Keys to Tapping Zero Point Energy


When Los Alamos national laboratory physicist Peter Milonni wrote a book titled The Quantum Vacuum, and Aca­demic Press published it in 1994, Thomas Valone decided it was time to do his own Ph.D. thesis on a topic that Milon­ni’s book dealt with—zero point energy.

In addition to his thesis, Dr. Valone more recently decided to make the information accessible to the layperson. The result is his new book Zero Point Energy: The Fuel of the Future. Its premise is that soon we’ll be able to use ZPE (his shorthand for zero-point energy) to power cars and houses.

His book is indeed welcome. We might not as easily follow the formal language of the Milonni book, such as a pas­sage about fluctuations of the quantum vacuum “…the coupling of the dipole oscillator to the electromagnetic field has a dissipative component, in the form of radiation reaction, and a fluctuation component, in the form of zero-point (vacuum) field; given the existence of radiation reaction, the vacuum field must also exist in order to preserve the canonical commutation rule and all it entails.”

In contrast, the language of Valone’s latest book is more conversational. “…the fluctuations of ZPE must be im­printed on your mind. To me, this is the key to an energy solution. Just like a refrigerator or heat pump forces heat to go in one direction only, this ‘rectification’ of heat can also be applied to non-thermal fluctuations.”

In Milonni’s text and elsewhere, Valone finds clues for would-be engineers-of-the-vacuum. For example, Milonni explains that “quantum noise” can be amplified. Valone predicts that amplifying spontaneous emissions will be an im­portant tool for the vacuum engineer to use when a circuit part such as a diode is chosen to convert ZPE to electrici­ty.

The name zero point energy came about for various reasons. Scientists discovered that it’s impossible to freeze anything so solidly that its molecules become absolutely still. Even if they were able to cool a substance down to ab­solute zero Kelvin, the atoms of its molecules would still jitter. At the level of the Extremely Small, some source of energy jostles everything all the time. If you pump everything out of a container—substance, gases and any heat en­ergy, as the temperature approaches absolute zero the only thing left in the container will be a vacuum and zero point energy. Valone says scientists have come within microdegrees of the absolute zero point of temperature. In an experiment in cooling helium that cold, the molecules retained some kinetic energy—enough to keep helium in the liquid state. Scientists say only ZPE can account for the energy that prevents helium from freezing.

ZPE could relate to the old ether-theory about the sea of energy that fills all space. In that concept, light travels by moving through a medium called the ether (also spelled aether) just as sound travels by rippling through water or air. The famous Michelson-Morley experiment early in the 20th century convinced scientists the ether doesn’t exist. However, Valone points out that their experiment has been countered by E. W. Silvertooth (“Experimental Detection of the Aether,” Speculations in Science & Tech, V10 N1, pp. 3-12) and other scientists with improved accuracy. The ZPE model could perhaps be compared to a dynamic ether but not to a static ether; ZPE is said to be in constant mo­tion.

Can we get ZPE to do useful work for us? In Valone’s appendix chapter titled “Is Permanent Magnetism Connected with Zero Point Energy?” he indicates that yes, permanent magnets (magnetized materials, as opposed to electromag­nets) can be a source of energy for the future. The “magnetic gradient” is an untapped potential energy source just like other gradients we depend on for energy. His examples include the thermal gradient in heat pumps, the voltage gradient in wall sockets, the gravity gradient in hydroelectric power plants, and the pressure gradient in water pipes.

We haven’t commercially perfected any magnetic-gradient machines that work continuously, Valone says, but he cites several promising patents as templates for what such a motor or generator would look like. For instance he helped draft the patent for a complex multi-rotor motor design by Russian scientists Roschin and Godin.

His book also deals with the submicrosopic world of proton spins. The conclusion is important to our future. Va­lone’s magnetism piece introduces the argument that the spin and orbital motion of an electron is closely coupled to nuclear energy states, which also include rotation. (If your science teacher explains the magnetic property of perma­nent magnets to you, the topic of spin alignment comes up. A material is magnetized when the direction of spin is no longer random; the spins are lined up.)

Without quoting his technical arguments, I’ll skip to Valone’s summary “Not only have we shown that the proton spin derives from the vacuum field…but that the atom itself is deriving energy from the vacuum ZPE field. Further-more…it is a well-known fact in quantum mechanics that the electron and the nucleus exchange energy and depend upon each other in an intimate fashion, acting as a coupled system of oscillators.”

Near the end of his magnetism article Valone says we can now understand the pathway ZPE travels as the energy source sustaining all energy states of the atom, including electrons’ spin. Up in the visible world, the magnetic field of a permanent magnet—dependent on the aligned spin of electrons—is thus shown to be sustained by the vacuum ZPE field.

Valone’s conclusion could open doors to a clean energy future:

“Therefore as totally permanent magnet motors, generators and actuators become commercialized, it will no longer be a mystery as to where the energy is coming from. Furthermore, these magnet-powered devices cannot be mistaken for perpetuum mobiles.”

