Does "Zero Point" Refer to Your IQ?

Rage, rage, rage...

Why do people think zero-point energy could possibly have anything to do with anti-gravity or artificial gravity? I keep seeing it, and I'm getting tired of it. Zero-point energy is the lowest possible energy of a physical system, in quantum mechanics. It's also called the ground state.

Now, the main mention of zero-point energy, e.g. in the Stargate shows, is as an infinite energy source—mainly because the zero-point energy is something like a lower limit on energy, below which a system can never fall. Only, systems don't magically have infinite energy at their zero point; if you keep trying to siphon energy out of a system beyond its zero-point, the system changes. Given the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the change generally takes the form of breaking down. Expecting that zero-point energy could be tapped as an inexhaustible power-source is like expecting that you could use the force-normal of your wall as one: no, you eventually just put a hole in your wall. That's the same thing, the system breaking down to the point where it has different energy characteristics.

That's all well and good, albeit stupid—but where do people get the idea zero-point=anti-gravity? The first place I saw it is The Incredibles—along with being an Ayn Rand Lite rant about how our society doesn't acknowledge special snowflakes, its understanding of physics makes Jack Kirby look like Enrico Fermi. Only, seriously, Half-Life 2, are you getting physics theories from a Pixar movie? That's pathetic.

Now, there is a slight relationship between zero-point energy and gravity, but at several degrees of separation. The zero-point energy of the vacuum is, at least probably, involved in the cosmological constant, which is the reason the universe's expansion is speeding up. And the Casimir effect depends on decreasing zero-point energy as the vacuum gap between two plates is decreased in size. The Casimir effect can be used (theoretically) to create exotic matter—matter with negative mass—and you could, even more theoretically, use exotic matter to create artificial gravity (plus, negative mass=anti-gravity). However, "the peculiar pressure density produced by an effect that depends on decreasing zero-point energy in a vacuum gap between two plates" is hardly the same thing as "zero-point energy".

No, if you want a "gravity gun", and you don't want it revealed that you mistook a Pixar movie for an episode of NOVA, you need to man up, and say "exotic matter mass manipulator." Or you could say "stress-energy tensor metric manipulator"—stress-energy tensor metrics are the mathematical properties of space-time that are curved by the presence of mass (i.e., they are gravity). And you'd probably manipulate them with exotic matter, anyway.