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2026-10-04 — colorado.edu (Garret Moddel faculty pages and hosted PDFs)

Investigator, Step I, first run. Reached through Chrome (Google search, then site pages). The site's PDFs do not render as text in Chrome, so the text was taken with WebFetch and pdftotext.

Queries and pages

Findings

1. Experimental test of the patent's mechanism by co-inventor Moddel's lab (priority 1 and 2)

Dmitriyeva, O. and Moddel, G., "Test of zero-point energy emission from gases flowing through Casimir cavities", Physics Procedia 38 (2012) 8-17, doi:10.1016/j.phpro.2012.08.007. Presented at the Space, Propulsion & Energy Sciences International Forum (SPESIF) 2012, University of Maryland, 1-2 March 2012. Peer review was under the responsibility of the Integrity Research Institute. [web: https://www.colorado.edu/faculty/moddel/media/59; copy in files/Dmitriyeva-Moddel-2012-PhysicsProcedia38.pdf] - Affiliations: Moddel is listed with both CU Boulder and "Jovion Corporation, Meno [sic] Park, CA". This makes him an interested party: a co-inventor testing his own patent. [web, same] - Setup: Whatman Nuclepore polycarbonate track-etched membranes with 0.1, 0.2 and 0.4 µm pores, about 3x10^8 pores/cm², some gold-coated (SEM shows coating on the top surface and the upper sidewalls). Stainless-steel chamber with a mechanical pump (base pressure 1e-3 torr). The flow was modulated at 0.5 Hz by valving the pump side. Detector: SPH-49 pyroelectric (responsivity 1.9x10^4 V/W, flat response 0.6-5 µm with a chromium coating), outside a ZnSe window (printed "ZrSe") 9 cm from the sample, read with a lock-in amplifier. Chamber pressure 1-10 torr. Gases He, Ar, N2, Xe. [web, same, p.10-12] - Result: "Emission in the infrared was clearly observed." He gave the largest signal and Xe the smallest. Uncoated membranes gave more signal than gold-coated ones. This is the reverse of the authors' prediction (Xe with gold should be strongest). [web, same, p.12-13] - Power balance: power in (flow × pressure drop) is about 2x10^-5 W at 5 sccm and 4 torr. Detected power is about 1e-7 W. The authors conclude "the power out was less than the power in". [web, same, p.13] - Conventional explanations examined: Joule-Thomson (a control with a single 3 mm hole in Mylar gave the opposite lock-in phase, i.e. cooling, so the membrane signal was judged not J-T), frictional losses (power linear rather than quadratic in flow; wrong gas order unless gas thermal conductivity is included), adsorption (signal did not follow membrane surface area), and turbulence (Reynolds number far too low). "None of these clearly fit the data, but it is possible that a combination of effects could." [web, same, p.14-16] - ZPE estimate: at about 1 eV per atom the expected output is "on the order of milliwatts", "thousands times larger than the measured power". The authors list reasons it could still be ZPE: non-uniform pores, mean free path of about 10 µm (larger than the pores), and emission possibly outside the detector band. [web, same, p.16] - Conclusion (quote): "ZP energy extraction from the quantum vacuum remains a possible explanation for the observed radiation." [web, same, p.16] - Funding: "supported by HUB Lab, and based on prior work supported by DARPA under SPAWAR Grant No. N66001-06-1-2026." Haisch is thanked for discussions. Ref. [7] attributes the term "Casimir-Lamb shift" to "B. Haisch, private communication". [web, same, p.17] - An earlier exploratory test is cited: Puthoff, Little and Ibison (2002) on the H2 molecular ground state in a 1 µm Casimir cavity, "without a definitive result" (see the arXiv note).

Conference abstract: "Test of zero-point energy emission from Casimir cavities", Dmitriyeva and Moddel, presented at the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE) annual meeting, Boulder, 10-12 June 2010. It says "This work was support by a contract from Hub Lab to Jovion Corporation" and "None of the sources considered could explain the results fully." [web: https://www.colorado.edu/faculty/moddel/media/60; files/Dmitriyeva-Moddel-test-ZPE-emission-Casimir-cavities.pdf]. This is probably the companion to the project's own "Haisch_abstractSSE10" (SSE 2010 meeting). That would date the project abstract to 2010 [inference, not stated in either document].

2. Moddel's list of zero-point energy (ZPE) publications and talks (priority 1)

From https://www.colorado.edu/faculty/moddel/research/zero-point-energy-technology [web]: - Moddel, Weerakkody, Doroski, Bartusiak, "Casimir-cavity-induced conductance changes", Phys. Rev. Research 3, L022007 (2021). - Same authors, "Optical-Cavity-Induced Current", Symmetry 13(3), 517 (2021). - Moddel and Dmitriyeva, Atoms 7, 51 (2019) (see the CU Scholar note). - Dmitriyeva and Moddel, Physics Procedia 38 (2012), and the SSE 2010 talk (with video). - G. Moddel, "A Demon, a Law, and the Quest for Virtually Free Energy", EdgeScience No. 2, pp.10-13, Jan-Mar 2010 (popular article; not read). - Talks: "Unlocking Zero-Point Energy" (YouTube, 1 Aug 2021); "Casimir Photoinjector" (Advanced Propulsion and Energy III, Jan 2021); "Harvesting Energy from Vacuum Fluctuations" (SED2018, Boston University, July 2018); "New Energy Technologies: What Can We Believe?" (SSE 2014); "Quantum vacuum energy extraction" (Dmitriyeva and Moddel, Workshop on New Frontiers in Casimir Force Control, Santa Fe, 27-29 Sept 2009); "Teasing energy from zero-point fluctuations" (SSE Europe, Viterbo, 2009); "Something from nothing: An evaluation of vacuum energy extraction methods" (SSE, Charlottesville, 2009; YouTube). - The research page says (quote): "We have developed devices which produce power that appears to result from zero-point energy quantum fluctuations." These are metal-insulator-metal (MIM) tunnel devices with a Casimir cavity on one side, giving current at zero applied voltage. This is a later line of work by the co-inventor, with a different mechanism (hot-carrier injection) from the patent's gas-flow orbital shift. [web: https://www.colorado.edu/faculty/moddel/research] - The same site also lists a "Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" research area.

3. Dmitriyeva PhD thesis (priority 2, context)

"Mechanism of heat generation from loading gaseous hydrogen isotopes into palladium nanoparticles", O. Dmitriyeva, PhD thesis, University of Colorado, 2012, 119 pp. Chapter I names two aims: LENR, and "the observation of a zero-point energy (ZPE) radiation" from Casimir cavities. Appendix A (p.94) reprints the Physics Procedia paper. Chapter VIII deals with "Measurement artifacts as a source of possible measurement error" in gas-loading heat experiments. The same lab, period and calorimetric skills were used on LENR, and the 2019 paper lists "Coolescence" (a LENR company) as a funder. [web: thesis PDF; files/Dmitriyeva-2012-PhD-thesis-CU.pdf]

How it bears on the claims

  • Claims 1-2 (Casimir-Lamb shift emission and re-energising): the only published experimental test found so far. The co-inventor's own lab measured an IR signal it could not fully explain conventionally, but it was about 1000x smaller than predicted and its gas and coating trends were opposite to the prediction. The authors call it inconclusive.
  • Claim 4 (power estimates): the authors' own measured power in (2x10^-5 W) exceeded the detected power out (1e-7 W, or about 4x10^-5 W at most after solid-angle correction).
  • Claim 3 (SED): the experiment does not test SED directly. The authors say SED cannot yet predict the cavity size or wavelengths needed.