I've been alerted to a new paper whose authors  show that the wave functions of quantum physics  

are really properties of the vacuum. And not only  this, if you trust what they say on Twitter, which  

maybe just maybe you should not, then this will  eventually make oil and the entire current energy  

industry irrelevant because it's ushering in the  era of zero point energy. Yes, that's complete  

nonsense. However, the idea in the paper is not  100% nonsense. So, I think it's worth exploring  

just where things go off the rails. Let's have a  look. The paper was published in Physical Review  

Research, and the first author is none other than  Harold White. We talked about White recently. He's  

the ex-NASA scientist who believes he can build  a warp drive powered by the energy of the vacuum.  

And this line of research fits into the program.  The new paper explores the idea that what we call  

empty space might behave like a physical medium in  which waves can travel. And that explains why the  

things we call particles also behave like waves.  If that was so, then one could plausibly extract  

energy from the vacuum and so power a war drive.  The idea that vacuum is a sort of a medium or at  

least behaves as one is not new. It's basically  an ether theory and yes the original ether has  

been ruled out experimentally for what the travel  of light is concerned but the idea that vacuum is  

actually something rather than nothing is not so  much out there. The reason is that we know many  

examples of quantum particles which do in fact  appear as a sort of wave in an actual medium. The  

particles in this case are called quasi particles  because they are collective wave motions of  

the particles that the medium is made of. But  that doesn't make them any less real. And that  

naturally brings up the question of whether the  things in the standard model of particle physics  

like the quarks and our friend the electron are  also waves in yet another medium that we haven't  

yet figured out. This is basically the idea of  the new paper. The authors imagine that the vacuum  

has properties similar to a material with density  and elasticity. So disturbances in it travel like  

sound waves. In their model, a proton changes  the properties of this vacuum medium around it.  

Waves traveling through the modified vacuum then  form standing patterns and those patterns turn  

out to have the same shapes and energy levels  as the familiar orbitals of the hydrogen atom.  

From this perspective, the quantized energy levels  of hydrogen would not be a basic rule of quantum  

mechanics, but would instead arise naturally from  the way waves resonate in the vacuum around the  

proton. And this is all well and good except that  they basically put standard quantum physics into  

the assumptions for how the waves propagate. And  this is why they get out the same. So for what  

the hydrogen atom is concerned, it's not so much  wrong as just a weird way to reformulate standard  

quantum mechanics. It's a bit like explaining why  apples fall by inventing a new theory of gravity  

that begins with the assumption that apples fall.  The bigger problem is that of course quantum  

physics is more than hydrogen energy levels. To  prove that their idea is viable, they'd have to  

prove that they can get the entire standard model  of particle physics and all its predictions. Yes,  

that's a high bar to jump, but I'm confident that  this approach isn't going to clear it. I give  

this paper a 9 out of 10 on the [ __ ] meter.  Why is it not a 10? Because at least it does  

contain equations and these are not obviously  wrong. And I've seen worse than that. Also,  

as I said, the idea that vacuum actually is a sort  of medium is not so far out there. Physicists have  

looked at this idea for a variety of reasons.  For example, to explain why the particles in  

the standard model seem to fall into a particular  pattern or to explain dark matter or dark energy.  

Sufficees to say that so far none of those ideas  have worked out. And the reason is it's actually  

very difficult to replace quantum physics with  something else and not break it entirely. What  

does any of this have to do with generating  energy from the vacuum and making the entire  

energy industry irrelevant? Nothing whatsoever. If  particles really are some sort of collective waves  

traveling in a medium, then the only way you'll  get energy out of this is from the traveling  

waves which are the particles. So same thing  that's already the case. You can't on the one  

hand claim you reproduce quantum mechanics and on  the other hand you want to get something new out  

of it. Otherwise every physics department would  already be running on vacuum power. Trust me,  

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and higher. Without you, this channel would not be  possible. Thanks for watching. See you tomorrow.