Casimir effect energy extraction

From: Craig Johnson (craigi@ibm.net)
Date: Sun Jan 30 2000 - 14:03:57 MST


Apparently, there is a startup company that is designing a MEMS device
to extract power from the vacuum using the Casimir effect. The company
was started by a Prof. Jordan Maclay who seems to have reasonable
credentials. Robert Forward is also involved. They also have a small
amount of grant funding from NASA. There is isn't a whole lot of
information on their page http://www.quantumfields.com/ but their
approach seems realistic both from a physics and a MEMS capability
viewpoint. In fact, it doesn't seem to require anything more than
existing (albeit state-of-the-art)engineering. If so, this seems to be
quite a significant development. Can anyone more familiar with the
Casimir effect comment ?



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