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Both attractive and repulsive Casimir forces do not exist
January 14, 2009 by Anonymous, 42 weeks 4 days ago
Comment id: 33742
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Casimir extended the microscopic van der Waals force between atoms in a gas to the attraction between macroscopic structures in a vacuum.
However, recent experiments at Harvard have suggested that the Casimir force can be changed from attraction to repulsion by immersing gold spheres and silicon plates in liquid bromobenzene.
But the Harvard experiment not only falsely presupposes the attractive Casimir force exists, but then extends that falsity to conclude the attractive Casimir force can be changed to repulsion.
In fact, both attractive and repulsive Casimir forces do not exist.
Casimir did not conserve the EM radiation in the gap between structures, for if he would have, Casimir would have found the frequency of the EM radiation increases by QED as the gap decreases to maintain the necessary constant EM energy. Since the gradient of the constant EM energy with respect to the gap vanishes, there is no Casimir force.
However, at gaps less than 200 nm, the EM radiation reaches VUV levels and the structures charge oppositely by the photoelectric effect. Hence, the attractive force measured in Casimir experiments is electrostatic from QED induced VUV radiation.
In the Harvard experiment, the attractive QED induced electrostatic force of oppositely charged gold and silicon structures is changed to repulsion upon immersion in bromobenzene because the latter is an electron scavenger that alters charge distribution.
Thomas Prevenslik
www.nanoqed.net