[waspguy]

Re: a preferred direction in spacetime...

That's the problem. According to Relativity, there can be no preferred frame of reference. My "up" is no more valid than your "up". If electrostatic charges were to setup some sort of spin - then that would have to be spin around an axis. But given the spherical symmetry of the situation, how would the charge be able to pick an axis out all the possible choices?

My argument is similar to a question once posed to me by my thesis advisor - "Why is it that the Laplace operator shows up so often in physics?" A: Because it's the simplest rotationaly invariant operator - the simplest way to ensure there's no prefered direction in the Universe.

For this result to be true (and it might be for all I know) we'll have to toss out most of our understanding of classical physics - but then replace it with something that gives exactly the same results in most cases, but now includes this unexpected result. You'd have to toss out most of classical physics (and Quantum mechanics as well since it has the Laplace operator in the Schroedinger equation as well.)

I guess it just seems to me that there's too much beauty in the symmetry arguments of classical physics to do such a thing.

(Of course I'll bet Ptolomey felt the same way about the geo-centric universe. Grin.)

[MainFrame65]

"I guess it just seems to me that there's too much beauty in the symmetry arguments of classical physics to do such a thing."

From my reading, the effect is very small. And for a very small effect, I suspect that very small asymmetries in the experimental setup might be the cause.

Still, this is interesting. Zero-point energy should be a scalar value, not a vector. This would be something else.