 could help researchers build tiny machines, such as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), that today are hindered by surface interactions that can make nanomaterials sticky to the point of permanent adhesion.)
A FEW GOOD MEMS Harnessing the Casimir effect (which takes place between the two metal plates in the above diagram) could help researchers build tiny machines, such as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), that today are hindered by surface interactions that can make nanomaterials sticky to the point of permanent adhesion.
Image: © Jeremy Munday, California Institute of Technology
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Named for a Dutch physicist, the Casimir effect governs interactions of matter with the energy that is present in a vacuum. Success in harnessing this force could someday help researchers develop low-friction ballistics and even levitating objects that defy gravity. For now, the U.S. Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched a two-year, $10-million project encouraging scientists to work on ways to manipulate this quirk of quantum electrodynamics.
Vacuums generally are thought to be voids, but Hendrik Casimir believed these pockets of nothing do indeed contain fluctuations of electromagnetic waves. He suggested, in work done in the 1940s with fellow Dutch physicist Dirk Polder, that two metal plates held apart in a vacuum could trap the waves, creating vacuum energy that, depending on the situation, could attract or repel the plates. As the boundaries of a region of vacuum move, the variation in vacuum energy (also called zero-point energy) leads to the Casimir effect. Recent research done at Harvard University, Vrije University Amsterdam and elsewhere has proved Casimir correct—and given some experimental underpinning to DARPA's request for research proposals.
Investigators from five institutions—Harvard, Yale University, the University of California, Riverside, and two national labs, Argonne and Los Alamos—received funding. DARPA will assess the groups' progress in early 2011 to see if any practical applications might emerge from the research. "If the program delivers, there's a good chance for a follow-on program to apply" the research, says Thomas Kenny, the DARPA physicist in charge of the initiative.
Program documents on the DARPA Web site state the goal of the Casimir Effect Enhancement program "is to develop new methods to control and manipulate attractive and repulsive forces at surfaces based on engineering of the Casimir force. One could leverage this ability to control phenomena such as adhesion in nanodevices, drag on vehicles, and many other interactions of interest to the [Defense Department]."
Nanoscale design is the most likely place to start and is also the arena where levitation could emerge. Materials scientists working to build tiny machines called microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) struggle with surface interactions, called van der Waals forces, that can make nanomaterials sticky to the point of permanent adhesion, a phenomenon known as "stiction". To defeat stiction, many MEMS devices are coated with Teflon or similar low-friction substances or are studded with tiny springs that keep the surfaces apart. Materials that did not require such fixes could make nanotechnology more reliable. Such materials could skirt another problem posed by adhesion: Because surface stickiness at the nanoscale is much greater than it is for larger objects, MEMS designers resort to making their devices relatively stiff. That reduces adhesion (stiff structures do not readily bend against each other), but it reduces flexibility and increases power demands.
Under certain conditions, manipulating the Casimir effect could create repellant forces between nanoscale surfaces. Hong Tang and his colleagues at Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science sold DARPA on their proposal to assess Casimir forces between miniscule silicon crystals, like those that make up computer chips. "Then we're going to engineer the structure of the surface of the silicon device to get some unusual Casimir forces to produce repulsion," he says. In theory, he adds, that could mean building a device capable of levitation.
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29 Comments
Add CommentDoes this mean that we can now have floating cities above the ground like they did in Star Wars?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the macro world, glue is expensive. For the gekko, the forces are a necessary burden for mobility on smooth surfaces. Maybe we should try modeling a more energy efficient mechanical equivalent of this creature?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) "even levitating objects that defy gravity" If an object defies gravity, there is no need to levitate it - it would already float.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2) "Dutch physicist Dirk Polder" Wasn't Dirk Polder a '70's porno star? (LOL)
Don't "scalar wave" Extremely Low Frequency" microwave emissions employ this same vacuum principle? Could it be that DARPA already has developed scalar wave "directed energy" weapons systems? Just wondering...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdefying Gravity could also mean falling slower as normal
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIF this bore fruit, i really doubt we'd hear about it for some time as the military would keep a lid on it. What is that new weapon they have that caused that fertilizer-based IED to blow up while the insurgents were planting it in the road in Afg? Seemed like it was done from a plane.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRockjohny, it wouldn't be hard to blow an IED with any sort of strong laser. I know that sounds very sci-fi, but Boeing created one a few years ago capable of burning carbon steel a mile away. Google it! It'd be a breeze to blow up some improvised explosive from a Helicopter especially.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis whole funding for levitation research would be a great way to bring already existing technology to public attention in a subtle way without a drawn out declassification process. If no one else is going to say it then I will. Documentation on UFOs is being declassified gradually by different countries around the world right now, European publications cover it more frequently than most American ones. It's clear that there are at least man-made devices already in use that defy "known" physics, though it's still up to debate how much of it--if any--is extra-terrestrial. This funding of 10 million dollars is a pittance in the grand scheme of scientific funding in the field, so it could even be a way to simply test the waters of public opinion on the matter of anti-gravity.
