Heat Energy Leaps Through Empty Space

[Comfortably Numb]

Heat energy leaps through empty space, thanks to quantum weirdness

Source: phys.org
Date: 11 December, 2019

If you use a vacuum-insulated thermos to help keep your coffee hot, you may know it's a good insulator because heat energy has a hard time moving through empty space. Vibrations of atoms or molecules, which carry thermal energy, simply can't travel if there are no atoms or molecules around.

But a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, shows how the weirdness of quantum mechanics can turn even this basic tenet of classical physics on its head.

The study, appearing this week in the journal Nature, shows that heat energy can leap across a few hundred nanometers of a complete vacuum, thanks to a quantum mechanical phenomenon called the Casimir interaction.

Though this interaction is only significant on very short length scales, it could have profound implications for the design of computer chips and other nanoscale electronic components where heat dissipation is key. It also upends what many of us learned about heat transfer in high school physics.

https://phys-org.cdn.ampproject.org...s/2019-12-energy-space-quantum-weirdness.html

 

[Tempest63]

Boffins! Don’t you just love em

 

[Ermintruder]

Don’t you just love em

Yes...but that love can often break-down over distances as short as just a few a hundred nanometres.

The only certainties in science seem to be the undiscovered exceptions that, given time, bypass many an established understanding. And the apples falling upon heads, still, are often from the overturned carts of conventional common (mainstreamed) sense.

Yet, may We nod, the true follows of Fort, us contemplators, bold, of alternatives and potentialities....as the great man himself once said:

I conceive of nothing, in religion, science, or philosophy, that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

"heat energy has a hard time moving through empty space"

But how does that differ from the heat energy radiated by the Sun? That travels across vast distances and still keeps us warm.

 

[escargot]

Remember the particles moving faster than light flap of a few years ago? This was actually down to faulty measurements caused by a loose cable at the receiving end of the transmission!

However, before the announcement and until the cause of the anomaly was detected the results had to be shared with the collaborating institutions.

Our very own Snailet of Physics was doing his post-doc at CERN back then and it fell to him to compose the email sent out to them all.
He said he had to word it very carefully indeed to avoid physicists all over the world dropping dead from the shock.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

... how does that differ from the heat energy radiated by the Sun? That travels across vast distances and still keeps us warm.

Had to look this up!

Evidently...

'The sun heats the earth through radiation. Since there is no medium (like the gas in our atmosphere) in space, radiation is the primary way that heat travels in space. When the heat reaches the earth it warms the molecules of the atmosphere, and they warm other molecules and so on'.

 

[Frasier Buddolph]

Yeah, I'm scratching my head on this one. We were taught that heat can be transmitted by conduction (through a solid medium), convection (through a fluid medium), or radiation (through a vacuum). I can't believe a trained physicist isn't familiar with this. Is it possible that the writer of this article doesn't understand the significance of the finding? Is this the mechanism by which radiant transfer through a vacuum occurs? Will wait for more info . . .