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“Unless we found a longer straw,” Kurt said

“Exactly,” she said, “except that physics tells us that, at soer straw”

“Can you give me a real example?”

“The classic case is helium,” she said “As it’s cooled, the ins to slow, and the heliuas to a liquid At absolute zero, it should freeze into a solid, and all molecular activity inside it should stop But no ht down to absolute zero, helium will never turn into a solid under normal atmospheric pressure”

“Meaning?”

“Soy that can’t be removed”

“And that’s zero-point energy?”

“Exactly,” she said once again

“So if it can’t be re it?”

“Well,” she hedged, “all things are impossible until they’re proven otherwise Theoretically, there are fields of energy all around us sitting at their zero point The saests it y the way sorid and reaps the benefits of electricity Only, no one has been able to do it yet”

It sounded a little like the mythical ether of the old days to Kurt, a substance that was once believed to fill the ealaxies when scientists of the day couldn’t believe there was such a thing as a vacuum

“Has anyone tried?” Kurt asked “Before you and Thero, I mean”

“A few brave souls,” she said “I assume you’ve heard of Nikola Tesla?”

Kurt nodded

“Tesla was one of the first,” she said “In the 1890s he began developing what he called his Dynamic Theory of Gravity He tinkered away on it for years until 1937, when he claimed it was finally complete and promised boldly that it would displace Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, at least in explaining how gravity works”