Misplaced Pages

Casimir pressure

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by SmackBot (talk | contribs) at 22:58, 12 December 2006 (Date/correct the maintenance tags using AWB). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 22:58, 12 December 2006 by SmackBot (talk | contribs) (Date/correct the maintenance tags using AWB)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
This article is an orphan, as no other articles link to it. Please introduce links to this page from related articles; try the Find link tool for suggestions.

Pressure created by Casimir force of virtual particles.

According to experiments, the Casimir force F between two closely spaced neutral parallel plate conductors is directly proportional to their surface area A:

F=kA

Therefore, dividing the magnitude of Casimir force by the area of each conductor, Casimir pressure can be found. Because Casimir force between conductors is attractive then the Casimir pressure in space between the conductors is negative.

Because virtual particles are physical representations of the zero point energy of physical vacuum, then the Casimir pressure can be associated with the density of the zero point energy of empty space.

Some scientists believe that zero point energy is the dominant energy of the Universe and that the Casimir pressure of this energy is the main cause of the observed accelerated expansion of Universe. By other words, one may say that virtual particles drive the accelerated expansion of Universe.