Free energy. Squeeze a vacuum hard enough and get a free photon. You CAN get something from nothing.
The phenomenon relies on the long-established fact that empty space is not at all empty, but full of particles that pop in and out of existence due to the laws of quantum mechanics, which say that even a vaccum cannot have exactly zero energy but must exhibit small fluctuations of energy.
The presence of virtual particles has been proved in experiments demonstrating the Casimir effect, in which two parallel mirrors set close together will feel a pull towards each other
Chris Wilson at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, has shown that moving a mirror at close to the speed of light through the virtual photons in empty space will stimulate the radiation of pairs of real photons.
The scientists created an analogous situation using a superconducting quantum interference device to change the distance from an electron to a zero-field location so quickly that the electron appeared to move at a quarter of the speed of light, fast enough for the circuit to emit real photons.
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