Did A US Navy Scientist Just Invent A Room-Temperature Superconductor? (phys.org)

"A scientist working for the U.S. Navy has filed for a patent on a room-temperature superconductor, representing a potential paradigm shift in energy transmission and computer systems," reports Phys.org: Salvatore Cezar Pais is listed as the inventor on the Navy's patent application made public by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday. The application claims that a room-temperature superconductor can be built using a wire with an insulator core and an aluminum PZT (lead zirconate titanate) coating deposited by vacuum evaporation with a thickness of the London penetration depth and polarized after deposition.

An electromagnetic coil is circumferentially positioned around the coating such that when the coil is activated with a pulsed current, a non-linear vibration is induced, enabling room temperature superconductivity. "This concept enables the transmission of electrical power without any losses and exhibits optimal thermal management (no heat dissipation)," according to the patent document, "which leads to the design and development of novel energy generation and harvesting devices with enormous benefits to civilization."
Long-time Slashdot reader resistant writes: NextBigFuture says the same individual appears to have made other startling claims that arguably stretch the boundaries of belief, such as a "high-frequency gravitational wave generator" that could supposedly drive a spaceship without conventional propellants as well as an "inertial mass reduction device." Prudence would appear to dictate examining these and other claims by Mr. Salvatore Cezar Pais with great caution.

Comments

easy to patent something

[tie_guy_matt]

You can patent just about anything you want, and you do not need a working model to patent something. There is a good argument for making things easy to patent. The problem is that it does lead to patent trolls. Also patents are only supposed to last a limited amount of time, but of course patent holders always try to make them as long as possible. Maybe something like a software or medical patent shouldn't last as long as an aerospace patent. Anyway my problem isn't that someone patent something that is useless. Although I might have a problem with a government employee patenting useless stuff while at work. Patent useless stuff on your own time.

Re:easy to patent something

[ShanghaiBill]

Patents cannot violate the laws of physics

High temperature superconductors don't violate the known laws of physics.

Additionally, patents last for 17 years.

Patents last for 20 years.

Re:easy to patent something

[jouassou]

For the record: I'm a physicist doing research on superconductivity. My own work is on low-temperature superconductivity, but I've tried to keep up-to-date on high-temperature stuff.

Actually, they do. The electron-electron interaction of a Cooper pair has energies on the order of 10E-3 eV. The "high temperature superconductors" assume that somehow you can compensate the random heat movement (kT) and (also random) electric repulsion (order of eVs) by interactions in the crystal lattice.

This is a bit disingenuous. First of all, the critical temperature of a superconductor is proportional to the pairing energy, so trying to find a high-temperature superconductor is synonymous with increasing this energy scale. Having a pairing energy of ~1meV is typical for a good low-temperature superconductor (like Nb), where the pairing is caused by phonons. Compensating the random heat movement (~kT) would happen precisely by increasing the pairing energy proportionally. Note also that we don't really know how most high-temperature superconductors work (cuprates), but some theories actually invoke the electric repulsion you brought up as a possible mechanism for superconductivity.

Since the main question was whether high-temperature superconductors break any known laws of physics, you might also be interested to know that we already have near-room-temperature superconductors. After the discovery of superconductivity at 203K (-70C) in sulfur hydride (SH3) a couple of years ago, the record was recently pushed to 250K (-23C) in lanthanum hydride (LaH10). The caveat is that these materials require millions of atmospheres of pressure to function at these temperatures, so they're not that useful for practical applications. But they do demonstrate that room-temperature superconductivity is not prohibited by any physical laws; for instance, a high-pressure hydride would still be subject to the same thermal (~kT) and electron repulsion (~eV) conditions you referred to, but they still work. Secondly, if one is able to replicate the conditions inside these crystals chemically instead of via external pressure (e.g. via the "pressure" between atomic layers in a crystal), they could in principle be made more useful.

As for the article itself: I agree that it sounds unlikely. I'll believe it when I see a published paper replicating the effect, and eliminating other possible explanations of the observations. There are bogus papers claiming to discover high-temperature superconductivity all the time, such as this obvious fraud that made some headlines last year.

The patent office does not check if anything works

[Gherald]

..they just take your money and vereify that you are the first to register and thus would own an invention or process

Until and unless there is a working demo shown or full whitepaper published, roll your eyes people.

Re:The patent office does not check if anything wo

[LynnwoodRooster]

Ever had a patent? I've got 24 issued (and more pending), and in several cases I was denied for lack of proof of results - meaning I had to provide additional details in the disclosure including measurements to prove it actually worked. At least as rigorous as a scientific journal.

Re:Repeatable by other scientists or it didn't hap

[phantomfive]

most researchers will still simply call it impossible and work on other things.

I don't think many researchers call room-temperature superconductors impossible, and many scientists are actually working on it.

Re: This is EM Drive

[Anonymous Coward]

The EM drive that was found to generate no thrust, the error being it pushing against magnetic fields generated in the wires used to power it, that once shielded generated no thrust, mystery solved, no magic thrustless drive. You mean that one, right?