Quantum Ripples in the Atom: A Simple Way to Account for Them ✎ express
Quantum vacuum resembles a sea, constantly rippling with tiny splashes. An electron in an atom moves in this sea, and its path slightly changes due to the waves. Previously, such corrections were accurately calculated only for hydrogen-like ions with a single electron. But in highly charged ions with several electrons, the picture becomes more complex. Scientists found a way out: instead of complicated formulas, they described the nuclear and electron field with a set of smooth bell-shaped waves. This technique, long known in spectroscopy, was applied for the first time to the effect discovered by Paul Dirac and described by Richard Feynman. The results matched previous estimates, confirming the method's reliability. Surprisingly, Dirac himself initially considered such vacuum ripples to be merely a mathematical abstraction, until precise experiments proved their reality. Today, knowledge of these tiny shifts is essential for ultrastable atomic clocks and testing the standard model to its limits.
The energy shift due to vacuum polarization in the hydrogen atom is so small that it is equivalent to a change in the distance between the electron and the nucleus of just one hundredth of the proton's size.
Harvesting energy from the quantum ripples of the vacuum is a popular sci-fi trope, as in Arthur C. Clarke's novel 'The City and the Stars'.