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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.
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.
"high-frequency gravitational wave generator"
So, basically, no. Sounds like a crank.
Nope. They invented it years ago and kept it a secret.
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.
..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.
The unofficial
If this guy wants to be taken seriously then he needs to publish a paper that describes the science and the methods thoroughly enough that other scientists can design (an) experiment(s) to confirm the validity. 'Patents' mean nothing. 'Demonstrations' don't mean shit either. Repeatable and explainable by others independently is the only thing that counts.
I agree, so the question is - does the patent give enough information for others to reproduce the result he claims?
Also you would think, if he does have this working is the Navy planning to make use of this in some way? Seems like a word from them on adoption (they don't have to be specific) would go a long way to back his claims.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Description of his invention, and how to make one. A valid patent application must include enough information that someone "skilled in the art" (in this case, physics and materials science) can successfully replicate the invention. If it's not disclosed to that level you can challenge it and have it invalidated.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
that's not entirely true and it depends on what kind of patent you are filing. Look at the IBM's patent portfolio, there are tens of thousands of bogus obvious stuff patented in their portfolio. The key is to hire experienced patent lawyers to file the patent. They will make sure it will get granted. I used to work at IBM and they have 2 armies of expert patent firms doing this for them. I've read many IBM patents that were totally bogus. For mechanical inventions, I would agree with you. For software patents I would disagree.
And even if the system is well-characterized and repeatable, most researchers will still simply call it impossible and work on other things.
Don't be silly, everyone on Slashdot has PhDs in at least three "STEM" fields, 20+ patents, at least 8 figures in assets and speaks 5+ languages.
Ah, and a wife and a mistress or two who are successful fashion models.
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.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Patents are for fairly obvious, minimally useful inventions and/or junk. Real interesting discoveries are published as scientific papers for peer review. Money and control, the purpose of patents, are not what motivate the best minds. It's a passion for the science, the process of discovery, and possibly of fame for changing the world that seem to drive it. And you don't need patents for that.
As a consequence, I would say there's a 99% chance this guy has nothing.
That's not how this works. A patent is a legal document, it has nothing to do with establishing scientific credibility. There is no requirement to prove that a device functions in order to be patented. The required steps to "reduce to practice" (make reliably reproducible) some invention are typically not patent-able. The requirement is simply that that someone like me, a PhD Physicist with a background in materials, could build the device listed in the patent.
A peer reviewed paper is what would be required to actually show that this works, preferably from a second group...actually from any "group" as Mr. Pais seems to always work alone, a big red flag in science.
Apart from the fact that this is likely total BS: let's imagine it does actually work the way it is described here in the summary: You need to pulse an electromagnetic field around the wire to induce this effect. The coil is not going to be superconducting (how could it be, it's needed to induce the effect), but is going to be made of regular wires, so they will dissipate heat for the time this is in operation. And while superconductors don't have any resistance, they do have a maximum current they can carry before they stop becoming superconducting, and I have a hard time imagining that a wire this thin is going to be able to carry a current larger than the one needed to create the magnetic pulses - especially if this is a non-linear effect. (Non-linear non-trivial magnetic effects typically need quite a large magnetic field, hence a large current through the coil.)
Basically this means that you'd need a large current in the magnetic coil (which is dissipated) to be able to transmit a smaller current without dissipation. Congratulations, you've spent a lot more energy and money for energy transmission than just laying down a nice copper wire and sending the current through it directly.
Also, since magnetics are involved in creating this effect, this will be useless for one of the primary applications of superconductivity outside of current transport: creating very strong magnetic fields, for example in MRI machines. Because the magnetic fields required for creating the superconductivity would probably need to be much stronger than the fields the superconducting wire could create by itself - and if you already have a good magnet, why not use it directly?
The only useful thing that could come out of this, were it real, would be a better understanding of how superconductivity works, especially at high temperatures, so that in the long term we might be able to actually build a more useful room-temperature superconductor. But that'd be something you'd publish in a reputable condensed matter physics journal, where there is proper peer review, instead of filing for a patent where the reviewer is likely not an expert in the fields required to evaluate this. So, as a lot of other people have said, likely complete BS.
