Thanks to Steve D for sharing the following link to an article from the New Scientist which reports about how researchers at Purdue University have used quantum computers to simulate moving energy from the zero point energy field of empty space and store it.
Unfortunately the link above from the New Scientist is paywalled, but there is another article from Interesting Engineering on the same story that is free to read:
The gist of the research, as best as I can understand it, is that somehow tiny specks of the quantum field referred to as quantum bits (or qubits) can be teleported to a new location, and this would be entangled with the original qubit. Energy can be detected in the quantum field at times (zero point energy, or vacuum energy), and if energy was detected in either qubit it could be stored for later use. Or so the theory goes, this was all done in simulation.
So at this point, this doesn’t look like a practical approach to extracting energy from the vacuum, as the E-Cat is claimed to do, but it is evidence of theoretical thinking towards that end.
