AaS! 252: Why Can’t We Get Free Energy from the Vacuum?
Ask a Spaceman!
Paul M. Sutter
4.8 • 853 Ratings
🗓️ 22 July 2025
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
Why does the vacuum of spacetime have energy? How much energy does it have? What prevents us from using it to do anything useful? I discuss these questions and more in today’s Ask a Spaceman!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's Friday. |
| 0:08.6 | Late afternoon. |
| 0:10.2 | You're at work and you've got that major deadline due at the end of the day. |
| 0:15.6 | Your boss is breathing down your neck. |
| 0:17.7 | Your whole team is on edge. |
| 0:20.5 | They're all counting on you to finish this |
| 0:23.2 | final task. Put a bow on it and get it out the door. You've had 10 cups of coffee today, |
| 0:31.8 | maybe more, you've lost count. Your hands are jittery. You can feel your heart racing in your chest. Your mind is going a mile a minute and you can feel the energy inside of you, but nothing comes out. Despite the intensity of your thoughts is almost like they're too sluggish to turn into anything meaningful. You're awake but exhausted. You're energized but unfocused. You're energized, but unfocused. |
| 0:55.1 | You're keyed in, but you have nothing left to give. |
| 0:58.3 | This is the state of the vacuum in our universe. |
| 1:02.8 | An overly caffeinated worker who can feel the energies inside them but can't tap into them |
| 1:08.4 | to get anything useful done. |
| 1:10.1 | Now, that's all you need to answer the question of today's episode, which is why can't we |
| 1:16.0 | get free energy from the vacuum, then please stop the episode, go home, and take a nap. |
| 1:21.8 | But this is more than a mere analogy. |
| 1:24.3 | Well, okay, it's literally an analogy, but I chose the words here on purpose, |
| 1:29.0 | full of energy, but unable to be used. That's physics. The vacuum of space time has energy. |
| 1:37.2 | It's impossible to say exactly how much energy. It's anywhere from a tiny amount to literally |
| 1:43.0 | infinity, but it's definitely not zero. |
| 1:46.1 | But no matter how much energy the vacuum of spacetime has, it's not useful energy. |
| 1:52.1 | It's not energy we can turn into work. |
| 1:54.2 | It's not energy that we can transform into something else or transfer somewhere else. |
... |
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