As convoluted and tinfoil-hatted as that sounded, who can say I'm wrong?
Have they tried "nanotubes"? Nanotubes can do anything! Everything!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes We Can! Defies laws of physics. Yes We Can. Do nothing and get a Pease Prize. But, pour some nano's on 'em. That's the deal! Nano-stuff: water soluble. Eco-friendly nano-stuff. Flying cars by Apple. iCars.
iEconomy. iCare-Health reform. Yeah, like the Ins. Cos. are onboard with that.
We simply need more nano-stuff! Pour it on the ground. Cleans up Coal Ash pits. Cleans water. Fixes economies--hire people to build and spread nano-stuff.
iFloaters for cars, cities and UFO's. Miracle things -- those nano-stuffs. Eh, gekkos use nano-stuff. Make it themselves, they do.
Umm, *NO* this was not intended to make sense. Have you read the article?
When is Scientific American going out of business. All they do is post articles with garbage quack science:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Nanoscale design is the most likely place to start and is also the arena where levitation could emerge."
The energy scale of the virtual particles that create the Casimir effect, when compared to gravity, is so Infinitesimal that the above statement is the equivalent of saying that the Sun orbits the Earth. Editors, go read a book (or at least wikipedia) before you post this garbage.
"Between 1996 and 2003, for example, NASA had a program to explore what it calls Breakthrough Propulsion Physics to build spacecraft capable of traveling at speeds faster than light (299,790 kilometers per second). One way to do that is by harnessing the Casimir force in a vacuum and using the energy to power a propulsion system."
Certainly, if you ignore the basic laws of special relativity that have been experimentally proven, the above statement might somehow be correct. However, conventionally accelerating to the speed of light not only would take infinite energy, but also infinite time. You cannot conventionally travel faster than the speed of light. The above quoted section is nonsense. It would take infinite energy to do what you propose, and the virtual particle pairs that produce the Casimir effect do not generate infinite energy and never will. Further, going "faster" than the speed of light is impossible. You might be able to bend/rip space-time to "travel" faster than the speed of light, but the garbage you propose above is impossible. Even with infinite energy, you cannot go faster than the Speed of Light. Editors, go read a book on special relativity before you post this garbage.
When is the public going to hold you accountable for propagating quack science?
Ah, did you people posting really read the above article?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thislevitation yes but on the nano scale.
The Casimir force propulsion and zero point energy use quote was about a real but FAILED NASA program - not a new proposal.
It would only take a strong EM field to blow the device as there were electronics connected to it (cell phone anyone?). Pulse a strong EM field and the electronics would trigger... blown up sir!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAh the Casimir Force... as soon as we scale it up by 21 orders of magnitude, THEN we're REALLY in business!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Casimir "force" doesn't represent free energy any more that the force of static electricity represents free energy. The generated by a Casimir device comes from the positioning of the parts of the device. It's akin to saying a boulder has "free" energy because you rolled it up a hill. It takes energy to position the parts of the Casimir devices such that the Casimir force will repel them. You can't recover more work from a Casimir device than it takes to position the components in the first place.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is not to say we can't harness the Casimir force for such task as preventing stiction but were never going to be able to actually move things with it.
Heh. Someone at DARPA has been reading KeelyNet. "Vacuum energy"/"Zero point energy" is the quantum fluctuation of particles between existance and non-existance. It's detectable with the Cassimer Effect but there's no known way to tap the energy. If you could you'd have a nuclear reactor the size of a walnut. That or you'd accidentally switch the universe to the "off" position. We're a hundred years away from calling it science quackery.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Does this mean that we can now have floating cities above the ground like they did in Star Wars?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly if those cities are a billionth of an inch long.
"If an object defies gravity, there is no need to levitate it - it would already float."
Good catch - but that's to be expected from the New Scientific American writers.
Polder - he really was a Dutch physicist, who worked with Casimir.
"... at speeds faster than light (299,790 kilometers per second)"
I see that the Sci Am writers still believe that their readers don't know what c is equal to. And I can excuse them for rounding it off from the official value of 299,792.458 km/S.
"The energy scale of the virtual particles that create the Casimir effect, when compared to gravity, is so Infinitesimal that the above statement is the equivalent of saying that the Sun orbits the Earth."
I don't think so.. The 4 forces, in increasing order of magnitude, are
Gravity
Electromagnetism
Weak Interaction
Strong Interaction
Each one is several thousand times stronger than the one before. The last two are the ones that work at the subatomic level. If gravity were anywhere near as strong as those, it'd be able to pull atoms apart.
The Casimir effect is being studied in nano-world applications. Just don't expect to see any "Casimir generators" giving you free energy any time soon.
