ZP OWER C ORPORATION PAGE OF 352 Z ERO P OINT E NERGY Performing a calculation of the type above leads to a "dragon the order of 10-13 m/sec2 for the earth in orbit Dr. Steve Carlip, private communication to Paul Stowe. A continuous acceleration on this order would stop the earth in around a million years. But there is an unstated assumption in Feynman's argument that the "aether particles" are not circulating with the Earth's orbital motion. This is an excellent first assumption, but is it true The presumption of particles circulating at the same orbital speed of the Earth appears at first to be only an excuse for "saving the theory" However, we saw above that the mathematics of General Relativity and the observed Thirring-Lenz effect requires that there be some rotational motion in the vicinity of a rotating body. According to the primary assumptions of General Relativity, the Thirring-Lenz effect has no "basis" A superfluid aether would cause accelerations as a result of imparting a vortex spin on the aether field which would then accelerate the target body. The sun is rotating rapidly in the direction of planetary (earth) orbits. According to General Relativity, the only solution that is not possible in such a situation is irrotational motion in the aether corpuscles. The key assumption in the argument that the earth "would impinge on more particles which are coming from its forward side than from its hind side" is based on non-circulating particles. According to General Relativity, this assumption is found to be invalid Also, if the aether fluid is indeed a superfluid, once a rotation of the fluid is started it will continue without loss of energy. The Feynman argument against the LeSage-type hypothesis was completely plausible, for there is no obvious reason to expect that the aether would be rotating along with the earth. But field rotation is both observed and a mathematical requirement of the superfluid vorticity in General Relativity. So, for the moment at least, our theory remains consistent with General Relativity. This is not the only possible explanation for the earth not spiralling into the sun. The Feynman argument rests on the additional assumption that gravity and the aether drag) is the only force acting on the earth's orbital motion. But -- in order to contract from a protostar -- the sun must have somehow lost most of it's angular momentum to the planets. If this mechanism were the result of the rotating solar magnetic field, the solar field will interact with the magnetosphere of the earth (and the plasma within it. This interaction will lead to a transfer of angular momentum from the sun to the earth. In short -- all possible sources of orbital impulse must be examined before we throw out a superfluid aether. The basis for Feynman's argument was the same as one made for the irrotational earth (geocentric cosmos, and dealt with by Galileo in his Dialog on Two World Systems in 1632. The argument went as follows