10 August 2012
@awesomeanchovy Your questions are both valid questions.
First regarding antimatter, no I haven't encountered any specific hypothesis in SED to explain its occurrence and why annihilation doesn't occur immediately but I can extrapolate and speculate a rudimentary explanation. Casimir forces exist from the macro through to the micro scales and perhaps this mechanism, albeit of a negative gradient, could be the reason for expansion; keeping the pairs from colliding, from the Planck pairs upwards. But then again there are thoeries suggesting that some particles like photons experience superluminar speeds - leading to hypothesis on tachyons - see sonoluminescence and sonofusion. In my opinion, the ZPF casimir induced forces separating pairs may be a close answer but I haven't encountered any facts yet. If you have any ideas regarding this then I'd love to read them. Perhaps it is that they do annihilate but new pairs are created so quickly that annihilation isn't observed and annihilation feeds energy back to the system; but again this is just speculation.
Secondly, the term 'granular' is very abstract, like describing the vacuum as a 'sea' of virtual particles popping in and out of existence. 'Granular' is meant to suggest that these particle constituents of the vacuum are very very tiny. However, you posed another valid question and I think the answer comes down to perception. The theory itself suggests that its effects are identified by visible effects, high energy cosmic rays, Johnson noise, etc. In my opinion the granular description is precisely because the space this field and its source exist, can't be directly observed because it is the same throughout everything and in all directions. This will call for a conceptual description of what it may be like, put together from the mathematical solutions.
Did I answer your questions? If you want to read more on the theory, I'd recommend starting with De La Pena he has the best and only complete book on SED ed 1996 (he has also written some pieces on SEDS) I think and maybe Puthoff as well, if you are interested in some experimental work and theories on FTL travel, I think the Glenn research centre might have also done some work on it and some of their info is available online. For recent developments on the theory and to read counter arguments the best sources are articles and papers, see web of knowledge and google scholar. This is perhaps one of my best theories in physics probably since it challenges the conventional and is definitely getting somewhere providing clear answers, which still match QED mathematically, in many cases. Best of all its adoption wouldn't mean quantum mechanics is wrong it just explains things with a little more depth and suggests things that we may not have considered before... That said it is still a developing theory and there are still a few challenges for it to encounter.
Quantum Vacuum • Opuss № I