This Startup Promises Energy From Nothing—Here's What's Wrong

TL;DR

Casimir Inc.'s claim to harvest unlimited energy from the quantum vacuum violates basic physics — the Casimir effect cannot produce continuous energy.

Key Points

• 1.Casimir Inc. raised $12 million claiming their microchip harvests unlimited energy from the quantum vacuum. Founded by ex-NASA scientist Harold White, their website calls it the world's first unlimited power supply, promising devices that run for years without batteries.
• 2.The Casimir effect is real but cannot produce continuous energy. Two uncharged metal plates in a vacuum attract each other, but this is a one-off energy release — the space between the plates is the ground state, meaning electrons that tunnel in won't voluntarily leave, so no sustained current can flow.
• 3.Their measured results are far too small to matter and likely have mundane explanations. Observed outputs of millivolts to volts at picoamp currents yield at most 10 picowatts — a factor of one million to one billion below their 37-microwatt commercial target — and such tiny signals match known artefacts like thermoelectric effects and contact potential differences.
• 4.The cited Physical Review Research paper doesn't actually support their vacuum-energy claims. The investor's claim that the product is 'based on 100 years of science' is true, but that same science explicitly rules out extracting continuous usable energy from the Casimir effect.