The particle/antiparticle pair created in a vacuum fluctuation are virtual — to to get a real pair you have to add energy, in an amount equal to or greater than anything could extract. (This is the basis of the physical description of Hawking radiation, where the added energy comes from a black hole, causing it to "evaporate")

Hmmnn, that normally is the way things work. The force that is required to push electrons together is over conventional distances the inverse square, the Casmir effect is inverse fourth power. Is the force to push it together at small distances inverse squared or fourth???

 

The Casimir force is observed between conducting surfaces, and AFAIK not individual electrons.

The particle/antiparticle pair created in a vacuum fluctuation are virtual — to to get a real pair you have to add energy, in an amount equal to or greater than anything could extract. (This is the basis of the physical description of Hawking radiation, where the added energy comes from a black hole, causing it to "evaporate")

That is what I thought too, but as the effect would appear to be a tunnelling of an electron form one plate to the other, I wasn't sure. I have no formal scientific education on this (only what I have read my self).

 

The thing is, the particles might be virtual, but as the Casmir plates show, these virtual particles can exert real effects. If the virtual particles can interact with the normal particles, then the "Energy" comes from the annihilation of the Electron in one of the plates (which gives enough energy to "promote" the virtual electron into a real electron). If the virtual particles don't interact with the real particles, then, of course, this can't occur.

 

Can a virtual positron annihilate a real electron?