Can you find a _single_ reputable physicist or chemist who thinks room temperature superconductors are feasible? Many speculate on the idea, but none has demonstrated a practical theory of how to do so.
Are you retarded? Room temperature super conductors are the hottest research topic since decades. In my university dozens of people work on that, and I bet that is the same in nearly _every_ university that has a physics department.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Can you find a _single_ reputable physicist or chemist who thinks room temperature superconductors are feasible?
Well, there are these guys. It took 10 seconds of Googling to find that, and there are lots more. If no reputable chemists or physicists believe room temperature superconductors are feasible, there sure are a lot of them wasting their time. The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics was given to a group of mathematicians and physicists whose research may pave the way towards high-temperature superconductors (as well as a lot more).
Many speculate on the idea
Why do they bother if they all believe it's infeasible? And they clearly do a lot more than just speculate.
but none has demonstrated a practical theory of how to do so.
So your argument is that because no one has achieved it, no one even thinks it's possible? Really?
Given this Navy guy's other patents and the nature of how his invention supposedly works, I'm pretty skeptical that he's done it. I expect that if it's achieved it will be one with some pretty exotic materials and/or complex methods, because if it were easy it would have been done years ago. But assuming it's impossible just because no one has done it is silly.
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"The President did just give orders to form a space force under the Navy.... It isn't crazy to think the military has technology under wraps"
I liked playing battlezone (the one where you fight russkies on the far side of the moon) too, but crazy Trump ordering up a space fantasy doesn't lend credence to the idea of secret technology, with or without aliens. It doesn't speak to it at all. Just because Putin explained to him that the USA bombs Iraq every four years doesn't mean that Trump knows anything of interest. He's been too busy golfing and ignoring briefings to have learned anything about secret tech. I could easily believe that he has demanded a space force because some general told him that the only way they'd continue to get big military funding was to expand into space, and made up some guff about room temp superconductors and antigravity, though.
I'd like nothing more than for both of those things to be real, except maybe for our leadership to develop a conscience, but those two things seem equally unlikely right now. For example, just look at who voted for SESTA. Even the liberals many hope will save us flushed their principles and voted for that stinker. It's easy to see why Trump's base supports him so faithfully, when he's the only one breaking ranks to call certain things what they are, repercussions be damned. It makes it easier for them to pretend he's telling them the truth on all of the other occasions.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is absolutely correct. There have been many, many patents issued for inventions that do not and never could work. Most of them involve descriptions with technospeak gibberish that the patent examiner can't make heads or tails of. Case in point: I was hired to test Bill Fogal's "charged barrier transistor" many years ago, for which he has a patent (i.e. "High gain, low distortion, faster switching transistor": 5,196,809).
Fogal claimed that adding an emitter degeneration network to a transistor (something that circuit designers have been doing for decades) would cause a superconducting effect, resulting in a transistor that could switch infinitely fast with zero power dissipation. It was pure crank science, but Fogal did convince one company to pay to test it. He didn't care for my results that showed it did nothing special but generate a lot of 1/f noise, but that is another story entirely.
Patents are legal documents, not scientific documents. The USPTO's main concern is that your patent does not duplicate another patent. The inventor may be asked to provide additional documentation for the patent wrapper to prove that it doesn't. But there is absolutely no requirement to prove that the invention "works" in any real sense.
There are plenty of antigravity and "free energy" machines that have made it past patent examiners, and received patent protection. Of course, those patents are inherently invalid, as no one skilled in the art could ever make one work. But no one is going to bother to take the inventor to court to invalidate such a patent. What's the point? The patent has no value. It's not as if some company is worried that their antigravity machine or free energy generator is going to infringe on it.
Salvatore Cezar Pais may work for the U.S. Navy, but that doesn't mean anything. Pseudoscientists are not unknown in government laboratories. In fact, several people working for the U.S. Navy kept pushing cold fusion long after it had been debunked. Mr. Pais is simply another pseudoscientific inventor who happens to have a government job.
I would put it at 'crap shoot'. Journals and patents have the same basic problem of 'depends on who you get', with wildly inconsistent standards, and in both cases they become trivial to handle when you hire on people who's domain is dealing with patents/publications. Same with research grants.
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