Dear Kevin,

 

Gently put, your assumption is incorrect.  To the contrary, the EM field and potential are considered "external parameters" in classical thermodynamics.  To change EM energy from the virtual state to the observable state connected with matter, is indeed a change of form of the energy --- and work is DEFINED as the change of form of energy.  Thermodynamics unfortunately defines the change of the magnitude of an external parameter as work, which is not necessarily true.

 

This fundamental error -- of improperly defining work, and erroneously defining energy as work --- is contained in the present statement of the first law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy law).  There it is erroneously assumed (from the hoary old days) that a change in the MAGNITUDE of the external parameter is work, a priori.  That is not quite true.  It only RESULTS in work if the FORM of the input energy is different, and it has to be changed in form.  Merely increasing or decreasing the potential  of a system (and therefore  the potential energy of the system) is NOT work at all, but is simple regauging, and is free --- as shown by the gauge freedom axiom of quantum field theory.

 

Change from virtual energy to observable energy is indeed such a change in form of the energy, and is a broken symmetry in the virtual energy flux of the vacuum itself, right out of standard particle physics.  Therefore the source charge is indeed continuously doing work, because it absorbs virtual energy and changes its form to observable energy.

 

If really interested in the effects, see Michael Leyton's revolutionary new discovery and group theoretic proof of the hierarchies of symmetry.  I have just finished applying his marvelous work to the source charge, and it does generate every level of happening that occurs, from the virtual state to the potential or field on the charge, to the emission of observable photons in all directions, to the appearance of higher order and determinism in the conglomeration of those photons (the fields and potentials), etc.  It continues through the various higher levels to the conservation of energy for the whole universe, then even outside it to the superuniverse, if one accepts the creation of universes (as by a big bang, etc.).

 

In my opinion, for the first time Leyton's work shows the absolutely required production of negative entropy, by consuming entropy at the next lower level.  A broken symmetry at one level, can consume disorder at one level and generates a new symmetry (controlled order) at the next higher level.  Nothing like this has existed before, and it completely overturns the present second law of thermodynamics.  The present second law is already proven to be violated to the cubic micron level and for up to two seconds, by Wang and Evans et al.  That a system can produce negative entropy, continuing to decrease toward negative infinity as time passes, has been shown by Evans and Rondoni.  They could find no physical system doing it, but the source charge does, and the source charge is indeed a deterministic dissipative system --- which they carefully stated still "has the problem" (of the negative entropy). Stay tuned for my expose of a little summary of all that, very soon now, on my website.

 

A few references of interest are given below.

 

Best wishes,

Tom Bearden

 

References:

1. Michael Leyton, A Generative Theory of Shape, Springer, 2001.
2. Ralph Baierlein, Thermal Physics, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 2.
3. D. J. Evans and D. J. Searles, "Equilibrium microstates which generate second law violating steady states," Phys. Rev. E, Vol. 50, 1994, p. 1645-1648. Advances the transient fluctuation theorem which predicts appreciable and measurable violations of the second law of thermodynamics for small systems over short time scales.
4. D. J. Evans and Lamberto Rondoni, "Comments on the Entropy of Nonequilibrium Steady States," J. Stat. Phys., 109(3-4), Nov. 2002, p. 895-920.
5. D. J. Evans, E. G. D. Cohen, and G. P. Morriss, "Probability of second law violations in Nonequilibrium steady states," Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 71, 1993, p. 2401-2404; "Erratum", ibid., Vol. 71, 1993, p. 3616.
6. G. M. Wang, E. M. Sevick, Emil Mittag, Debra J. Searles, and Denis J. Evans, "Experimental Demonstration of Violations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics for Small Systems and Short Time Scales," Phys. Rev. Lett., 89(5), 29 July 2002, 050601, p. 1-4 (VERIFY). Experimentally demonstrates the integrated transient fluctuation theorem, which predicts appreciable and measurable violations of the second law of thermodynamics for small systems over short time scales. Entropy consumption is shown to occur over colloidal length and time scales, for up to two seconds and at micron size scales. 

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        Subject:        question...

Mr. Bearden, you state the following in your rebuttal of Collins:

In that conventional EM and EE model, all observable EM fields, potentials, and their observable energy in space are said to come from and be produced by the associated source charge. But it is an experimental fact, easily shown, that no observable energy input is made to the charge in the real world, or in that classical and EE model.  The classical model also does not contain or model an unobservable, virtual state EM energy input.  So the current Maxwell-Heaviside EM model (and the current electrical engineering model) accepted in every university, every EE department, by every EE professor, and in every EE textbook, already implicitly assumes that the source charge freely creates and pours out real observable EM energy continuously, from nothing at all, thereby establishing and continuously replenishing its associated EM fields and potentials and their energy, spreading across the universe at light speed from the moment of presentation, assembly, or creation of the charge.

But, isn't this because the charge is doing no work?  If it were doing work, then energy would have to be input into the charge.  Doing no work, it's energy is only potential and the idea of an EM field permeating space is like the idea in quantum mechanics that there really isn't anything there until it's observed.  In other words, the idea of a charge field existing prior to work is a way of expressing the "potential to do work." ...?

I'm not a physicist, but I'm trying to remember the best I can from college physics.  I'd love to hear how what I've said is incorrect -- it would improve my understanding of ZPE.

Thanks,
KEvin