ZP OWER C ORPORATION PAGE OF 352 Z ERO P OINT E NERGY Second, even our simple model demanded a complex mathematical analysis, which is difficult to verify. For instance, we ignored non- electromagnetic vacuum fields, such as those associated with the gluon particles that bind quarks together. We are now completing a different approach that avoids this and other problems, and the preliminary results have confirmed the first approach. We hope that more researchers will look into these problems, drawn by the appeal of unsuspected deep connections. Illustration caption The origin of inertia Quantum mechanics predicts that photons are constantly flitting on and off the stage of existence. These photons are virtual' in that each survives so short a time that the rest of us hardly notice. Collectively, however, they have observable effects, one of which was predicted by physicists Paul Davies and William Unruh in the mid-1970s and studied in detail by the authors. To a particle sitting still or moving uniformly, the field of virtual photons looks the same in all directions (top left. But as the particle begins to accelerate, the field ceases to look the same in the fore and aft directions (top center. For faster accelerations, the asymmetry worsens (top right. Physicists had thought the Davies-Unruh effect was an esoteric curiosity significant only near black holes. But the authors have found that the asymmetry creates a force similar to the radiation pressure that pushes cometary dust tails away from the Sun. This force always opposes the acceleration (bottom. Voilà, inertia. Diagrams by Bernhard M. Haisch.
ZP OWER C ORPORATION PAGE OF 352 Z ERO P OINT E NERGY
