One usually imagines a vacuum as empty space devoid of any matter. That picture isn’t quite accurate when quantum mechanics is taken into account. Emptiness turns out to be an illusion: The real vacuum is full of activity in the form of quantum fluctuations—sometimes thought of as virtual particles that appear and disappear so quickly that they don’t violate Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. In this Quick Study, I discuss how electromagnetic fluctuations can give rise to forces and even torques between macroscopic objects without the need for any other interactions. Indeed, the quantum mechanics of a vacuum may prove to be an exciting tool for engineering nanoscale devices.
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