Finally, the writers were just quoting research ("Breakthrough Propulsion Physics") that has been done at NASA &c. If you're going to accuse anyone of "quack science", blame NASA. But first you might want to read their 16 peer-reviewed articles in journals like Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Foundations of Physics, Physical Review, IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, &c.
I-like-quack-science. Why? Because by inventing lots and lots of quack science one fills one's mind with load and loads of things, that may contribute to a newly discovered truth when your mind wakes you up with a head-cracking-on-the-ceiling-moment because your mind's night-time file-crew have added connecting points of the same energy like items together. The eureka moment transfers into your awakening mind, and it is that induced thought to your awareness system that blasts your form upright. If you do not transcribe that clear-as-a-bell information immediately, then upon awakening again you may realize that fantastic thought came last night. What was that...hmm. It was....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour short term memory is a very small construct. Every sensory perception enters there first. Things such as a fly's buzzing, a squirrel dropping a nut on a metal roof, a sigh of contentment, or the dressing down from a boss, such as your mate. It is only the serious or important things that make it towards your long term memory, the rest just overflow the rim and drift away down some drain.
The more intensity you place to remembering the beautiful thought of last night; the more items enter your short term memory and so the faster the marvelous thought drifts away.
So, please Mr. and Mrs. thinker-upper of quack science carry on with your good work. The Ancient One
Oh yeah, to travel faster than the speed of light, simply take a short cut by accessing a voided universe's empty space, and then cut back to your destination here at Orelia Five in the Frillian Sector. But first, always make sure you have the required co-ordinates for re-entry and be sure to bring your anti-Cassimir effect boots, because the effect seems to have a bit of a glich.
I can help in the area of mathematics in this project.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood luck. RYTIS BARTKUS rytisb2000@yahoo.co.uk
I can help in the area of the mathematics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can help in the area of the mathematics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisrytisb2000@yahoo.co.uk
bernsten69, shit-wit, you said "is" and then "they", which means you believe 1 = 2.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://google.com/groups?q=Casimir+Huygens+Guth
http://google.com/group?q=gimme-money+accelerate
Get lost, retard.
good on you mate! we should all rally against this utter garbage,these people should be ashamed of themselves.if anything they are anti science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuinn, nanotubes are already an example of Casimir effect, they roll up and hold their shape due to Cassimir effect , recent discovery by Peng Chen at Cornell indicates a relationship to catalytic action which only occurs at the ends and defects of Casimir cavity. The implication is that the change in distance may be more important than just the mesoscopic scale of plate spacing to induce effects. see animations of Casimir plates vs vacuum fluctuations http://byzipp.com/energy/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"It's not so much that these look like really good energy schemes so much as they are clever ways of broaching some really hard questions and testing them," says Marc Millis, the NASA physicist who oversaw the propulsion program.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSounds like "clever" means "we can get them to fund pure research by getting them to believe in a fantasy application".
We are talking about levitating an object in our four dimensions on an energy source (repelling gravitational
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisforces in our dimensions) that is coming from other 11 dimensions according to string theory? Is this a proven theory? Does these forces come from some other source?
The casimir force is always described as occuring in vacuum. So are MEMs devices fabricated or operated in vacuum?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe vacum is everywhere as are the dispersion forces creating this effect (think fabric of space-time vs the deep space connotation). The vacuum is not empty but rather a roiling sea of EM energy or virtual particles wiking into and out of existence, this energy is chaotic and cancels out but can be supressed or enhanced by mass and geometry. C increases between the plates of a Casimir cavity due to supression of vacuum energy (Scharnhorst effect), Light in normal empty space is "slowed" by interactions with these unseen vacuum waves or virtual particles with which the quantum vacuum seethes such that time inside the plates accelerates from our perspective outside the plates. We also know time slows in a deep gravitational well and finally stops from our perspective at an event horizon. I think this can be considered an opposing situation where mass causes the vacuum flux to compress to a higher energy density instead of lower -My point being that a relativistic interpretation should be applied to the Casimir effect and relativistic forms of hydrogen such as the hydrino and deuterium clusters where the claims of fractional fround states would be a much more palatable from a relativistic perspective.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://froarty.scienceblog.com/32155/relativistic-interpertation-of-casimir-effect-expanded/
If NASA indeed "...had a program ... of traveling at speeds faster than light" as well as financed other crazy anti-gravity projects than no wonder a growing number of people around the World do not believe anymore that Americans stepped on the Moon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf NASA indeed "...had a program ... of traveling at speeds faster than light" as well as financed other crazy anti-gravity projects than no wonder a growing number of people around the World do not believe anymore that Americans stepped on the Moon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf NASA indeed "...had a program ... of traveling at speeds faster than light" as well as financed other crazy anti-gravity projects than no wonder a growing number of people around the World do not believe anymore that Americans stepped on the Moon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this