US Navy Has Patents on Tech It Says Will 'Engineer the Fabric of Reality' (vice.com) 113
The U.S. Navy has patents on weird and little understood technology. According to patents filed by the Navy, it is working on a compact fusion reactor that could power cities, an engine that works using "inertial mass reduction," and a "hybrid aerospace-underwater craft." From a report: Dubbed the "UFO patents," The War Zone has reported that the Navy had to build prototypes of some of the outlandish tech to prove it worked. Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais is the man behind the patents and The War Zone has proven the man exists, at least on paper. Pais has worked for a number of different departments in the Navy, including the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAVAIR/NAWCAD) and the Strategic Systems Programs. (SSP) The SSP mission, according to its website, is to "provide credible and affordable strategic solutions to the warfighter." It's responsible for developing the technology behind the Trident class nuclear missiles launched from Submarines. The patents all build on each other, but at their core is something Pais called the "Pais Effect." This is the idea that, "controlled motion of electrically charged matter via accelerated vibration and/or accelerated spin subjected to smooth yet rapid acceleration transients, in order to generate extremely high energy/high intensity electromagnetic fields."
Sounds legit (Score:5, Funny)
Remember, an invention doesn't have to work in order to get patented.
He and the Time Cube guy ought to get together.
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Only in one of the four Earths tho.
Re:Sounds legit (Score:5, Interesting)
Not strictly speaking true. You no longer have to provide a prototype by default but a skeptical patent examiner can require proof of your invention and in this case did so. That is the update here, these patents have been known about for awhile and previously covered on Slashdot. The news is FOIA requisitioned emails with enough declassified bits to indicate prototypes and demonstration were both required and provided.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37134/emails-show-navys-ufo-patents-went-through-significant-internal-review-resulted-in-a-demo
I'm not saying any of this is legitimate but for whatever it is worth I had people tell me about having seen this tech in the lab while in the Navy.
Re: Sounds legit (Score:2)
It's been discussed a bunch for at least a few years, going back to an uptick in UFO sightings by the military. Suppose the tech does work which doesn't seem all that crazy from what I read, but the issue primarily seems to be power for the kind of electricity generated. You basically need to solve fusion to have the energy output these things seem to require for any type of missions comparable to current fighters. This is the part of the story that makes sense, only the Navy seems to have the intersecti
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They claims cover the fusion power source. The special sauce is supposedly a bunch of work with alterations and manipulations of high flux magnetic fields. I'm not physicist who could comment on his published paper or the exact details of his work but the inventions all seem to be inline with discoveries in that area. If I were I probably wouldn't comment positively anyway. The effects of superconducting fluid and some of the applications of this kind of field manipulation (the actual hoverboard and other l
Re: Sounds legit (Score:2)
How is a high temperature superconductor mixed in with all that other stuff? Those have actually been created.
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Apparently according to the Navy so have the others.... to some extent anyway.
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The ones that actually have been publicly demonstrated only exist while being compressed with a diamond anvil, and at such pressures that the anvil usually breaks. Not very useful for anything beyond an existence proof.
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Depends what you call high temperature. There are plenty of "high temperature" super conductors that actually are in commercial use.
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Such as...?
Traditionally, "high temperature" superconductivity just means warmer than boiling nitrogen (77 K, -196 degrees C). The highest published temperature for superconductivity at 1 atmosphere of pressure is 138 K (-135 degrees C). That is still a lot colder than dry ice.
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And a lot hotter than boiling helium. So, "high temperature" isn't that much of a misnomer. There might not be anywhere on Earth where it would be considered "room temperature", but there are plenty of places elsewhere in the Solar system that it would be "room temperature". Or an environmentally relevant temperature.
If they're being serious (and that there appears to be money being spent, they do seem to be no less serious than the Clown's Guild), they may be lookin
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https://www.can-superconductor... [can-superconductors.com]
FYI: https://courses.lumenlearning.... [lumenlearning.com]
And you could at least have scrolled down to the table below: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
High temperature super conductors above liquid nitrogen exist since over 30 years ...
