Magnetic field turns the void into a motor ⚡ экспресс
Quantum vacuum fluctuations can make objects spin—this is Casimir torque. Usually, asymmetry is needed. But in altermagnets, a uniform magnetic field creates rotation without breaking symmetry—like a top spun by an invisible hand. Could the vacuum become an engine?
Two metal plates in a perfect vacuum attract each other. Even Richard Feynman compared emptiness to a boiling foam: particle pairs are born and immediately vanish, creating the Casimir effect. If the plates are asymmetric, they also start to twist — that's a vacuum motor.
But rotation doesn't require oddly shaped parts. Following the equations of James Clerk Maxwell, physicists discovered that in altermagnets — special magnets with a wave-like magnetization — a perpendicular magnetic field breaks time symmetry. The void responds with a torque that grows as the square of the field.
As temperature rises, thermal noise ( entropy ) weakens the rotation. The most surprising part: the same quantum fluctuations that spin nanoparticles are suspected to drive the expanding Universe — that's dark energy. Engineers hope to create contactless nanomotors, since in micromachines the usual Casimir effect, on the contrary, glues parts together.
🎯 The Casimir effect was calculated by Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir back in 1948, but it wasn't experimentally confirmed until 1996–1997 with the help of ultra-precise measurements.
🎬 In Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction novel 'The Fountains of Paradise', engineers build a space elevator. Perhaps one day Casimir-effect nanomotors will become part of such structures.