Re:Zero-point energy? (Score 1)

The name Nikola Tesla springs to mind. The Tesla Coil, a variant on the transformer (another of Tesla's inventions) ostensibly used roughly a home outlet's power to extract and/or guide the ZPE so as to yield usable power across any distance. It isn't considered to violate laws of thermodynamics, because you aren't getting the power from the power you put in, you put in power just to be able to make use of a flow of energy that already exists. One of his famous experiments involved setting a coil on a kitchen table and lighting something like 100,000 lightbulbs at once about a mile away (exact details blurred, feel free to correct). Using his theory of how the ZPE flows, you can send both usable power and communication signals at once across spacetime like a radio signal. Pretty cool theory for the turn of the 20th century, but it doesn't help the theory that he went insane and was scared of shiny objects and billiard balls etc.