
Physicists solve Casimir conundrum - ColinWright
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/jul/18/physicists-solve-casimir-conundrum
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tocomment
Can this be used to generate energy? Are there any practical applications to
the Casimir force?

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weichi
No, and the smallness of the force has nothing to do with it. While it's true
that there's a force between two metal objects that you could use to do some
work, this doesn't get you energy for free because you had to do some work
yourself in order to pull them apart in the first place.

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pbhjpbhj
But you can use things like tidal forces to do the work 'resetting' a system.

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InclinedPlane
And? Tidal forces are just an energy source like any other. This is a bit like
saying you could use a gasoline powered engine to do the work.

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pbhjpbhj
Yes, except that tidal forces are "renewable" in the sense that the energy
comes from outside our eco-system. Thus if one is using such a method to
"reset" the system the energy moved in to the local system is effectively
free. Such energy acquired does not need an equal amount of work [from the
local system] to drive as is moved in to the system.

That's the and. In short, in the same way solar energy brings energy in to the
locality such a system could theoretically work thus being so down on it (as
to say it will never be made to work) seems counter-logical.

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InclinedPlane
So skip the complicated casimir effect energy generator and just use tidal
forces or solar energy or what-have-you directly, that's the point I'm making.