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Education and experimental uses are not commercial uses. You claimed there were lots of commercial uses, but you haven't named any. For example, that Lumen link you identified falsely (ludicrously, even) claimed that one application is in mobile phones. They apparently mistakenly looked at high-Q filters in mobile phone base stations from the 1990s, but I don't think that application is used any more: we have better ways to get good filter responses now, and base stations need to be more robust and small
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Well we still have that miracle engine from NASA covered on slashdot several times so who knows what's happening in the back corridors.
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And we all know the Air Force has Stargate.
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Starforce has taken over the project. They couldn't let the fly boys do freefalling work.
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My only surprise is that there is even any desire to patent any of it.
Patents make designs public, for the purpose of others being able to use those designs while compensating the designer.
I can't imagine the Navy desiring either of those things.
They'd want to keep it to themselves instead of being publicly available, and there's no need to be paid for them when they have the resources of the US government.
Few entities have more money and resources than the US government.
The majority of those entities are *
Re:Sounds legit (Score:5, Interesting)
To this point it may have been just to put it out there already knowing that it's completely useless or a fools errand - and to watch other governments fall into the pit trying to copy it.
Example would be Sub propellers - the shape and design of them is highly classified as with it you would be able to determine the sounds and signature of a Sub.. A few years ago they where outed for doing just that - letting public photos get out of "advanced" props which in reality where not in use and had known (to the US) design flaws that made them easy to identify in the water (if you knew what you where looking for) which allowed them to see the China copies in the water.
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Or to be more precise, it allowed the Chinese navy to attract the attention of the US's surveillance assets to a particular area, while determining the capabilities of those assets. Meanwhile, the actual "stealth" subs were operating elsewhere.
Yes, that way madness does lay. Beginners play quadruple-bluff.
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No really!
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I'm not saying any of this is legitimate...
"I'm not saying it's UFOs, but..."
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Ahem, UAPs. But no... they are identifying it so it is not unidentified.
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The Navy lab is what finally got the Pons and Fleishmann 'cold fusion' system to work consistently (apparently purity of the metal was much more important than anyone thought. I'd be happier about their use of my tax dollars if they actually routinely submitted their research to peer reviewed publications, though.
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https://spectrum.ieee.org/ener... [ieee.org]
Now they've apparently stopped talking about it again. With the military that sometimes indicates that they've found a use for it that they don't want "the enemy" (in most cases that classification includes taxpayers) to know about.
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I doubt they want to go to that shame again ...
Re:Sounds legit - it is (Score:2)
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Crashed Chinese spacecraft. :-D
Re:Sounds legit (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, an invention doesn't have to work in order to get patented.
Indeed. A lot of snake oil has been patented over the years, including numerous perpetual motion machines.
Patents are public record. If they actually exist, anybody can get a copy, and try building one themselves. Many people will. Some will make equally outrageous claims of success, and get their 15 minutes of fame, before fading back into whatever woodwork they crawled out of, never to be heard from again.
If this stuff worked, either it'd be everywhere by now, or it wouldn't have been patented because military secrets don't get put into the public record.
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If this stuff worked, either it'd be everywhere by now, or it wouldn't have been patented because military secrets don't get put into the public record.
That in itself tells us nothing about why it was patented. If it was about academic accolades one doesn't need a patent for that. If one wants attention that is what social media is for.
Re: Sounds legit (Score:2)
Cry more. Maybe that'll help.
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There just isn't as many people around anymore who want to oil a snake.
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That's what she said. :-p
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Patents are public record. If they actually exist, anybody can get a copy, and try building one themselves.
...
If this stuff worked, either it'd be everywhere by now, or it wouldn't have been patented because military secrets don't get put into the public record.
Just gonna put this out there [wikipedia.org].
In Feynman's memoir, he notes that he was awarded several classified patents (that he thought were ridiculous, for what it's worth, because the ideas were trivial (on the order of "doing [thing] ON A COMPUTER or ON THE INTERNET" level triviality, (actually, "doing [thing] WITH ATOMIC ENERGY")). IIRC one was for a nuclear powered airplane. The punchline was that he had to surrender all rights to the idea for the sum of $1 (which he insisted be paid, and was eventually success
Three Stooges did it in 1962 (Score:3)
https://youtu.be/6fVPINjI6iY [youtu.be]
I'm calling it prior art.
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Spot on!
When I was a kid I saw a guy on TV holding a patent for the anti-gravity/time-travel drive in his hand based on a fiber-optic coil (supposedly based on Einstein's General Relativity) - have not seen such a device yet.
