Zero-Point Energy: Capturing Evanescence
Garret Moddel
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In one page
Garret Moddel's laboratory builds a device smaller than a speck of dust: a metal–insulator–metal diode — palladium and nickel separated by an insulator about two nanometres thick, thin enough for electrons to tunnel through — with an optical cavity sitting on top of it. That cavity is a Casimir cavity, two reflective layers close enough together that long-wavelength zero-point modes cannot fit between them, so the vacuum inside is thinner than the vacuum outside. Add the cavity and the diode starts producing electrical power with no apparent input, at a power density of 70 watts per square metre — about a third of what a solar cell delivers over the same area. Moddel reports the trend across thousands of devices in dozens of batches, with nine candidate measurement artifacts investigated and none able to explain the result. His proposed mechanism is borrowed from optics: the same trick as frustrated total internal reflection, catching an evanescent wave before it can disappear.
Why it matters hereThis is chapter 6's most advanced hardware claim — not a proposal but a fabricated device with a measured output and a published artifact analysis — and chapter 2's Casimir cavity turned from an experiment into a component. It also states the chapter's hardest question in the author's own words: if this is zero-point energy, where is the energy ultimately coming from?
What it claims
01Metal–insulator–metal diodes with an adjoining optical Casimir cavity produce electric power in the absence of any apparent input, at a power density of 70 watts per square metre — roughly one third of the power per unit area produced by solar cells.Abstract; Device Description and Results, pp. 495–496
On the bench now02A calculation of the power flow rather than the energy density puts the power available from the zero-point quantum vacuum, up to a cut-off photon energy of 4 eV, at 5.0 gigawatts per square metre — about what an entire full-size coal-fired power plant generates.Abstract; Zero-Point Energy Background, p. 495; Appendix I
Published and peer-reviewed03Short-circuit output rises as the Casimir cavity is made thinner, for cavities filled with PMMA and with silicon dioxide alike — the trend Moddel identifies as a signature of zero-point energy, because a thinner cavity suppresses more of the long-wavelength modes.Figure 4(b), p. 496
On the bench now04The trends have been replicated in many thousands of devices produced in dozens of batches, and an in-depth investigation of nine possible artifacts found none that can explain the observed results.Testing for Artifacts, p. 496; Appendix II
On the bench now05The proposed operating principle is a direct analogue of frustrated total internal reflection: evanescent waves are equivalent to virtual photons, and capturing the energy fast enough — a transit and capture completed within roughly one femtosecond — converts a virtual charge flow into a real one.Device Concept, pp. 497–499
Designed, not yet built06Harvesting zero-point energy need not violate the second law of thermodynamics: on the conventional quantum reading free-space ZPE is a unique ground state and therefore carries zero entropy, and because the cavity spacing in these devices never changes there is no change in internal entropy — but the ultimate source of the energy remains an open question.Laws of Thermodynamics, p. 499; Conclusions
What to watch
The way in
https://journalofscientificexploration.org/index.php/jse/article/view/2567Journal of Scientific Exploration 36(3), 493–503; submitted 6 April 2021, accepted 29 June 2022, published 22 October 2022. Platinum open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0), free to read at the journal.
How to cite it
Garret Moddel (2022) Zero-Point Energy: Capturing Evanescence. doi:10.31275/20222567
Where it sits in the curriculum