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12.7. The zero-point energy

If you could zoom in, you would see molecules vibrating hectically everywhere.

Go down to the very smallest, where the elementary particles pop up from seemingly nothing in a frantic, erratic dance.

Remove these particles, suck out all the air in a closed container, reduce the temperature to the absolute zero point so that everything is completely motionless. All change should be impossible.

Then take a doctorate or two in physics and mathematics, bring out the calculator and estimate how much energy is still inside the empty container.

It's an enormous amount, almost infinite!

This knowledge comes from mathematics, the same mathematics that otherwise works perfectly to do calculations on energy in all other contexts.

This void – an absolute «nothing» – is called the zero-point field and thus has a colossal «ability to do work», cause changes, and create mass.

Estimations show that within a cube of 1 cubic centimetre, i.e. the size of a sugar cube, 10120 «events» occur every second.

That is an unbelievably high number, 10 with 120 zeros behind. By comparison, there are an estimated 1080 atoms in the entire universe. Your body has approx. 7 x 1027 atoms.

An «event» can be that a «virtual particle» pops up, a virtual particle is destroyed, a movement, that the energy in an area changes when the temperature increases – and the like.

To generate 10120 «events» in «nothing» in every cubic centimetre throughout the entire universe every single second – requires a huge, huge, huge amount of «energy». It is referred to as «infinite» or at least meaninglessly large in physics.

Because energy belongs to the zero point, i.e. vacuum where nothing else happens, the researchers choose to ignore it. It is present everywhere.

Everything in the whole universe is «on top» of this insanely vibrating «field» of something we do not know what is. It is known to us because mathematics shows it, and the existence of the field is also proven through experiments, among other things, by studying the Casimir effect.

The zero-point energy is just there everywhere, so to get simpler equations, scientists «normalise» it away, subtract it from everywhere in the equations.

That is allowed when you are a mathematician, but not when you formulate a theory of what the world is in essence.

Then we can not just remove the essence.