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Dr Gene Ray, Scientist died in 2015 :(
Re:Sounds legit - Time tavelers never die... (Score:2)
Dr Gene Ray, Scientist died in 2015 :(
He's still around, time travelers never die: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Sounds legit (Score:1)
Spindizzy or GTFO (Score:2)
Seriously, I want to send New York City into space.
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We could...if the SDF-1 were to crash land there instead of an island.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Note that Macross City was heavily damaged in the process... though for some I guess that would be a feature not a bug if applied to NYC.
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Many of the people living there want to go home, too!
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Also, the enjoyable to watch "Dark City" with Rufus Sewell and Kiefer Sutherland has a similar premise (alien ant farm).
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Actually a very good movie!!
Poor summary... (Score:1)
The patents aren't news. The news is that people digging around the patents got partially declassified emails indicating working prototypes and demonstrations of the technology were required to grant the patent.
"https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37134/emails-show-navys-ufo-patents-went-through-significant-internal-review-resulted-in-a-demo"
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You don't need a working prototype or demo to get a patent. The patent application itself is considered reduction to practice.
Even if the above existed, remember this version of Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo."
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that's in typical prosecution, but an examiner can reject something goofy-looking as lacking utility.
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This is NOT a troll ffs.
Reagan Star Wars - Rail Gun / Laser Power Source (Score:2)
reminds me of the Ronald Reagan star wars program. Some of the rail-guns and laser systems had extremely high peak power requirements (Gigawatts over milli-seconds). The idea was to use a "flywheel" to store up a large amount of energy, and then release th
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Also, the US Navy rail gun seems to be progressing well https://www.popularmechanics.c... [popularmechanics.com] not sure how long till they have it mounted on a ship though (if not already).
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Congressional Research Report from December says the railguns haven't been mounted on anything yet, but prototypes of the lasers are on ships now.
https://news.usni.org/2020/12/... [usni.org]
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It makes me think that for any of the claims in the article to be plausible, they must be exploiting some new material science effect
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Reagan's Star Wars scared the Soviets, though. And in my book that means it worked well enough, even if it didn't really work.
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The worst part is they've never shut down that unending money pit to this day. They still waste money on tests that fail almost half the time when they put a transmitter in the target missile. I'm not sure they'll be able to convince the Russians to put transmitters in their ICBMs any time soon, so we'd better just keep pouring money down that rat hole.
Re: Reagan Star Wars - Rail Gun / Laser Power Sour (Score:1)
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They used "wiggler magnets" to add energy to electrons. As far as I know they never got it where it needed to be but there have been advances to use the concept as nuclear accelerators.
Very misleading and lazy article. (Score:4, Interesting)
For starters it completely benefits from the investigative journalism performed by The War Zone. All of this came together over several articles over multiple months.
It's little more than a summary of someone else's work.
Its misleading in that it starts off with a tone that implies that the "Pais effect" and the related inventions are potentially real and groundbreaking. And only mentions the Navy pulled the plug several paragraphs in.
Also what serious journalist writes the world bullshit in any way besides a direct quote?
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No serious journalists work at teen-magazine Vice.
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A journalist will go to who ever hires them. They will often work for a local New Paper, or onto some specialty news site. If they take their job seriously and do good work, and sometimes they get really lucky and uncover a bigger story than the company will normally cover, they will get exposure, as well have more work references, they can apply towards a job at more of the serious big name journalist.
Rolling-Stone Magazine has been covering a lot of serious topics, and current events. Which its results
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Navy Patents (Score:2)
Chinese Patents (Score:2)
I'd be more concerned if the Chinese were all over it. They have the money to throw at pie-in-the-sky and more importantly no one to judge how they spend it.
That's BS (Score:5, Informative)
The Wikipedia article on him seems to indicate that his theories have no basis in evidence or mainstream support and his work in the Navy ended in 2019.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It's probably partly just disinfo to get adversaries like Russia or China to waste some resources looking into technology that the government feels to be either impractical or impossible. Even if they just dedicate a few scientists and a few million dollars into a couple dead end experiments that's still better than having them work on projects with actual military value.
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They've also been funding the Polywell fusion reactor.
