MEMS Researchers Hope To Exploit Casimir Effect

smartalix writes "Researchers at Purdue University's School of Science are examining the Casimir effect (a phenomenon that explains Max Planck's and Werner Heisenberg's quantum vacuum fluctuation theory) and its impact on nanostructures in MEMS devices. At the distances these structures such as gear teeth, actuators, and such) will be operating from one another, the Casimir force may become something to reckon with, potentially forcing a limit to the level of miniaturization possible. The Purdue team is not only confirming Casimir's original theory, it is exploring possible ways to harness the effect in micromachines."

Comments

The Casimir Effect?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I wonder what that nonsense is meant to say. There's very little the Casimir effect explains. It's a prediction of quantum field theory that was borne out by experiment. The experiment did a good job of verifying the theory wasn't bullshit but it doesn't explain very much.

I have no idea what Heisenberg's Quantum Vacuum Fluctuation Theory is. I'm pretty sure there's no such thing. And the Casimir Effect is more a consequence of quantum field theory which was largely pioneered by workers after Heisenberg. Vanilla quantum mechanics itself doesn't predict the Casimir effect.

And going along with what Feynman had to say about miniaturization: the Casimir effect doesn't set limits. On the contrary it is another force that engineers can work with to get what they want done. Forces are good - they give interactions between parts. No interactions, no machine. It does mean you have to throw out even more of your classical mechanics intuition and replace it with a quantum one. That can only be good.

Re:The Casimir Effect?

[loadquo]

IANAPhysicist. Got that out of the way.

Do you happen to know whether these people measuring the forces factored gravity into their measurements?

I know it is not normally a problem but the plates were very close together and so the force of gravity might be measurable. This has been niggling at me since I first heard about the casmir affect. Can anyone point me to a paper that explains the set up and the calculations.

Re:Fiction

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Eg Hawking radiation given off by a black hole is explained via the invocation of virtual particle pairs.

No it isn't. Sounds like you're competent to do the calculations yourself. Pick up a book or paper on Hawking radiation. No need to use that nonsense about pair-production with one half falling past the event horizon. That's just a story made up for the popular science press. It comes from the fact that in curved spacetime there is no natural choice of time coordinate and so you can't distinguish between positive and negative energy modes meaning that you can't distinguish properly between creation and annihilation operators.

Many cornerstones of modern physics started off as mathematical construct introduced to aid calculations

And if they can't be eliminated from the computation there comes a point where you need to treat them as real. You can compute the Casimir force strength without them so there's no need to invoke them.