[extropy-chat] damien's psi book

[Adrian Tymes]

--- David <deimtee at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> One thing that I sometimes wonder about is the
> possible
> connection between gamma ray bursters, and zero
> point
> energy schemes.  I have read reports of truly
> staggering
> quantities of energy being bound up in the vacuum
> quantum
> flux, and that the source of gamma ray bursters is
> unknown.
> What if there is an easy way to tap zero point
> energy, but
> there is a runaway effect until the tapper is
> obliterated
> by a black hole formed by the sheer energy density.

Very unlikely.  Zero point energy can't realistically
be tapped except by very small mechanisms, which would
be at ground zero of any such obliteration.  The
instant they were destroyed, the feedback would stop.
Spillover effects might destroy things for a few
millimeters around.  Any development program would
start with a few test arrays, to work out the process;
these would be hit well before mass production could
start.  (Or, if it did go into mass production, the
feedback would likely hit before too many units were
produced.)  The net result would be far too little
power to produce gamma ray bursters.

IMO, far more likely - not that this is saying much,
given the low probabilities involved either way - is
spillover from technologically advanced civilization
that we simply don't yet comprehend, for instance
byproducts of FTL travel or communication (say, gamma
rays are a byproduct of wormhole creation).  Far more
likely still are natural processes that, again, we
don't yet understand.