There Was Nothing, A Great Void, Absolutely Nothing...

[sandyRoe]

Then there was a big bang and the ejecta was propelled faster than the speed of light to fill the cosmos.
And some would say that my simple faith is far fetched. Is the account of the creation in Geneses any more unlikely than the scientific alternatives?

[jim360]

They're made of metal, then.

[Zacs-Master]

So if they're made of metal it's no longer a vacuum. (?)

[jim360]

The Vacuum between and around the two metal plates.

The set-up is explained on the wikipedia page reasonably well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect

[Zacs-Master]

"This effect, that two mirrors in a vacuum will be attracted to each other, is the Casimir Effect. It was first predicted in 1948 by Dutch physicist Hendrick Casimir. Steve K. Lamoreaux, now at Los Alamos National Laboratory, initially measured the tiny force in 1996."
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-casimir-effec/

So this is a badly written article then, or is someone missing the point about a vacuum?

[jim360]

No, that seems on the face of it to be a good explanation. What's your question really?

[sandyRoe]

Ludwig, that's a backhanded compliment, if I ever heard one.

[ludwig]

My Dyson is mostly plastic.

[ludwig]

// Ludwig, that's a backhanded compliment, if I ever heard one.//

It wasn't meant to be. I was being honest.

[Zacs-Master]

I thought a vacuum had nothing in it. So how can you have a vacuum with mirrors in it? Please indulge me here.

[ludwig]

Mine's got a light on the front. No mirrors though.

[Zacs-Master]

Ah Ludwig is the light sonoluminescence?

[jim360]

Well you have mirrors inside what is otherwise a vacuum. You also don't have anything else but the two mirrors there. On the face of it, then, nothing interesting should happen. No electric force, two neutral mirrors, no light, no matter between them.... so why should anything happen? And yet, after all, there is an attractive force between the mirrors, that can be explained because there was something going on in that vacuum after all and the mirrors are disrupting it.

[Zacs-Master]

Well they would disrupt it by the basic fact of it not being a vacuum anymore.

[ludwig]

// Ah Ludwig is the light sonoluminescence? //

It's just a little bulb. Helps you see into the dark corners like behind the settee. Bit of a gimmick really.

[Zacs-Master]

It'll never catch on.

[jim360]

Well that's not really the point, though. There is (apparently) nothing other than the mirrors present. You are not running an electric current through them. You are just suspending them in otherwise empty space. Doing nothing to them. According to any normal picture, the two mirrors should just hang there, doing nothing -- of course, because there is "No force" between them. And yet this doesn't happen. Because there is, after all, a force being exerted on the plates by the vacuum.

[joko]

i like bodfins.

[mibn2cweus]

Nothing is impossible.

[sandyRoe]

Is that a quote from a happy-clappy song?

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/planetshakers/nothingisimpossible.html

[jomifl]

Sandy, just in case you aren't aware of it, the catechism isn't a holy book, it is just a religious text book contrived by the catholic church to brainwash the simple minded and inculcate catholic dogma into the void thus produced. It ain't exactly the word of god.