{"id":221298,"date":"2025-09-02T03:28:37","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T08:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/something-from-nothing-physicists-model-vacuum-tunneling-in-a-2d-superfluid"},"modified":"2025-09-02T03:28:37","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T08:28:37","slug":"something-from-nothing-physicists-model-vacuum-tunneling-in-a-2d-superfluid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/something-from-nothing-physicists-model-vacuum-tunneling-in-a-2d-superfluid","title":{"rendered":"Something from nothing: Physicists model vacuum tunneling in a 2D superfluid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/something-from-nothing-physicists-model-vacuum-tunneling-in-a-2d-superfluid.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In 1951, physicist Julian Schwinger theorized that by applying a uniform electrical field to a vacuum, electron-positron pairs would be spontaneously created out of nothing, through a phenomenon called quantum tunneling.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with turning the matter-out-of-nowhere theory into Star Trek replicators or transporters? Enormously high electric fields would be required\u2014far beyond the limits of any direct physical experiments.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, the aptly-named Schwinger effect has never been seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1951, physicist Julian Schwinger theorized that by applying a uniform electrical field to a vacuum, electron-positron pairs would be spontaneously created out of nothing, through a phenomenon called quantum tunneling. The problem with turning the matter-out-of-nowhere theory into Star Trek replicators or transporters? Enormously high electric fields would be required\u2014far beyond the limits of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}