Ephemeral vacuum particles induce speed-of-light fluctuations

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Two forthcoming EPJ D papers challenge established wisdom about the nature of vacuum. In one paper, Marcel Urban from the University of Paris-Sud, located in Orsay, France and his colleagues identified a quantum level mechanism for interpreting vacuum as being filled with pairs of virtual particles with fluctuating energy values. As a result, the inherent characteristics of vacuum, like the speed of light, may not be a constant after all, but fluctuate. Meanwhile, in another study, Gerd Leuchs and Luis L. S?nchez-Soto, from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Light in Erlangen, Germany, suggest that physical constants, such as the speed of light and the so-called impedance of free space, are indications of the total number of elementary particles in nature.

Vacuum is one of the most intriguing concepts in physics. When observed at the quantum level, vacuum is not empty. It is filled with continuously appearing and disappearing particle pairs such as electron-positron or quark-antiquark pairs. These ephemeral particles are real particles, but their lifetimes are extremely short.

In their study, Urban and colleagues established, for the first time, a detailed quantum mechanism that would explain the magnetisation and polarisation of the vacuum, referred to as vacuum permeability and permittivity, and the finite speed of light. This finding is relevant because it suggests the existence of a limited number of ephemeral particles per unit volume in a vacuum. As a result, there is a theoretical possibility that the speed of light is not fixed, as conventional physics has assumed. But it could fluctuate at a level independent of the energy of each light quantum, or photon, and greater than fluctuations induced by quantum level gravity. The speed of light would be dependent on variations in the vacuum properties of space or time. The fluctuations of the photon propagation time are estimated to be on the order of 50 attoseconds per square meter of crossed vacuum, which might be testable with the help of new ultra-fast lasers.

Leuchs and Sanchez-Soto, on the other hand, modelled virtual charged particle pairs as electric dipoles responsible for the polarisation of the vacuum. They found that a specific property of vacuum called the impedance, which is crucial to determining the speed of light, depends only on the sum of the square of the electric charges of particles but not on their masses. If their idea is correct, the value of the speed of light combined with the value of vacuum impedance gives an indication of the total number of charged elementary particles existing in nature. Experimental results support this hypothesis.

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M. Urban et al. (2013), The quantum vacuum as the origin of the speed of light, European Physical Journal D, DOI 10.1140/epjd/e2013-30578-7

Gerd Leuchs and Luis L. S?nchez-Soto (2013), A sum rule for charged elementary particles, European Physical Journal D, DOI 10.1140/epjd/e2013-30577-8

Springer: http://www.springer.com

Thanks to Springer for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127451/Ephemeral_vacuum_particles_induce_speed_of_light_fluctuations

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Vt. town OKs church takeover, Solzhenitsyn exhibit

CAVENDISH, Vt. (AP) ? Residents of a small town that was the home of exiled former Soviet dissident author Alexander Solzhenitsyn for nearly two decades decided on Monday to create an exhibit honoring him.

About 70 voters at Monday night's Town Meeting in Cavendish overwhelmingly decided the town should take over a historic stone church to house the exhibit for the Nobel laureate.

Preservationists will examine the church, particularly its roof, in the spring, once all the snow has melted, and the exhibit should be ready by next year, Cavendish Historical Society coordinator Margo Caulfield said. The church likely will need minor repairs and cosmetic work, but events should be able to be held there almost immediately, she said.

Solzhenitsyn lived in Cavendish from 1977 to 1994 and died in Russia in 2008. His house in Cavendish is still lived in by his son, pianist and conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn, and his family.

The Town Meeting, the locals' annual decision-making gathering, was the venue where Solzhenitsyn addressed his new neighbors when he arrived in Cavendish.

Solzhenitsyn, who spent eight years in prison and labor camps for criticizing Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, said he chose Cavendish for its resemblance to his homeland and its small-town personality.

"I like very much the simple way of life and the population here, the simplicity and the human relationship," he said then. "I like the countryside, and I like the climate with the long winter and the snow, which reminds me of Russia."

Solzhenitsyn wrote his best-known works, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and "The Gulag Archipelago," based on his years imprisoned, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.

The exhibit would include videos of Solzhenitsyn talking about his years in Cavendish. The impetus for the project came last summer when the town had little to offer a group of Russian tourists who expected a monument in their countryman's honor, Caulfield said.

The church that will be used for the exhibit was built in 1844 under the leadership of renowned abolitionist the Rev. Warren Skinner and was decommissioned in the 1960s. Church leaders offered to donate it to the town of 1,300 residents last year.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/vt-town-oks-church-takeover-solzhenitsyn-exhibit-031513257.html

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