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One interesting example of a mainstream cosmological physical model using the balancing of positive and negative energy is that of a charged black hole. Here, positive electromagnetic energy and negative gravitational energy are being balanced against one another.

Are there examples of mainstream physical models also using the idea of positive and negative energy balancing one another at the quantum level?

Physiks lover
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  • One problem is that electrons are point particles and both energies are infinite. – G. Smith Nov 25 '19 at 00:07
  • Try assuming that the electron is a spherical shell of small finite radius. Calculate the two energies and see whether you can find a stable point. – G. Smith Nov 25 '19 at 00:09
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    This is too far out from mainstream physics to fall within the site's rules.https://physics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic – anna v Nov 25 '19 at 08:12
  • @annav charged black holes balancing EM and gravitational energy fall within mainstream physics at the cosmological level IMO. I don't see why similar questions concerning the balancing of positive and negative energies of the vacuum can't be asked here either. But if questions concerning charged black holes aren't allowed here, then I agree this question should be closed. – Physiks lover Nov 25 '19 at 20:56
  • In mainstream physics the fields in the vacuum have a VEV of zero except for the Higgs field.Vacuum has no energy density by definition in classical physics. Black holes are classical physics and the proposals are within classical physics. What you propose is in the quantum frame and does not follow the mainstream . – anna v Nov 26 '19 at 05:24
  • @annav Could you write your comment as an answer then? You seem to be saying that the vacuum cannot create positive and negative energies that sum to zero according to current theoretical physics. Also, I'm not proposing my idea as a theory, but rather the problems it creates and hence why positive and negative energy of the vacuum isn't treated seriously if this is the case. My question is meant in the same spirit as What would happen if F=m da/dt? – Physiks lover Nov 26 '19 at 20:49

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What are the theoretical/experimental problems with using negative gravitational energy and positive EM energy of the vacuum to balance one another?

Energy is :

In physics, energy is the quantitative property that must be transferred to an object in order to perform work on, or to heat, the object. Energy is a conserved quantity; the law of conservation of energy states that energy can be converted in form, but not created or destroyed.

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The total energy of a system can be subdivided and classified into potential energy, kinetic energy, or combinations of the two in various ways. Kinetic energy is determined by the movement of an object – or the composite motion of the components of an object – and potential energy reflects the potential of an object to have motion, and generally is a function of the position of an object within a field or may be stored in the field itself.

Note the words "object" and "system. It refers to things that can be described by coordinates (x,y,z,t) . In classical physics energy cannot belong to the vacuum, by definition of the word vacuum, which means no objects or systems in a vacuum.

In the quantum frame the existence of objects at (x,y,z,t) has become probabilistic, the only calculations that can be done give the probability of a system to interact, there is no determinism. This mathematical system has lead to the use the word "vacuum" for the mathematical description of the interactions in a specific way to make it consistent with measurements and observations at the quantum framework.

The model called field theory of quantum mechanics, fills up everything with fields that correspond on the elementary particles in the table of the model. electron fields neutrino fields etc , and creation and annihilation operators on these fields generate the interactions given in the mathematical integrals of the theory, which are depicted by Feynman diagrams.

The fields have a vacuum expectation value (VEV)of zero, except for the Higgs field which has one at 246 GeV. This will be true for all interactions, whether electromagnetic or gravitational.

It means that no electron positron pairs can be created from vacuum due to the conservation of energy. The pair production loops have to be connected to real four vectors entering the interaction so that real particles may appear.

The often misused vacuum loops are higher order corrections in the integrals that give particle interaction and decays. Without input energy and momentum, the VEV is zero.

A combination of electromagnetic and gravitational forms is even more forbidden by conservation of energy. The standard model of physics, which fits existing data and is very predictive, cannot be fitted using your hypothesis and the present tools.

There do exist off the main stream proposals to give a value to the VEV, but this site is not the place to discuss them. To propose such a model as you do, needs a lot of mathematical justifications and effort not to destroy existing verified models.

anna v
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