The Casimir effect as acoustic pressure

Two uncharged metal plates placed very close together in a vacuum are drawn toward each other. This is the Casimir effect. The standard view holds that the vacuum is not truly empty but filled with quantum fluctuations, and that the plates change which fluctuations can exist between them.

RSI proposes a physical account. The vacuum is a highly tensioned, incompressible universal continuum that resonates continuously at about 10⁴³ Hz. Its baseline vibrations are waves of tension, not sound. When two plates sit very close together, only certain wavelengths fit in the gap, so the pressure between the plates falls below the pressure outside, and the medium presses them together. Hendrik Casimir's own 1948 derivation counted exactly these excluded waves.

Any account must match the measurements. The force agrees with quantum electrodynamics to about one percent in the best experiments and depends on the electrical properties of the plates. RSI must reproduce that, and any departure it predicts must be smaller than this and sought in geometries not yet tested.