A permanent solution to the world energy problem, dramatic reduction of biospheric hydrocarbon combustion pollution, and cessation of building nuclear power plants (whose nuclear component is used only as a heater) could be readily accomplished by the scientific community. However, to solve the energy problem we must (i) update the century-old notions in electrodynamic theory of how an electrical circuit is powered, and (ii) rid the classical electrodynamics model of numerous serious foundations flaws. We summarize the problems and essential changes, based on more modern developments in particle physics and gauge theory well after the foundations of electrodynamics were set. Self-powering systems readily extracting electrical energy from the vacuum to power themselves and their loads can be quickly developed whenever the scientific community will permit their development to be funded.
What Actually Powers the External Circuit Connected to a Battery or Generator?
Contrary to conventional wisdom, neither the shaft energy introduced into a generator nor the chemical energy present in a battery is used to power the external circuit. The internal energy in a generator or battery is only dissipated to perform work upon the internal charges, to separate them and form a source dipole between the terminals, with some of the energy dissipated in other internal losses.
Once formed, the source dipole's broken symmetry [
[1] ] in the vacuum's energy flux extracts enormous
observable EM energy — many orders of magnitude greater than the small amount of energy input to the generator or present in the battery — from the virtual particle exchange between dipole charges and active vacuum. The extracted
observable EM energy is reradiated as the EM energy flow through all space surrounding the external circuit [
[2] ]. This energy flow is usually referred to as the
Poynting [
[3] ,
5 ] flow, but Poynting's theory [
3 ] captured only a very tiny component of it. Heaviside captured the remaining huge component, but Lorentz [
6 ] mathematically discarded it.
To summarize: The total energy flow in space surrounding the conductors has two components as follows:
1) A tiny
Poynting component [
3 ] of the energy flow directly along the surface of the conductors strikes the surface charges [
[4] ] and is diverged (deviated) into the conductors to power the circuit.
2) The huge nondiverted
Heaviside component [
3 ,
[5] ] filling all space around the circuit, misses the circuit entirely and is wasted in all those circuits using only a single pass of the energy flow. The Heaviside energy flow can furnish energy to the circuit if retroreflected to again pass over the surface charges, but conventional power systems completely ignore this enormous energy source accompanying every circuit.