TL;DR

• A former NASA engineer has built tiny chips that pull continuous micro-power from the quantum vacuum using the Casimir effect.

• Decades of theoretical papers suggested this was possible, and modern nanofabrication is now turning those ideas into hardware.

• Researcher Ashton Forbes connects these chips to leaked MH370 footage and argues the real story is hidden breakthroughs in physics, not extraterrestrials.

• Public fundamental physics slowed after the 1970s while secret or quiet work likely continued, making advanced human tech a more rational explanation for UAPs.

• This slow-release approach via low-power chips could be a careful way to introduce world-changing technology without chaos.

How a Joe Rogan appearance cracked open an old idea

I stumbled across Ashton Forbes while looking for something interesting to watch. Like many people, I first saw the strange MH370 videos years ago and dismissed them as glitches or fakes. Then I started listening to Forbes piece together his case, and the more I sat with it, the less crazy it sounded.

The latest thread pulling it all together came from Sonny White on Joe Rogan. White, a former NASA advanced propulsion researcher, has founded Casimir Inc. In May 2026 the company raised $12 million to commercialize its MicroSparc chip: a 5mm by 5mm device that uses engineered nanoscale cavities to harvest tiny but continuous electrical power from the quantum vacuum.

These chips are real. They exploit the Casimir effect, a phenomenon measured in labs for decades. Place two metal surfaces extremely close together and the vacuum fluctuations outside them push the surfaces inward. White’s team has turned that principle into a semiconductor that produces usable voltage and current for ultra-low-power devices like sensors and wearables. Commercial availability is targeted for 2028. It is not science fiction. It is nanofabrication meeting old theory.

The Casimir effect, old papers, and why it matters

The Casimir effect itself is straightforward. Empty space is not empty. It buzzes with quantum fluctuations. When you restrict those fluctuations between two plates, the imbalance creates a measurable force. Scientists have confirmed it.

In 1984 physicist Robert Forward published a paper describing how charged plates could use this force to extract electrical energy. Hal Puthoff and others followed with serious work in the late 1980s and 1990s exploring zero-point energy and its potential applications. These were not basement inventors. The ideas appeared in peer-reviewed journals.

Public physics progress on foundational questions slowed noticeably after the 1970s. The big leaps of quantum mechanics and relativity had already happened. Meanwhile computing power and the ability to build structures at the nanoscale exploded. What was once theoretical suddenly became buildable. Sonny White’s chips are the visible result of that shift.

Ashton Forbes and the bigger picture

Forbes has spent years examining the two leaked MH370 videos, one thermal, one from another sensor, showing orbs circling the plane before a bright flash and disappearance. He does not jump straight to aliens. Instead he argues the footage shows advanced human technology: plasma orbs using scaled-up vacuum engineering to manipulate spacetime, possibly creating portal-like effects.

He connects the dots methodically. The same physics behind White’s micro-power chips could, in more advanced forms, enable propulsion and energy systems far beyond what we see publicly. The low-voltage chips represent a safe, controlled first step. If classified programs have had decades and serious funding to develop plasma versions or dynamic systems, events like MH370 become explainable as demonstrations of human capability rather than visitors from another star.

The alien narrative, in this view, serves as useful misdirection. It keeps public attention on lights in the sky while the real story, breakthroughs in vacuum physics, energy, and propulsion, stays contained.

Why this feels more plausible than the alternatives

This explanation requires fewer impossible assumptions. Interstellar travelers who visit Earth repeatedly yet remain mostly hidden strain credibility. Human ingenuity plus black budgets plus decades of quiet work on known physics does not.

We know the Casimir effect is real. We know the old papers exist. We know nanofabrication has advanced dramatically. We know Sonny White, with his NASA and DARPA background, is shipping prototypes. The pattern holds together without needing extraterrestrials.

Of course skepticism remains healthy. The MH370 videos could still be fake or misinterpreted. Scaling from 40 microwatts on a chip to spacetime manipulation is a huge engineering leap. Thermodynamics skeptics raise fair questions about net energy gain. Yet the overall framework feels coherent and grounded.

The careful path forward

If practical vacuum energy is real, full uncontrolled release would upend economies and hand dangerous new capabilities to bad actors. Starting with tiny chips for sensors is exactly the measured rollout you would choose if you wanted to introduce the technology responsibly.

It is early days. But watching Forbes connect these threads, from 1948 Casimir to 1984 Forward to 2026 White chips, makes the subject hard to dismiss. The physics rabbit hole is fascinating because it rests on real science that is quietly moving from theory to hardware.

Whether it leads to abundance, new propulsion, or something stranger, the story is worth following with open eyes and a dose of skepticism. The pieces fit better than most people realize.