From Roger Morgan
London
I read with interest your article about virtual particles
exerting macro effects on suspended gold foil
(2 February, p 17).
This reminded me of E. A. Reeve’s “north-seeking force” of the 1930s, a
heretic effect consigned to oblivion along with perpetual motion and
anti-gravity. Reeve, who was the Royal Geographical Society’s librarian, claimed
that thin, non-magnetic sheets lightly suspended from a single point in a vacuum
and exposed to daylight eventually aligned themselves with true north. Despite
the apparatus being reasonably easy to duplicate he could get no serious
scientist interested in replicating and confirming his results because there was
no obvious mechanism.
He was so convincing that I have always thought there might be something in
it, and that it ought to be followed up. Now we have “dark energy” and “virtual
Brownian motion”, perhaps it is not quite as stupid as was thought.
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