In 1951, physicist Julian Schwinger proposed that applying a constant electric field to a vacuum could cause electron-positron pairs to emerge spontaneously, a process known as quantum tunneling.
Why can’t this matter from nothing idea power Star Trek replicators or transporters? The electric fields required would be extraordinarily large, well beyond the reach of any direct laboratory experiment.
Because of this limitation, the phenomenon, known as the Schwinger effect, has never been directly observed.
Physicists at the University of British Columbia (UBC) have now outlined a related effect in a system that is easier to study. In their approach, a thin layer of superfluid helium replaces the vacuum, while the flowing motion of the superfluid takes the role of the immense electric field.
“Superfluid Helium-4 is a wonder. At a few atomic layers thick, it can be cooled very easily to a temperature where it’s basically in a frictionless vacuum state,” explains Dr. Philip Stamp, a theorist at UBC working on condensed matter and quantum gravity, whose new findings appeared in PNAS on 1 September 2025.
“When we make that frictionless vacuum flow, instead of electron-positron pairs appearing, vortex/anti-vortex pairs will appear spontaneously, spinning in opposite directions to one another.”
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