'You can't extract energy directly from the vacuum because there's nothing there to give,' said William Unruh, a theoretical physicist at the University of British Columbia, describing the standard way of thinking. Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research develop'ments and trends in mathe'matics and the physical and life sciences. At first, many researchers ignored this work, suspicious that pulling energy from the vacuum was implausible, at best. Those who took a closer look, however, realized that Hotta was suggesting a subtly different quantum stunt. The energy wasn't free; it had to be unlocked using knowledge purchased with energy in a far-off location. From this perspective, Hotta's procedure looked less like creation and more like teleportation of energy from one place to another'a strange but less offensive...
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