The Nothing That Has the Potential to Be Anything

"They cooled iodopyridine, an organic molecule consisting of 11 atoms, almost to absolute zero and hammered it with a laser pulse to break its atomic bonds. The team found that the motions of the freed atoms were correlated, indicating that, despite its chilled state, the iodopyridine molecule had been vibrating. "That was not initially the main goal of the experiment," said Rebecca Boll, an experimental physicist at the facility. "It's basically something that we found.""

"Perhaps the best-known effect of zero-point energy in a field was predicted by Hendrick Casimir in 1948, glimpsed in 1958, and definitively observed in 1997. Two plates of electrically uncharged material-which Casimir envisioned as parallel metal sheets, although other shapes and substances will do-exert a force on each other. Casimir said the plates would act as a kind of guillotine for the electromagnetic field, chopping off long-wavelength oscillations in a way that would skew the zero-point energy."

Researchers cooled iodopyridine molecules nearly to absolute zero, struck them with laser pulses to break bonds, and observed correlated motions of freed atoms indicating residual vibration despite extreme cooling. The Casimir effect arises from zero-point electromagnetic fluctuations between uncharged plates, where suppression of long-wavelength modes makes energy outside greater than between the plates, producing an attractive force. Quantum fields behave as infinite collections of oscillators, each with zero-point energy, implying formally infinite field energy. Physicists typically focus on energy differences and cancel infinities, but the same subtraction approach fails for gravity, creating a deep theoretical tension.

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