His book cites many indications that the background sea of ZPE can be converted to produce electricity. “It may be our primitive 20th-century upbringing that stops us from putting a paddlewheel in this sea.”

While on the east coast of the continent Tom Valone as an engineering physicist looks for future energy technolo­gies, out west Nassim Haramein seeks a sweeping cosmology that explains everything. If the two men met, they would find ample common ground. Haramein, for example, leads his audiences along a path of knowledge with com­ments such as “Maybe it’s the vacuum that we call space that holds the key to creation.”

Crossing the Event Horizon

Last year I wrote a column about Nassim Haramein and the Resonance Project, expecting there would be a DVD soon. Recently, his Crossing the Event Horizon set of four DVDs has appeared on the market ( The six hours of information and animations were worth waiting for. They were filmed at one of the public workshops where he introduces transformative science through illustrations and anec­dotes.

Haramein spent most of his adult life so far seeking knowledge about the structure of space and time. His re­search resulted in a Unification Theory with implications in theoretical physics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, bi­ology, chemistry, archaeology and anthropology.

Decades ago, as a free-spirited young man who had escaped the confines of formal schooling, Nassim Haramein made his living as a ski instructor. Since he also relished mountain climbing, his early ponderings about the struc­ture of space-time took place while out in nature. He realized that if he wanted to know if nature is being directed by it, he should be able to see signs of that structure while observing nature.

Up in the mountains, therefore, he peered closely at snow crystals and crystals in the rocks, looked at the way tree branches divide, thought about many aspects of the natural world and concluded that universal forces continually re­peat patterns. The dividing of the vacuum seems to always generate the same fundamental specific geometry.

This review can’t do justice to the step-by-step logic of his story as told in Crossing the Event Horizon. I’ll just give snapshots. For instance, looking at the proliferation of spheres in nature and knowing that the sphere is the most unstable shape, he wanted to know what’s inside—the geometry that holds the sphere together. On the outside, he says, the sphere is an event horizon, the boundary from which things radiate. The inner structure holding a sphere that divides the vacuum must be in perfect equilibrium, he realized. We would think there’s nothing there, just a vacuum.

His logic quickly led to the tetrahedron, but there were many more puzzles to be solved before he reached the an­swer about a further geometric structure which meets all the requirements of his search—endlessly uniting the finite with the infinite and extremely small with extremely large objects.

As if confirming that he was right to begin his odyssey, in a small ski-town library Peter Tompkins’ book Mystery of the Mexican Pyramids fell into Haramein’s hands and opened to a certain graphic of a tetrahedron inside a sphere. This incident was one of the small but encouraging steps in Haramein’s twenty years of investigation—from micro to macro—in diverse fields such as advanced physics, ancient civilizations, crop circles, cosmology and biology as well as philosophy and consciousness studies.

He proposes that instead of looking for fundamental particles, scientists should start looking for a fundamental principle of division, a fundamental pattern of creation. If we understand the pattern, the principle behind every­thing, Haramein says, we have the key to creation. He concludes that the underlying geometry is the key.

His questioning led to the realization that if our universe is expanding, there must be something contracting, some compression before expansion. After years of concentrated study and breakthrough thinking he can explain the process scientifically. It apparently works for all size scales. Animations on his DVDs illustrate an information feed­back loop between rhythmic contraction and expansion, the radiated side and the contracted side of universal struc­tures. It seems we’re looking at a new field of physics, yet one partially predicted by visionaries such as the late Walter Russell.

Distinguished physicist Elizabeth Rauscher was skeptical about Haramein’s concepts when they first met, but eventually found that the mathematics worked out. This led her to co-author a scientific paper with him. The collabo­ration led to further insights on the fractal structuring of the universe. They graphed sizes and resonant frequencies of objects, from the smallest known object to the largest, and found a linear progression on the graph. In other words, there is universal patterning. Our own living cells are at the point where the micro and macro join. Haramein sees empowering implications in such data.

“The biological resolution is the link between the large and the small. You are the event horizon. Instead of seeing yourself as an insignificant little dot that means nothing to the universe, you begin to see yourself as the cen­ter…Everyone else is the center of their universe as well…And we are all one.”

Haramein’s journey led him to closely study esoteric writings and the Christian bible. He concluded that the Old Testament and New Testament can come together just like the divisions of physics can be united. He believes that the Old Testament contains references to beings who mastered very advanced technology and the New Testament deals with the level of mastery of spiritual principles which humankind must reach in order to have this level of technology. The goal is a civilization that has reached levels of mastery in which people have equilibrium between their inter­nal world and their external world. They are knowingly in contact with the universe, even within their physical exis­tence, which is made of subatomic mini-black holes connecting all things together.

His message to the world isn’t just about the hidden geometry of space and how we could have a more technologi­cally advanced civilization in harmony with nature’s ways. It’s about a deeper understanding of our experience and our existence.

As he understands it, this is the crucial time to transcend our way of doing things, in order to survive changes coming to our solar system—and to move to the next level of interactions among living beings.


Leave a Reply
