would allow more or less unlimited discussion of the cranky bits withlittle or no arguments. Would that work? linas 14:10, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I performed this edit, removing the erroneous explanations, and keeping only the pseudoscience discussions. I think it could turn into a marvelous article with a bit of work; I've enjoyed reading this kind of stuff on and off over the years. linas 14:24, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
This has some problems with overlaps regarding Free energy suppression and Stochastic electrodynamics. But it's remarkably better than the previous attempt by Said. --Pjacobi 16:55, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
A while ago, I actually read through some of the SED papers. These people aren't completely crazy; there's a kernel of an interesting idea there. The problem with SED is the rejection of QED, which, in terms of decimal places of measured values, is the most successful theory humankind has ever known. (FWIW, my wide & varied travels in math is in large part driven by a gut feeling that there's a certain something missing in QFT, and I have an inkling of what it is, but I don't have the tools to express it.) linas 00:12, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move talk page back

I think it would be good to move the talk page back to Talk:Zero-point field, since its appearence here, at Talk:Vacuum state, is disconcerting and somewhat confusing. Is there an admin watching this, who could do this? linas 16:29, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Done. --Pjacobi 16:54, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quick comment

I’m short on time presently, but quickly I see that the solution linas and Pjacobi have decided on is to chuck the term completely into the pseudoscience category and to strip off any respectable references I may have used. This obviously violates WP:NPOV. I understand, I don’t like articles that confound pseudoscience and science together; and I really could care less about this term, but quoting from Gribbin’s Encyclopedia of Particle Physics (subheading zero-point energy) “in quantum field theory, the lowest energy state of a field, i.e. its ground state, is non-zero, giving the quantum vacuum a complex structure.” Hence, at this point, I would rather scrap the whole article for this one sentence, with this one reference. Down the road, I will likely have more time to argue. Again, I really could care less if there actually is such a field or not; at this point there is too much derogatory commentary invariable directed at me as though I were up to some kind of conspiracy. I’ll have to come back to this irritating situation when my tanks are full. --Sadi Carnot 04:02, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

As said above, we have articles for this mainstream knowledge. You find it everywhere in the QFT articles, starting from the very basic and well understood Vacuum polarization, the main article Vacuum state, the axiomatic QFT variant Reeh-Schlieder theorem, there's a connection to the Unruh effect. And a non-technical introduction is in the article Virtual particle.
Adding User:Sadi Carnot's essay on the zero-point field to this list of articles doesn't help.
And if you "don’t like articles that confound pseudoscience and science together", you shouldn't perhaps started btinging Lynne McTaggart in here.
Pjacobi 07:12, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New option

Judging by the trend of logic the two of you are using against my efforts, namely (1) ridicule each reference then (2) delete it, I am going to assume that neither of you have the capacity to write a decent one page article on zero point field from a rigorous scientific point of view. I will also suggest that this article be split into zero-point field (science) and zero-point field (pseudoscience). This will be similar to the articles Law of attraction and laws of attraction, which both have their origins in Plato’s first law of affinity, i.e. “likes attract unto likes”, but have since veered off into their own topics, namely “self help” (the first variation) and “thermodynamics and quantum chemistry” (the second variation). I’ll let this sit for a while to see if either of you can prove me wrong by writing up a decent article: zero-point field (science). --Sadi Carnot 17:22, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi Sadi, you still don't get it. We already have articles about the topic which is (in science) rarely named "zero-point field", I will repeat the list I've already given above but each time I look into this, I find even more article on this topics, so the list is still growing:
Pls compare the citebase search result [1]:
The top cited paper actually using the phrase "zero point field" are all by David Haisch, and relate to his non-mainstream theory of Stochastic electrodynamics. Per current guidelines and common sense, this use of a term shouldn't enter the mainstream articles. Then there papers by BG Siddarth -- only cited by other papers of this author. The Ibison paper is also about SED, as are most of the less cited ones.
Pjacobi 09:21, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] There is no evidence for strong and weak force zero-point fields.

The previous undoing of the latest edited version is unwarranted and against the policy of Wikipedia. If an edit is to be undone without comment it must be obvious and proven that the previous edit was vandalism of the subject in question. There is no reason to undo the previous edit I made because it has never been proven that there is a corresponding zero point field for the weak and strong force, either experimentally or that it is required mathematically. If you don't believe it then just do some of the latest cutting edge research on what quantum entanglement of particles actually is. You will find that the strong and weak force are just examples of quantum entanglement of particles and that the decay of particles in th weak force is just an imperfect instance of entanglement. Quantum Entanglement has also been shown to not require anything besides an electromagnetic zero-point field to come into existance. Until you have educated yourself on this subject you have no right to undo this past edit without comment.75.6.239.2 (talk) 20:26, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Are New Age ideas based on the zero point field completely pseudoscience?

It's interesting how easy it is for people to jump to conclusions about things. In the effort to put themselves in line with the herd of sheep called society "most" theortical physicists will delude themselves into believing certain things are impossible and that other things deemed impossible are not possible because it has been stated by authority figures in the field. For instance it has been an enduring position of the scientific community that conservation of energy does not pertain at the quantum level. Scientists have acted like contortionists to create theories of virtual particles, quantum "fluctuations" and delayed choice so as not to have to admit this is what they really believe. But everything they have said and speculated about in the last 50 years says they don't take conservation of energy at the quantum level seriously. Every time the flag of "conservation of energy" is run up the flafpole they all salute it because they just can't bring themselves to own up to it. But they are like little kids with crumbs on their faces telling their mom they don't know what happened to the chocolate cake she just baked.

But once you take conservation of energy and conservation of information (which is the same thing) seriously at the quantum level all sorts of strange and even mythical effects start to emerge. If information never is really lost do you really want to treat other people in a way you would not want to be treated? Even the idea of "fairness" suddenly takes on a richer meaning. Things just might come back to bite you if you don't act right. An idea we could all use a little bit more of.75.7.16.106 (talk) 20:55, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Edited "time" out of definition of temperature.

I changed my own edit because I realized time was intimately involved with the flow of information locally. At zero degrees kelvin the flow of energy and information stops. This seems to indicate that time itself for any space or body that could actually be brought to that temperature, would stop. So time is a redundant definition in that context. Time seems to be a measure of the "ticking over" of information locally. It may also be the reason that time slows down for any object accelerated to near the speed of light. If gravity is a measure of the zpf energy density surrounding a massive object or particle, then near the speed of light the zpf energy density around that object would be so "thinned out" that the energy and information exchange between the zpf and the object would slow down - time slows down. 75.7.18.188 (talk) 00:57, 12 February 2008 (UTC)