Abstract
A possible connection between a point electron and vacuum energy was recently claimed by Puthoff (Int. J. Theor. Phys. 46, 3005 (2007)). He envisions a point electron as an ideally conducting spherical shell with a distributed charge on the surface, in equilibrium with the radiation pressure from electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations on the outside, and claims that his analysis demonstrates the reality of high-energy-density vacuum fluctuation fields. The present paper finds, instead, that the analysis is meaningless without specific knowledge on the cutoff frequency that is a free parameter in the model.
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References
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Maclay, J.: Presented at a workshop on Modern Trends in Energy and Power, Army Research Laboratory (2015), in the session on QVE organized by E. W. Davis. The scientific literature does not seem to contain support for this concept, or even serious discussion, in contrast to the Web (which may be the best place for a discussion) and the popular literature. One book (M. Pigliucci, Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk, University of Chicago Press, 2010) states ... the so-called zero point energy, the idea that one can extract energy from empty space – a proposition, I should add, that violates basic principles of thermodynamics and that is considered pseudoscience by credentialed physicists
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Acknowledgments
We acknowledge useful discussions with Dr. H. E. Puthoff, and encouragement from Dr. T. Zheleva at the Army Research Laboratory. We also thank Dr. E. W. Davis who made us aware of Ref. [1]. This work was supported in part by contract W911QX09D0016-0004 with the Army Research Laboratory.
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Pereira, N.R. On Puthoff’s Semiclassical Electron and Vacuum Energy. Int J Theor Phys 55, 5233–5238 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10773-016-3144-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10773-016-3144-2