Note that when there is a relative covariant acceleration between a detector and zero point oscillations, the detector will "click" so that it's not always true that QED cannot directly detect virtual off shell quanta. This is essentially the Unruh Effect.

A global Minkowski vacuum looks like a thermal blackbody medium to non-geodesic Rindler observers seeing the local mixed state density matrix of entangled virtual photons in spacelike separated Rindler wedges. This is a particle horizon effect similar to what happens in deSitter space for dark energy. The "wedges" are the past and future horizons that Hawking radiate just like the surface (event horizon where the Killing vector field for t -> t' = t + T is null. Its timelike for r > rs and spacelike for r > rs).

Suppose the virtual ZPF (photons in this case) are confined in a cavity and the detector is inside the cavity. If both detector and cavity are on geodesics no click if the geodesic deviation is small enough. Consider the other possibilities. Also there are issues of complementarity between reliability and localization. The more you localize the response of a detector the less reliable it is and you get dark false positives even in vacuum. See Asher Peres's last paper in RMP 2004 I think on quantum, information and relativity. Peres's theory is diametrically opposed to Bohm's ontological interpretation of course. Peres refutes Susskind implicitly saying that the issue of information loss down a black hole is not well-formulated - misuse of unitarity. See end of his paper. I will go into this in more detail anon.

Also to correct one of Zielinski's confusions, the Rindler wedge spacetime is not the GR version of a uniform homogeneous constant Newtonian gravity field. True the test particle in hyperbolic motion has a constant non-geodesic covariant 4-acceleration g along its world line, but different world lines have generally different g's because in 1 + 1 to make it easier formally

t^2 - x^2 = 1/g^2

i.e.

t^2 - (x/c)^2 = c^2/g^2

Note c^2/g^2 dimensionally is

(L^2/T^2)/(L^2/T^4) = T^2

Therefore, fixing a number for g is the locus of a hyperbolic worldline in global Minkowski space-time. The corresponding neighboring world lines will have different numerical values of g.

Physicist Paul Warburton at University College London is building such a dark energy detector and could have results next year.

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http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn11523-superconductors-inspire-quantum-test-for-dark-energy.html

Superconductors inspire quantum test for dark energy

• 10:05 03 April 2007
• Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
• Zeeya Merali, London

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• Christian Beck, Queen Mary, University of London
• Paul Warburton, University College London
• Paul Frampton, University of North Carolina

Dark energy is so befuddling that it's causing some physicists to do their science backwards.

"Usually you propose your theory and then work out an experiment to test it," says Christian Beck of Queen Mary, University of London. A few years ago, however, he and his colleague Michael Mackey of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, proposed a table-top experiment to detect the elusive form of energy, without quite knowing why it might work. Now the pair have come up with the theory behind the experiment. "It is certainly an upside-down way of doing things," Beck admits.

Dark energy is the mysterious force that many physicists think is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. In 2004, Beck and Mackey claimed that the quantum fluctuations of empty space could be the source of dark energy and suggested a test for this idea.

This is not so. They were not the first. That is an old idea that dark energy is positive ZPF with w = -1 negative pressure (repulsive antigravity). It's already in both my books in 2002 and it was not original with me. That dark matter is also negative ZPF of positive pressure w = - 1 that asymptotically mimics w = 0 CDM (attractive gravity) was my idea.

This involved measuring the varying current induced by quantum fluctuations in a device called a Josephson junction – a very thin insulator sandwiched between two superconducting layers.

Beck reasoned that if quantum fluctuations and dark energy are related, the current in the Josephson junction would die off beyond a certain frequency (see A table-top test for dark energy?). But they hadn't worked out what exactly caused the cut-off.

Now the duo say they know, and last week Beck presented the theory at a conference on unsolved problems for the standard model of cosmology held at Imperial College London.

Frequency cut-off

Quantum mechanics says that the vacuum of space is seething with virtual photons that are popping in and out of existence. Beck and Mackey suggest that when these virtual photons have a frequency below a certain threshold, they are able to interact gravitationally, contributing to dark energy.

Their theory is inspired by superconducting materials. "Below a critical temperature, electrons in the material act in a fundamentally different way, and it starts superconducting," says Beck. "So why shouldn't virtual photons also change character below a certain frequency?"

If so, virtual photons should behave differently below a frequency of around 2 terahertz, causing any currents in the Josephson junction to taper off above this frequency. Physicist Paul Warburton at University College London is building such a dark energy detector and could have results next year.

This seems Rube Goldberg ad-hoc. Meaningless without seeing the math model.

Some evidence that dark energy works like this may already have been found. In 2006, Martin Tajmar at the Austrian Research Centers facility in Seibersdorf and his colleagues noticed bizarre behaviour in a spinning niobium ring. At room temperature, niobium does not superconduct, and accelerometers around the ring measured that it was spinning at a constant rate. But once the temperature fell, the niobium started to superconduct, and the accelerometers suddenly picked up a signal (Gravity's secret).

An ODLRO coherent condensate effect like Modanese's?

Odd acceleration

"We measured an acceleration even though the ring's motion hadn't changed at all," says Clovis de Matos, who works at the European Space Agency in Paris and established the theory behind the experiment. He thinks the results could be explained if gravity got a boost inside the superconductor. "Beck and Mackey's gravitationally activated photon would have that effect," he says.

The controversial experiment seemed to fall foul of Einstein's equivalence principle, which states that all objects should accelerate under gravity at the same rate. It implied that "if you have two elevators, one made of normal matter and one made of superconducting matter, and accelerate them by the same amount, objects inside will feel different accelerations", de Matos says. Astronomers may have seen a similar violation of the principle (see "Two-speed gravity", below).

The odd acceleration detected in the niobium ring also suggests that energy isn't conserved in the superconductor – another major violation of known physics. Dark energy could solve that problem, however. "We did the sums and found out that energy wasn't conserved, but perhaps that was just because we were missing dark energy," de Matos says.

Paul Frampton, a cosmologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, thinks Beck and Mackey's reasoning is flawed. "I don't think for a second they'll measure dark energy, but they should certainly try."

Cosmology - Keep up with the latest ideas in our special report.

From issue 2591 of New Scientist magazine, 03 April 2007, page 28-33

Two-speed gravity

"If Galileo could have dropped a lump of dark matter and a lump of normal matter from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, he might have expected them to fall at the same rate," says Orfeu Bertolami at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal. "But he would have been wrong."

Bertolami and his colleagues studied a galaxy cluster known as Abell cluster A586 to see if dark matter and normal matter fall in the same way under gravity. He says this cluster is ideal because it is spherical, suggesting that it has settled down: "The only motion we are seeing now is due to gravity toward the cluster's centre."

The team studied 25 galaxies in the cluster using gravitational lensing – the shift in the apparent position of a light source caused by gravity bending the light. When they analysed the positions of galaxies using conventional models, things just didn't add up. "It only makes sense if the normal matter is falling faster than the dark matter," Bertolami says.

This is the first astronomical observation to suggest that Einstein's principle of equivalence is violated, says Bertolami (read a preprint of the article). "If dark energy interacts with dark matter in some way, it could be affecting its motion."