What!?<p>This is just incorrect. They aren't creating light from vacuum - they are simply creating light in <i>exactly</i> the same way that antennas create light.<p>Antennas create light (electromagnetic energy) by vibrating electrons at the same frequency of the light they want to create.<p>Here they are also vibrating electrons at the frequency of light. "several billions of times a second" - frequency of microwaves? Ghz. Exactly the same.<p>Accelerating an electron (actually any charged particle) creates light. For example: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrotron_radiation" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrotron_radiation</a> You can shake the electron, force it to curve, anything and it will radiate light.<p>I've often thought that this would be an awesome way to make a laser if you could find a material you can vibrate fast enough.
>What happens during the experiment is that the “mirror” transfers some of its kinetic energy to virtual photons, which helps them to materialise.<p>how is that different from just saying that their vibrating EM field radiated the energy (a vibrating EM field does radiates the energy and this radiation is photons by definition) without bringing in "virtual photons"
Is true that the energy put into the system (in the form of the dynamic mirror) must be the same or greater than the energy of the photons taken out? I don't think this is the "zero-point energy" or "reactionless engine" breakthrough that people on that page are hoping it is.