This is so cool....quantum physics rocks

[curiousa2z]

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/ ... 368920.htm

interesting, huh? They write making something out of nothing, but of course, there is no "nothing".

- although I'm not sure about "dynamical" being a real word....gonna look that up.

[Santaman]

Indeed interesting.

[RJDiogenes]

That's fascinating. That's a very powerful effect-- basically, that's the phenomenon that causes Black Holes to evaporate. I wonder if any practical applications will evolve from this. If they can manage this effect to give them a net gain it would almost be like zero point energy.

- although I'm not sure about "dynamical" being a real word....gonna look that up.

With Quantum Physics, new words are often needed.

[curiousa2z]

lol! good point!

[huggle]

couldn't this phenomenon be due to the activities of dark matter? Since it's generally acknowledged that more than half of the universe consists of dark matter, we can safely assume that the same goes for any material, including the mirror used in this experiment.
It seems rather plausible to me that under certain circumstances dark particles, like any others, might be able to emit energy in the form of light. It's all a matter of feeding them with enough energy to trigger the process.

[curiousa2z]

This is a good start. At least there is coverage - but having said that:
I found there were a couple of phrases that indicated the guy writing this was just a reporter - not a scientist. Uses of words like weird and spooky were pissing me off. WTF?
Have an open mind if you're going to report on Quantum Physics, dude!

[RJDiogenes]

^^ The quality of reporting these days, especially science reporting, is the pits.

couldn't this phenomenon be due to the activities of dark matter? Since it's generally acknowledged that more than half of the universe consists of dark matter, we can safely assume that the same goes for any material, including the mirror used in this experiment.
It seems rather plausible to me that under certain circumstances dark particles, like any others, might be able to emit energy in the form of light. It's all a matter of feeding them with enough energy to trigger the process.

It seems like it's just Hawking Radiation, or similar, but you bring up some good points. If Dark Matter interacts with regular matter through gravity, then does that mean it has the potential to interact with other types of radiation (if GUTS are correct, then it's all variations on a theme anyway). Also, what is the exact nature of Dark Matter and where does it hide? Is it just composed of a set of particles that swirl around ("Dark Radiation"), or is it actually connected to material objects? Does, for example, a hydrogen atom consist of a proton, an electron and unknown Dark Matter particles, but we've only identified the normal matter components? Very interesting thought....

[curiousa2z]

I know, eh!? ...so cool....