Warp Speed (39 page)
Authors: Travis S. Taylor
The Casimir Effect is a phenomenon that has been shown theoretically to exist in which two very closely spaced parallel plane conductors are actually pushed toward each other by the vacuum energy of spacetime itself! It turns out that the spacetime between these two very closely spaced plates should theoretically expand!! The theory predicts that the speed of light between the plates is slightly higher than that in a vacuum due to the expansion, in other words light travels faster than light due to the Casimir Effect.
Also, the Casimir Effect expansion between the plates will cause the plates to attract toward each other or be pushed together by the spacetime outside them depending on your point of view. If a clever scientist were to arrange several of these parallel plates in the right configuration and connect them with springs of some sort it might be possible that as one set of plates pull together another set gets pulled apart. Then the set that gets pulled apart would get pushed together thus pulling the others back apart. This motion could be set up to generate electricity in a generator and therefore allow us to extract power right out of spacetime itself damn near perpetually and for free. Imagine that!
Interestingly enough, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA has been looking for novel new ways to power small sensors and unmanned vehicles for various defense applications. NASA also has a similar requirement for small space probes. In late May 2003, I went to DARPA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia and presented an idea much like the Clemons Dumbbells to them. The possibility of extracting energy right out of spacetime intrigued them. It is quite possible that one day in the not too distant future we will be developing and maybe even testing a Casimir Effect energy supply. That would be cool. And a little further down the road from that, say ten to fifty years, we might have solved the Warp Equation correctly, developed a big enough power supply, and be testing a Warp Drive. Now that would be real cool!
--Travis S. Taylor
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