Absolute Vacuum

[hm_Idont/\/0]

alright this may make me seem very arogant, but a few days ago i was kinda inspired by my science teacher ( i am only 16) to look into something. I was wondering sence it is not theoretcly possible to create an absolute vacuum, and use the energy created to power the field if it were to become unstable. could there be a way around that, maybe creating enough anti matter in magnetic field, that the field become a vacuum.

 

Thanks for putting up with my lack of knowlege (and bad spelling)

[RyanJ]

alright this may make me seem very arogant' date=' but a few days ago i was kinda inspired by my science teacher ( i am only 16) to look into something. I was wondering sence it is not theoretcly possible to create an absolute vacuum, and use the energy created to power the field if it were to become unstable. could there be a way around that, maybe creating enough anti matter in magnetic field, that the field become a vacuum.

 

Thanks for putting up with my lack of knowlege (and bad spelling)[/quote']

 

Firstly welcome to SFN!

 

No its not possible to create an absolute vacuum. There are always fluctuations, energy fields and virtual particles in there that prevent it being an absolute vacuum and seeing as there is no way to remove these its just not possible to get rid of everythingto make a vacuum

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[insane_alien]

if you used antimatter then there would be alot of gamma rays inside the chamber (even if it is only gor a split seond if they can get out), these gamma rays can spontaneuosly turn into matter-antimatter pairs. which means you'd still be left with stuff inside the pressure vessel. also there are quantum effects which can exert a pressure. and virtual particles(i don't understand them, ask swansont or severian)

[RyanJ]

if you used antimatter then there would be alot of gamma rays inside the chamber (even if it is only gor a split seond if they can get out), these gamma rays can spontaneuosly turn into matter-antimatter pairs. which means you'd still be left with stuff inside the pressure vessel. also there are quantum effects which can exert a pressure. and virtual particles(i don't understand them, ask swansont or severian)

 

I don't understand them either but this may help...

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[insane_alien]

Yeah i've read it but it still seems a bit beyond me. i don't exactly need to know what it is for my course so i think i'll save my mind the boggling nature of virtual particles.

[5614]

As said you could not use antimatter because there would be a lot of gamma rays, however maybe you could get rid of those too. But it still wouldn't work. The biggest reason for this is, as mentioned, virtual particles.

 

The basic idea of virtual particles is this:

 

Part of quantum mechanics is called the Uncertainty Principle (otherwise know as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle after the man who discovered it).

 

This basically says that there are somethings which you cannot know absolutely precisely, ever, it is physically impossible. A common one is the position and momentum. If you know where a particle is then there is an uncertainty with which you can know its momentum. So say you know its position you can only know approximately what its momentum is.

 

Another pair is energy and time. The same thing applies as above, but this time with energy and time. The idea of virtual particles is that they are energy. If some energy suddenly appears then that violates the law of conservation of energy, but that is where uncertainty comes in.

 

What if the time it is there for is so short we cannot measure it because the uncertainty principle says we can't be certain about the time because we know the energy.

 

This works the other way around too. If we measure a time period then we cannot know the energy so we can't show that anything was there in the first place. The particle is energy remember.

 

So this is how a particle can just appear. There is of a course a condition; which is that the particle disappears very very quickly. That way we can never know it was there and so it does not violate the laws of physics.

 

So if we cannot detect it then why do we think it's there? Because it works mathematically, theoretically there's nothing wrong with it and experiments like the Casimir Effect:

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

prove that it exists. If you want I can explain that too, just ask.

[RyanJ]

That makes sence, thanks for the description 5614

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[hm_Idont/\/0]

thanks this stuff is very intresting and i can get enough...