Last week, Mohideen and his team announced they had measured this lateral force. They placed two corrugated gold plates a few hundred nanometers apart with their peaks and troughs aligned. When they moved the plates slightly out of alignment, they detected a force of a few piconewtons that pushed them back into position. At this point, you dont get out any more energy than you put in, but its the first time that virtual particles have been cajoled into doing work in this way. The researchers are now trying to generate other effects, such as a repulsive force and a "dynamic Casimir effect" that moves plates back and forth. The teams measurements could also pick up signs of other as yet undiscovered fundamental forces, as well as evidence of extra spatial dimensions that some theorists predict are "curled up" on a tiny scale. "We should be able to place limits on the size of these effects," says Mohideen.
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