virtual particals

"moogle33" writes:

OK I may be a bit out of my league here so humour me OK.

Also rather off-topic for this NG.


Are virtual particles effected by magnetism?

Only if they happen to be charged.


What material was is used for the conducting plates when measuring the
casimir effect

It doesn't matter. _Any_ two chunks of matter placed close together
will exert the so-called "casimir force" on each other. However,
contrary to what you may have read in bad SF novels or UFO magazines,
the "casimir effect" has _NOTHING WHATSOEVER_ to do with "vacuum" or
"zero-point energy," or any of that other nonsense. As was very clearly
shown by Julian Schwinger, the "casimir effect" is merely a macroscopic
analog of the van der Waals force between molecules. A macroscopic chunk
of matter has a fluctuating electric dipole moment due to the fluctuating
electric dipole moments of all the molecules it is made out of, and when
two macroscopic chunks of matter are placed close to each other, these
fluctuating dipole moments interact with each other, resulting in a small
time-averaged force between the two chunks, comparable in strength to the
van der Waals force. No "magic" is required --- and no so-called "vacuum"
or "zero-point energy" is required, either!


-- Gordon D. Pusch

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