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NEWSCIENCENEWSCIENCENEWSCIENCE VACUUM ENERGY A BREAKTHROUGH? In a bid to try to explain the experimental data, the researchers actually tried to prove the impossible. One of their proofs was very "strong". The one-megawatt substation of the Moscow Aviation Institute, where Chernetski and Galkin were staging an experiment with a powerful plasma unit, burned out. When the discharge currents reached criticality, superstrong current was "born" in the generator and went back into the net- work, playing havoc with the safety devices calculated for short-circuit. Later on, they read in books that earlier in the century the power plant of prominent Yugoslav electrical engineer Nikola Tesla caught fire under similar circumstances in the United States. Chernetski and Galkin were sure that Tesla was making such experiments but did not publish the results. They are also sure that vacuum energy can explain this mysterious effect. half-a-million electron-volts during its life- time. The potential energy in the electric- bulb vacuum is enough to boil the Earth's oceans, as Americans John Wheeler and Richard Feynman have calculated. Until recently, the vacuum energy idea was only a daring hypothesis bordering on science fiction. The lamp powered by vac- uum in Chernetski's basement laboratory in the centre of Moscow made it a reality. This is how he explains his miraculous experiment: "The self-generating discharge emerges when the discharge current reaches a defi- nite critical density, when the magnetic fields they create ensure magnetisation of plasma electrons and they begin to perform mostly cycloid movements. "The interaction of currents with their magnetic fields forces the electrons to devi- ate to the cylinder-shaped discharge axis, and the electrical field emerges. It has proved to ‘switch on' the physical vacuum: in this field the vacuum is polarised, and consequently the virtual pairs begin to move in a definite direction instead of chaotically. The virtual positrons acceler- ate plasma electrons, giving them part of their energy. "The current in the circuit builds up and additional energy is discharged on the resistor switched into the discharge circuit. Clearly, only part of the tremendous vacu- um energy is extracted. "We've developed several circuit ver- sions which can find application. In the by Andrei Samokhin T™ model of a plasma generator which can convert physical-vacuum energy into electricity has been developed under Professor Alexander Chernetski at the Moscow Georgi Plekhanov Institute of the National Economy, Russia. Such generators could lay the groundwork for the future environ- mentally-benign power industry. Classical physics cannot explain what happens when a plasma discharger placed in the Chernetski circuit is started: for no apparent reason the ammeter pointer shows triple strength-of-current increase and ener- gy output is several times above input. The plant's efficiency is much more than unity. No magic is intended. Additional energy outputs at specific plasma discharges are fixed in several independent expert reports by the Lenin All-Union Institute of Electrical Engineering. This effect has been checked by different methods. Whence this mysterious energy? A Vacuum-Powered Lamp The researchers relied on the present-day quantum physics idea of "zero-point oscil- lations" in physical vacuum. Such oscilla- tions signifying the birth and annihilation of virtual pairs—the particle and anti-parti- cle, distinguished from the normal elemen- tary particles by a negligibly short life—a mere 8.10/-21 [sic] seconds [8 x 107'?]. Emerging below the zero-energy level from 'nothing' and returning to ‘nothing’, virtual particles appear to defy the law of conservation of ener- =~ we Self-Generating Discharge Prof. Chernetski, the author of the first- ever study paper on plasma-diagnostics equipment (he has been in this field for 40 years now) and 20 inventions, never knew what he was probing into specific unstable plasma states at strong-current discharges could have led to. In the early 1970s, he and fellow researcher Yuri Galkin worked on a basically new type of high-frequency plasma generator which, at high power, could do without unwieldy energy convert- ers. In one test, they discovered input-out- OS hene orcur comes from Soro 6, Got 6, finite. x DECENT) B65. “eg gy. Quantum electro- dynamics explains this paradox through the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Under it, all the pre- cise particle charac- teristics cannot be learnt simultaneous- ly, and therefore one must not require from nature ‘punctual’ abidance by the law during such a short time as the life of vir- tual pairs. The observer fails to notice anything, while every virtual pair is more than real, carrying an energy of more than put energy gap. "I knew electron drift begins in plasma, and sought to deduce a combination of variables in which fluctuating plasma insta- bility emerged in discharge," Chernetski says. "Gas discharge was meant to serve as a powerful stimulator of electromagnetic modes and, all of a sudden and in defiance of the law of conservation of energy, a strange energy imbalance was produced. Repeated experiments with different cir- cuits proved energy output to be always greater than input." The mysterious discharge stimulating additional energy extraction was called the "self-generating discharge" (SGD). Measurements showed that part of the dis- charge power went back into the network as if two series-connected electromotive forces were at work. NEXUS - 47 DECEMBER 1997 - JANUARY 1998