No energy to be extracted from the vacuum

Abstract

A few years ago a hopeful article (Evans 2000 Phys. Scr.61 513–7) appeared in this journal promising that according to its 15 authors' opinion the pending energy crisis could be solved by ‘extracting energy from the vacuum’. However, in the past years the energy price has grown to unthinkable heights: a reason for having a look at the promised ‘energy from the vacuum’ in (Evans 2000). So we shall do so below and shall arrive at a great disappointment: the 15 authors were in error; their vacuum energy stems from a simple flaw of thinking by misinterpreting the well-known Lorenz term of the classical Maxwell gauge theory. Their miraculous conclusion should have made the authors suspicious, that just the Lorenz term should yield a vacuum current. Surely, its a pity that vacuum currents and vacuum energy in (Evans 2000) have their origin merely in a simple flaw of thinking, and all further speculations for a vacuum energy density are in vain. However, better to return to reality. Quote: Abstract of [1]: Great announcements…It is shown that if the Loren(t)z condition is discarded, the Maxwell–Heaviside field equations become the Lehnert equations, indicating the presence of charge density and current density in the vacuum. The Lehnert equations are a subset of the O(3) Yang–Mills field equations. Charge and current density in the vacuum are defined straightforwardly in terms of the vector potential and scalar potential, and are conceptually similar to Maxwell's displacement current, which also occurs in the classical vacuum. A demonstration is made of the existence of a time dependent classical vacuum polarization which appears if the Loren(t)z condition is discarded. Vacuum charge and current appear phenomenologically in the Lehnert equations but fundamentally in the O(3) Yang–Mills theory of classical electrodynamics. The latter also allows for the possibility of the existence of vacuum topological magnetic charge density and topological magnetic current density. Both O(3) and Lehnert equations are superior to the Maxwell–Heaviside equations in being able to describe phenomena not amenable to the latter. In theory, devices can be made to extract the energy associated with vacuum charge and current.

An Assessment of Evans’ Unified Field Theory I

“…whereas the first piece can be computed by using (3). For a comparison with Riemannian geoemtry, it is often convenient to decompose the connection 1-form into a Riemannian part, denoted by a tilde, and a tensorial post-Riemannian part according to…”

“…Such a statement, which overlaps with the last subsection, seems necessary since there are numerous inconsistencies and mistakes in Evans' work, see Bruhn [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] and Rodrigues et al [19,61], such that it is necessary to distiguish between the relevant and the irrelevant parts of Evans' articles.…”

“…This is known as the Lorentz (or spin) connection. The one-form Γ takes values in the Lie algebra of SO (1,3). Hence, the variables ϑ α and Γ αβ , i.e., coframe and Lorentz connection, specify the geometry completely.…”

“…The spatial rotation group O(3) is a subgroup of SO (1,3). But the Lorentz group includes also the boosts.…”

“…The evaluation of Evans' theory is made more demanding since his articles contain many mathematical mistakes and inconsistencies, as has been amply shown by Bruhn [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] and Rodrigues et al [19,61]. Let me just illustrate this point with two new examples.…”