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The Wikipedia article on him seems to indicate that his theories have no basis in evidence or mainstream support and his work in the Navy ended in 2019.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The wiki states that he currently works for the Air Force. That doesn't seem like he got fired or let go.
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> his work in the Navy ended in 2019.
He still works for them in DC, not in the lab.
Pedrick's patents (Score:3)
I expect to see a working prototype of this patent: Photon push-pull radiation detector for use in chromatically selective cat flap control and 1000 megaton earth-orbital peace-keeping bomb [google.com] by Arthur Paul Pedrick [wikipedia.org] before any of Pais' work.
Very old (Score:5, Informative)
Although I cannot find the sources, this "Pais Effect" mentioned in all the patents reminds me of a prior set of experiments: The US examined claims that a spinning superconductor disc could be connected to high-frequency vibrating coil, like a speaker, and make efficient use of a piezo-effect of inertial mass changes. In total, the system could be tuned so that the disc had greater mass in one direction of the physical motion, creating a thrust in proportion to a gravitation field. In what I read, the technology of the time could not create large-enough/strong-enough superconducting discs to withstand the movement; they always broke apart, especially considering the low temperatures the apparatus needed.
So, the claim as I recall is: A stick-slip actuator & high temperature superconductor combination in some rotational configuration = anti-gravity.
It may have been this controversy I'm remembering: https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com]
Related:
And rabbit holes into:
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This sounds familiar (Score:2)
Prior Art (Score:4, Insightful)
Disinformation? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the other side spends more resources attempting to compete with or defeat a non-existent advancement than you did in convincing them it was true, then you could come out ahead.
I guess the downside would be if you thought you were wasting their time and money but they actually succeeded where you failed. Oops.
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Seems like it could also be a case of a private company or individual being hired by the military to pursue research into certain new technologies. I wouldn't be surprised if these contracts include a clause in the remuneration section saying payment is X or X + Y where Y is a payment for each successful patent.
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I guess the downside would be if you thought you were wasting their time and money but they actually succeeded where you failed. Oops.
Nah, that's actually a very efficient use of resources called "outsourcing to the enemy." You acquire their successful research via relatively cheap espionage.
More likely the enemy skips the competing research and uses their own espionage instead. But of course you're ready for that: the whole thing was a honeypot to expose their spy apparatus! Unless....
Another overunity fantasy... (Score:2)
...this is so low that I'm surprised the Army would get involved in it, it's sometimes refered to as the "over unity effect", and yes - while you can recycle the electromagnetic fields (if you like), you can't get more energy OUT than you put IN IT, it's the LAWS of PHYSICS.
Just this utterance alone says it all:
"...controlled motion of electrically charged matter via accelerated vibration and/or accelerated spin subjected to smooth yet rapid acceleration transients"
Yes, right... it's the same theory youtube
Re: Another overunity fantasy... (Score:2)
You can't get more out than goes in.
If it could get energy from somewhere else, though, you could conceivably get out more than you put in.
No, I don't think they have done so.
Not coming soon to Netflix (Score:2)
Dubbed the "UFO patents," ...
The most boring sci-fi show ever.
hmmm... (Score:2)
Aliens! (Score:1)
As long as it leads to hot green alien chicks, I'm all in.
Re: Aliens! (Score:1)
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Hopefully you received the latest memo with TPS cover sheet that the hot green alien chicks are hung like a rhino and want to go all in.
Waiting.. (Score:2)
Re: Waiting.. (Score:1)
What is his actual role? (Score:2)
This guy (Score:2)
*sniff* *sniff* *sniff* (Score:2)
Sleight of hand, you bozo (Score:2)
A classic case of using this type of media junk reporting to get the rubes to look for deep secrets using fringe science instead of looking at the actual practical applications (engineering) of mainstream physics used by the military in their advanced weapons programs..
Strains Credulity (Score:2)
Is it just me, or does the fact that they (the SSP) had to verbally assert "credibility" on their mission statement somehow reduce the overall credibility of the group? It would appear they have also invented the credibility interferometer. Shoulda' patented that instead.
Hybrid aerospace-underwater craft (Score:2)
I think this guy has been watching too many TV show reruns [blogspot.com].
Unsubscribe Popular Mechanics / Omni (Score:1)
Can someone explain to me... (Score:2)
Better not be infringing on my patent (Score:2)
Better not be infringing on my patent of the unicorn harness!