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The Physical Vacuum
As
always, I provide simplified summaries throughout the article, do give up
reading.
Since
we have thought of space in its purist form as a vacuum, we will start by
considering what was speculated about a vacuum and what is now known about a
vacuum. The response of most people to the question “what is a vacuum?”, would generally be “space with nothing in it,
nothingness”. Study of what we refer to as “space” has proved quite the
contrary. The name for this new view of “space” is the “physical vacuum”.
Magdeburg
hemispheres
The Magdeburg
hemispheres are a pair of large copper hemispheres with mating rims. When
the rims were sealed with grease and the air was pumped out, the sphere
contained a vacuum
and could not be pulled apart by teams of horses. The
Magdeburg hemispheres were designed by German scientist and mayor of Magdeburg,[1]
Otto von Guericke in 1656 to demonstrate the air
pump which he had invented, and the concept of atmospheric pressure.
It is the weight of the air
outside of the hemispheres that prevented pulling them apart once they were internally
voided of atmosphere.
To
“create” some of this space, let’s use an imaginary sphere of a size that you
like and we will remove all solids, liquids and gas. This is what is referred
to as a perfect vacuum. Now that we have this perfect vacuum, let’s push a few
things at it to see how it responds. We start with sound and we find that sound
will not pass through the vacuum because there is no solid, liquid or gas to
transfer the mechanical vibrations or sound waves through the vacuum. Next we
try electromagnetic energy starting with the shortest wavelengths (gamma rays)
and work our way through progressively longer wavelengths, through the visible
light spectrum, infrared, radiant heat, radio frequencies and even some very
long wavelengths, all of which pass through this “perfect vacuum”.
While
we were throwing different wavelengths of energy at our vacuum, we noticed that
this vacuum still retained heat or thermal radiation. Ok, we fix that by
perfectly insulating our sphere and then cooling it down to absolute zero (-273C or -459F) thus removing all thermal energy. But, this vacuum still
contains measurable energy. Science has dubbed a vacuum void of solid, liquid,
gas and thermal radiation as being at “Zero Point Energy”. Remember that this
energy is called, “Zero Point Energy” because it exists at a temperature of absolute
zero.
Science
has now discovered that this ZPE is present universally in every atomic
structure, even to the far corners (everywhere within) of the cosmos.
How
was this discovered? More than a hundred years ago, experiments were preformed
with a cavity radiator known as a “black body”.
Black body From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A black body
is an idealized physical body that absorbs all incident electromagnetic radiation. Because of
this perfect absorptivity at all wavelengths, a black body is also the
best possible emitter of thermal
radiation, which it radiates incandescently
in a characteristic, continuous spectrum that depends on the body's
temperature. At Earth-ambient temperatures this emission is in the infrared region
of the electromagnetic spectrum and is not
visible. The object appears black, since it does not reflect or emit any
visible light.
The thermal
radiation from a black body is energy converted electrodynamically from the
body's pool of internal thermal energy at any temperature greater than absolute
zero. It is called blackbody radiation and has a frequency
distribution with a characteristic frequency of maximum radiative power that
shifts to higher frequencies with increasing temperature. As the temperature
increases past a few hundred degrees Celsius, black
bodies start to emit visible wavelengths, appearing red, orange, yellow, white,
and blue with increasing temperature. When an object is visually white, it is
emitting a substantial fraction as ultraviolet radiation. The term black body
was introduced by Gustav Kirchhoff in 1860.
Knocking this
down into simpler language:
1.
A black body
absorbs all energy that falls upon it, invisible radiation, light, heat, radio
waves etc…
2.
Any object of
high temperature placed in a room of lower temperature will have to give off
heat until it reaches an equilibrium with the
temperature in the room, that is to say that it reaches the same temperature as
that of the room. The temperature of the object reduces and the temperature of
the room increases until they approach equality.
3.
So this black
body, as it absorbs energy must also release energy to stay equal with
everything around it. It absorbs all energy, converts it to thermal energy
(heat) and then radiates (emits) the excess energy.
4.
At normal room
temperature, this radiated excess energy is emitted as infrared and not visible
to the human eye. The black body radiator emits this energy at any temperature
above absolute zero. As the temperature of the black body increases, from
absorbing energy, the energy radiated shifts to infrared and then visible light
and even ultraviolet.
The
black body used in the experiments was a hollow sphere with a tiny hole to
allow radiation to be emitted from inside the black body. The radiation
emitting from this tiny hole represents the internal energy of the black body
and is used to measure the internal temperature. Remember that all science is
based upon observation and experiments to support theories spawned inspired by
the first observation. Several different groups of scientist exercised the
black body cavity at different temperature levels, recording the results. These
results can then be expressed in a mathematical formula and verified by first
using the formula to predict a result and then creating the circumstance and
then measuring the result. Test the black body emission at three different
temperatures and write a formula that agrees with the three separate
circumstances. Then pick a fourth temperature, use the formula to calculate the
level of radiation from the tiny hole in the black body and then adjust the
temperature of the black body to that fourth temperature and measure the emitted
radiation to validate the mathematical formula.
Knocking
down the language some more, the formula was tested at multiple temperatures
from very low to very high with total predictability of results. When the
formula was subjected to absolute zero temperature, it was found that the
results indicated a uniform, isotropic background radiation. OR, that there
is energy in the background totally independent of the temperature of the black
body. Just wrap your mind around that last sentence before proceeding.
If
you remove all energy of a known source, there is still energy there from an
unknown source and it is constant regardless of the energy levels of the know
sources of energy.
The
long and short of it is this; science recognizes that if you remove all physical
matter and known energy, there is still something there. Call it “Zero Point
Energy” or as I call it “the power of God that is beyond our understanding”.
How
great is this energy in the background? it has been stated that: “Formally, physicists attribute an infinite amount of energy to
this background. But, even when they impose appropriate cutoffs at high
frequency, they estimate conservatively that the zero-point density is
comparable to the energy density inside an atomic nucleus” Science Editor, New Scientist, 1989.
There is estimated to be more than 100 billion stars in our
universe, the level of energy in one cubic centimeter (about the size of a
large vitamin tablet) of vacuum is in excess of all of the energy radiated from
these stars for one million years. For all practical purposes, the energy
contained in a thimble of space is as infinite as God himself.
I
reached the early twentieth century in this article, there is much more as to
how ZPE has shaped modern physics that is yet to be discussed.
5 Lean on, trust in, and be
confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own
insight or understanding. Prov
3:5Prov
3:5 AMP. BIBLE
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