-----Original Message----- From: Horace Heffner Question and comment:
... mixed with an electron transport gas, like argon. Why are you calling argon an "electron transport gas" ? Is there a mechanism you are suggesting that is non-ionizing? (capacitive?) Comment #1 Timothy Boyer was apparently the first to show that the geometry of two tiny hemispheres causes a repulsive force, not an attractive one; and later Evgeny Lifshitz provided a theory of how the repulsive force occurs, and it is in liquids most often. That seems to have been confirmed: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7226/abs/nature07610.html If the close range force as seen in liquids is repulsive, then that might counter some of the assumptions underlying any proposal for phase change BUT it might be put to benefit in "boiling" if I understand what you are suggesting. There is so little real data that it is hard to tell. Comment #2 A special "lens" of a kind that can negatively alter, or reverse the focus of the attractive CF and convert it into a repulsive force has been considered by Prof Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/30670 Such a lens would be made from a material that is engineered to have negative index of refraction - meaning that it bends light in the opposite direction to an ordinary material. The technology to make such optical lenses is only a few years old and Philbin says it's already good enough to produce lenses that can convert the Casimir attraction between objects into repulsion. http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/19240/?a=f To reverse the Casimir force, it would seem that a perfect lens will have to work at very short wavelengths - corresponding to nanometer distances and below; and photons in the UV range are generally absorbed and not reflected, so how can they be focused? Would virtual photons be different? Despite the seemingly authoritative source or this story, I am skeptical - but it might be worth consideration. Jones
