AAWSAP DIRD, Concepts for Extracting Energy from the Quantum Vacuum, April 2010

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Unfortunately with regard to energy generation, though the Casimir forces involved can
be of significance for MEMS applications (Reference 63), the associated Casimir
energies involved are too small to be considered of significance for energy applications,
so if the possibility for vacuum energy conversion exists, one must look elsewhere to
other types of matter-vacuum interactions.
TYPE I (TRANSIENT) AND TYPE II (CONTINUOUS) MACHINES
A key feature of the Casimir process just described, regardless of viewpoint (plenum or
matter-fields), is that it is a "one-shot," transient, energy-producing machine. That is,
after delivering its energy, E, the matter that comprises the machine is in a "used"
state (this used matter is commonly referred to as "ash") and cannot be restored to the
original state without an input of energy that is greater than or equal to E. This "one­
shot" feature can be generalized to define a category of machine called a Type I
transient machine, with the Casimir machine constituting the prototypical
representative. Should gravitation eventually be traced to a vacuum ZPF origin as
proposed by Sakharov (Reference 64), then the fall of an object of mass m through a
height h in a gravitational field (g = acceleration of gravity at Earth's surface),
delivering its gravitational energy mgh upon impact with the ground, would constitute
another example.
In contrast, one can envision a Type II (continuous) machine in which vacuum ZPF
energy is converted to a useful form on a recycling basis without net alteration to its
own matter state. A hypothetical example is the tunable Casimir device that was
reviewed in Section IV. The cycle of energy generation would consist of the collapse of
conducting plates with delivery of energy, followed by separation of plates switched to
insulating mode for which the attractive force is considerably weaker, only to be
switched back to conducting mode for the next cycle, and so forth. Provided the input
switching energy required per cycle is less than the output energy delivered per cycle, a
continuous generation of energy without a net change in matter configuration would
result. A second example would be a nonlinear oscillator that continuously, on a steady­
state basis, down-shifted high-frequency components of the vacuum ZPF spectrum to
lower frequencies for convenient collection and application, without a net change in its
own operation.
Clearly a Type II machine would be far more useful than a Type I machine for energy
extraction . Type II machines would constitute a fuel-less energy source, with the
ambient vacuum ZPF providing essentially unlimited energy. For this to be the case,
however, another requirement needs to be satisfied, which the next section will
address.
DEGRADABILITY OF THE VACUUM
The possibility of continuous conversion of vacuum ZPE to other forms (that is, by a
Type II machine) requires that, in principle, vacuum energy must be degradable (that
is, continuously consumable), not just that there be a surfeit of energy in place to
harvest. This perspective leads to a remarkable question for deeper explorations of
QED. It turns out that the mathematical structure of QED is based on a formalism in
which the vacuum mode structure and vacuum fluctuation energy per mode are
quantized in what could be called a "hard-wired" fashion; that is, they possess fixed
immutable values. Therefore, at the end of a cycle of a hypothetical Type II machine, in
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