Historical research guide · 0045 · 2005
Quantum vacuum energy extraction
Bernard Haisch · Garret Moddel · Jovion Corp
In one minute
Bernard Haisch and Garret Moddel, working through their company Jovion, patented a way to draw power from the vacuum itself. Their starting point is stochastic electrodynamics: an electron holds its orbit because the energy it radiates away is exactly matched by energy it absorbs from the zero-point field. Take part of that field away and the balance breaks. A Casimir cavity — two conducting surfaces a fraction of a micron apart — does exactly that, because the longer waves of the vacuum field cannot fit inside it. So the patent proposes flowing an inert gas such as argon or xenon through millions of tiny Casimir cavities. Each atom sheds one to ten electronvolts of heat on the way in, which a water jacket or a thermophotovoltaic cell collects, and takes the energy back from the ambient field on the way out. Haisch and Moddel calculate kilowatts from a one-cubic-centimetre block against about 1.7 milliwatts of pumping power, and argue the cycle draws energy locally while the field replenishes it globally.
Connection
This is chapter 6’s claim in its most concrete form — a named mechanism, real materials and dimensions, and a power budget for taking energy out of the vacuum — resting on the chapter 2 and chapter 3 physics of a structured vacuum that sets atomic energy levels. Its co-author Garret Moddel now runs one of the three funded vacuum-energy programmes the site follows.
From the source
Electron energy levels in atoms are set by a balance between the Larmor radiation an orbiting electron emits and the radiative energy it absorbs from the electromagnetic quantum vacuum — the stochastic-electrodynamics result of Boyer (1975) and Puthoff (1987), strengthened by the Cole and Zou simulations that reproduce the Schrödinger probability density.Background of the invention
A Casimir cavity suppresses vacuum modes at and above its plate separation, so an atom carried into a suitably sized cavity loses orbital energy and releases it — on the order of 1 to 10 eV per atom for a cavity of about 0.1 micron — and is re-energised by the ambient field on the way out.Summary of the invention; Background of the invention
The cycle is consistent with the conservation of energy and with the second law: the usable energy comes at the expense of the energy content of the electromagnetic quantum vacuum, energy is extracted locally and replenished globally, and Cole and Puthoff’s published thermodynamic analyses show no violation.Abstract; Background of the invention (Cole and Puthoff 1993, Phys. Rev. E 48, 1562)
A one-cubic-centimetre block of segmented Casimir tunnels 0.1 micron across, with gas flowing at 10 cm/s, would give about 1.3 × 10²² transitions per second — 2,150 to 21,500 watts of release — against roughly 1.7 milliwatts of pumping power, and the architecture scales from battery replacements to power-plant generators.Detailed description, Casimir tunnels; Casimir channels in bonded wafers
An asymmetry in the apparatus is what makes the cycle net-positive: an absorbing layer placed only on the approach to the cavity forces the atoms to deliver their excess energy locally, while the exit side carries no local source, so the deficit must be supplied globally from the ambient field.Detailed description, Asymmetric Casimir cavity entry and exits; FIG. 8
The same emission-versus-absorption balance must underlie the electron states of all atoms and, by analogy, molecular bonds — so any atom could serve as the catalyst for vacuum energy extraction — but the patent notes this has not yet been proven theoretically beyond hydrogen.Background of the invention, closing paragraphs
The way in
https://patents.google.com/patent/US7379286B2/enHow to cite it
Bernard Haisch, Garret Moddel, Jovion Corp (2005) Quantum vacuum energy extraction US7379286B2