system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What exactly is vacuum or zero point energy and can it be harnessed?
gpt
Vacuum energy in free space is better understood as quantum field fluctuations that arise from the inherent variability/uncertainty of all quantum objects. Note that vacuum energy is not a static, permanent energy that we can extract and use. In other words, although vacuum energy leads to measurable effects, it does not violate the law of local energy conservation by allowing you to extract energy from nothing.

Rather than thinking of quantum particles such as electrons as literal particles that get created out of nowhere, it's more helpful to think of them as wave-like excitations in a quantum field. Excitations become particle-like when they can stably self-exist (even if only for a very short time) independent from the mechanism that created them. Vaccum fluctuations are like excitations that can't stably self-exist.