Detection of Casimir Radiation from Our Sun

This paper extends the previous experimental work on Planck’s constant h and the vacuum field, whose spectrum is determined by h. In particular it adds additional experimental evidence supporting temporal and spatial variations in the vacuum field, including the Sun as a source at 13 sigmas of certainty. The vacuum field has long been a mystery of physics, having enormous theoretical intensity set by Planck’s constant h and yet no obvious physical effect. Hendrick Casimir first proposed that this form of E & M radiation was real in 1948 and suggested an experiment to verify its existence. Over 50 experiments since then have confirmed that this vacuum radiation is real, is a form of electro-magnetic radiation, and varies in time and space over 10:1 in our laboratory compared to its standard QM spectrum. Two other authors have found the fine structure constant α (proportional to 1/h) is varying across the cosmos at up to 4.2 sigma certainty. All these results suggest that the vacuum field (and thus h) varies in time and space. In a previous paper we reported our tunnel diode experimental results as well as the results of six other organizations (including German, Russian and US national labs).The six organizations reported sinusoidal annual variations of 1000 - 3000 ppm (peak-to-valley) in the decay rates of 8 radionuclides over a 20-year span, including beta decay (weak interaction) and alpha decay (strong interaction). All decay rates peaked in January-February and minimized in July-August without any candidate cause suggested. We confirmed that Planck’s constant was the cause by verifying similar variations in Esaki tunnel diode current, which is purely electromagnetic. The combined data from previous strong and weak decays plus our own E & M tunnel data showed similar magnitude and time phasing for strong, weak and E & M interactions, except that the tunnel diode temporal variations were 180 deg out of phase—as we predicted. The logic for this 180 deg phase shift was straight forward. Radioactive decay and electron tunneling both have h in the denominator of the tunneling exponent, but tunnel diodes also have h2 in the numerator of the exponent due to the size of atoms being proportional to h2. This extra h2 makes the exponent proportional to h for electron tunneling instead of proportional to 1/h for strong and weak decay—shifting the annual oscillation for E & M tunnel current by 180 deg. Radioactive decay had a maximum around January-February of each year and a minimum around July-August of each year. Tunnel current (the equivalent to radioactive decay rate) had the opposite—a minimum around January of each year and a maximum around July of each year. This predicted and observed sign flip in the temporal variations between radioactive decay and electron tunneling provides strong evidence that h variations across the Earth’s orbit are the cause of these annual cycles. In this paper we take the next step by verifying whether the Sun and a potential more distant cosmic source radiate the vacuum E & M field, just as all stars generate massive amounts of regular E & M radiation. We reprocessed two years of data, 6 million data points, from our tunnel diode experiment to search for day-night oscillations in tunnel current. Here we assume that the Earth would block the radiated vacuum field half of each day. Sun-locked signals have 365 cycles per year and cosmos locked signals have 366 cycles per year. With our two years of data, these two signals are separated by a null-signal, which is not locked to the Earth or to the cosmos—allowing us to clearly distinguish the solar and cosmic sources. 1) We found sun-locked variations in the vacuum field, peaking around local noon with 10-13 probability of false alarm. Other potential causes are carefully examined and ruled out. 2) We also found cosmos-locked variations in the vacuum field, peaking at the right ascension of the red super-giant star Betelgeuse with 10-7 probability of false alarm. Cosmos locked sources are easily distinguished from the solar source because they have one extra cycle per year, two extra cycles during the two years of the experiment. They are thus independent Fourier components, easily separated by a Fourier transform. Both of these high probability detections support that the vacuum field spectrum may vary in space and time and be enhanced by stellar sources.