[OT] Zero-point energy (was Re: 3-phase (was: Re: CDC 9766 Drive and packs))

Max Eskin <max82(a)surfree.com> wrote: And why do I see this argument as being on my side? On a separate line, modeling is an interesting thing. Where I work, we model how semiconductors work. Even though the models makes many valid predictions, it is also incomplete in representing real silicon. The models make other predictions that don't work as well. The trick of using models to make predictions is that they have a chance of predicting correctly if they don't violate rules that we have never seen violated before. If they point to new rules that we see no particular violations, then we should expect that we have a chance. Like I said, we should completely understand what in our model that makes a prediction that seems to contradict what we have seen to be true. It is also that we are not seeing things correctly but to treat predictions that contradict known understanding as a good candidate for a valuable new science is truly a waste of time. In order for goal oriented science to stand a chance of working such as making the bomb, we need to be at the point where there are no contradictions that we know of. The problem is that there are a lot of things that ARE and likewise a lot of things that AREN'T. We understand, slightly, only a small amount of things that are and can think of orders of magnitude of things that aren't. If we were, tomorrow, to find a new working principle of the universe that explained how we could violate the principle of conservation of energy that would allow taking advantage of Zero-point energy then I would say go for it. Without that new principle, talking about using this new source of energy is about as useful as worrying about the probability that all my atoms might suddenly move five feet to the left. Probability and practicability are two quite different things. We can talk about making free energy from magnetism or a car that runs 2000 miles on a drop of gas. How about instantaneous flight to distant galaxies, temperatures less than absolute zero, worm holes in space, .... Any one of these things may be possible. Wasting much time exploring these with the knowledge we have today would most likely be fruitless. We might stumble across the key to any of these tomorrow but not likely for any specific one of them. In making the bomb, the scientist of the time that did the work, saw that there was a lot of work to do to create the thing but didn't have any specific nature of things that they otherwise knew of at the time that would mean that it couldn't be done. It was specifically because they thought that they had all the pieces that they attempted it in the first place. Dwight