He seems to be makings some mistakes as well. He says: This is baloney too - but now it's graduate-level baloney. "Quantum vacuum virtual plasma" is something you'd say if you failed a course in quantum field theory and then smoked too much weed. There's no such thing as "virtual plasma". If you want to report experimental results that seem to violate the known laws of physics, fine. But it doesn't help your credibility to make up goofy pseudo-explanations.
The original description might be clumsy, but the idea of empty space being full of virtual particles is not wrong.
Here is Dr. Laurence Krauss's description of empty space:
especially the idea that what we think of empty space is really not empty, correct?
KRAUSS: That's exactly right. Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence in a time scale so short that you can't even measure them. Now, that sounds of course like counting angels on the head of a pin; if you can't measure them, then it doesn't sound like it's science, but in fact you can't measure them directly.
But we can measure their effects indirectly. These particles that are popping in and out of existence actually affect the properties of atoms and nuclei and actually are responsible for most of the mass inside your body. And in fact, really one of the things that motivated this book was the most profound discovery in recent times, and you even alluded to it in the last segment, the discovery that most of the energy of the universe actually resides in empty space.
He dismissed the idea in a very arrogant way, just look at the wording, because someone used a incompatible word. Yet, the experiments gave a result; but he doesn't like that, and instead of using arguments he used ridicule, which doesn't show any credibility.
If you find his tone objectionable, try to look past it. Baez is a fellow worth listening to. He makes a number of substantive arguments why this looks and smells like crank science (for example, the contradictory statements about whether the experiment was done in a vacuum). It's perfectly legitimate of him to point out some social cues that you would not expect from a serious scientist making this kind of claim.
The faster-than-light neutrino experiment gave a result, too, but in these cases the onus is massively on the people making the wild claims, and rightly so.
The wording used indicates that the writers have no understanding of the current state of the field, which is extremely highly correlated with crackpottery in physics. It's not a comment on the experiment, it's a comment on the fact that the hand-wavy theoretical explanation doesn't pass the sniff test to anyone who's taken QFT.
>>In the paper by White et al, they also write that the Cannae Drive “is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and therefore is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma.” That last bit stopped me. What’s a quantum vacuum virtual plasma? I’d never heard the term, so I dropped a note to Sean Carroll, a Caltech physicist whose work dives deeply into speculative realms of cosmology and quantum theory.
Carroll wrote back immediately, with a pointed message: “There is no such thing as a ‘quantum vacuum virtual plasma,’ so that should be a tip-off right there. There is a quantum vacuum, but it is nothing like a plasma. In particular, it does not have a rest frame, so there is nothing to push against, so you can’t use it for propulsion. The whole thing is just nonsense. They claim to measure an incredibly tiny effect that could very easily be just noise.” There is no theory to support the result, and there is no verified result to begin with.<<
Pretty strange response, there are lots of things that prove virtual particles are a legitimate model, even for things like generating force:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
Because lots can go wrong, one experiment is not a verification. Particularly when the measurements are so sensitive. And I'm aware this is the third experiment, but with a result that is so counter to basic theory, we need many more.
It's not a missed point. The term "plasma" means something very specific. You can't just take an existing thing (virtual particles) and slap the term "plasma" to the end of it and necessarily be correct.
Imagine you're reading a paper about programming, and suddenly it mentions "refactoring the abstract megabyte". A non-programmer might insist that replacing "megabyte" with "class" makes the phrase kinda sorta meaningful, so the paper is totally legit. But I don't think you'd buy it.
When you're unfamiliar with some field, and insiders to that field tell you that misuse of technical terms is a strong red flag, you'd better believe them. Their words come from painful experience.
The original description might be clumsy, but the idea of empty space being full of virtual particles is not wrong.
Here is Dr. Laurence Krauss's description of empty space:
especially the idea that what we think of empty space is really not empty, correct?
KRAUSS: That's exactly right. Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence in a time scale so short that you can't even measure them. Now, that sounds of course like counting angels on the head of a pin; if you can't measure them, then it doesn't sound like it's science, but in fact you can't measure them directly.
But we can measure their effects indirectly. These particles that are popping in and out of existence actually affect the properties of atoms and nuclei and actually are responsible for most of the mass inside your body. And in fact, really one of the things that motivated this book was the most profound discovery in recent times, and you even alluded to it in the last segment, the discovery that most of the energy of the universe actually resides in empty space.