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- Casimir Stress Induced Anisotropic Inertial Mass Measurment
| ZP OWER C ORPORATION PAGE OF 352 Z ERO P OINT E NERGY Cubes have positive energy and repulsive forces on the walls, long rectangles or parallel plates have negative energy and attractive forces on the walls, while a rectangular box of relative dimensions 1 by 1 by 3.3 has zero Casimir force. It would be desirable to verify these predictions. Casimir Stress Induced Anisotropic Inertial Mass Measurment The Casimir stresses on the vacuum space between two conducting plates are anisotropic. Scharnhorst (1990) and Barton (1990) see also Barton and Scharnhorst (1993)] used this stress anisotropy to predict an anisotropy in the velocity of light. According to their theoretical calculations, the velocity of light parallel to the conducting plates has the speed of light in an unbounded vacuum, q=c,, while the velocity of light perpendicular to the plates has a speed greater than c by the amount Cc a / (L / Le where L is the spacing between the Casimir plates, the fine structure constant a, and L,=h/2Tcm,c=3.86x1 0-13 m/rad= 0.386 Itm/rad is the reduced Compton wavelength of the electron. Numerically, this amounts to a difference of cc+ x (meters / L which implies that the speed of light perpendicular to the conducting places is greater than c. Some important features of this result are Barton (1990)]: (1) This anisotropy of the vacuum space between Casimir plates is calculated to be greater than any dispersion effect, so the phase and group velocities of the light are both given by the same equation and both are greater than c, causing concerns about violation of causality. Fortunately for the sensibilities of those worried about this, Milonni and Svozil (1990) show that Heisenberg uncertainty principle will probably work to prevent the use of faster- thane propagation for the reliable transmission of information back in time. (2) The size of the effect is the same everywhere between the plates except perhaps very near to the surface of the plates where some of the approximations used might not be valid. By very close, Scharnhorst (1990) states "near denotes a distance of a few Compton wavelengths apart from the plates" An electron Compton wavelength is 2 L,=2.43pm, much smaller than proposed Casimir plate separation distances, typically measured in nm. |