[Physicist]

Reactionary New Scientist hype bump.

(Is it just me, or is FR getting fuzzy, squishy and new-agey?)

[longshadow]

Side question:

"Leonard Parker discovered in the late 1960s that an expanding or contracting Universe would create particles out of a pure vacuum. In effect, the stretching of space jiggles up some of the virtual particles and turns them into real particles.

Would this be the same mechanism that causes the creation of matter during Inflation, or is this referring to a different mechanism? If I understand it correctly, the Inflationary matter creation mechanism requires the presence of a gravitational field in the "stretched" space, but there is no mention of any type of field in the above quote.

[PatrickHenry]

Like the ether of old, the quantum vacuum exerts no frictional drag on a particle with constant velocity. But it's a different story with acceleration. The quantum vacuum does affect accelerating particles. For example, an electron circling an atom is jostled by virtual photons from the vacuum, leading to a slight but measurable shift in its energy.

Is it me, or sloppy writing? An orbiting atom isn't accelerating, is it? He's got to be thinking of rotation.

[FormerLurker]

Reactionary New Scientist hype bump.

Do you think Einstein to be "New Agey"?

Aether and the Theory of Relativity - Albert Einstein (1920)