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US10144532B2 – Craft using an inertial mass reduction device
- imglorp 7y agoMore details here: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/02/if-these-us-navy-patents-are-made-then-we-are-in-a-star-trek-technology-world.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/02/if-these-us-navy-paten... I was about to dismiss as speculative woo woo (there is plenty of "may" passive language in the patent), until I noticed the assignee is the US Navy. Taxpayers are funding this.
- Hupriene 7y agoThe fact that this patent isn't classified leads me to believe that the Navy doesn't think that this will go anywhere, at least not in the near term.
- 64738 7y agoOr, that it did go somewhere, but the start of this project's "near term" was decades ago.
- mattkrause 7y agoI wouldn't read a ton into this. He also has a patent on a room-temperature superconductor. In one of his autobiographies, Richard Feynman talks about ending up with some bizarre patents on nuclear-powered aircraft. In brief, the patent office at Los Alamos went around and solicited patent ideas, though he tells it better here: https://youtu.be/rc9gwPB78lk https://youtu.be/rc9gwPB78lk
- dogma1138 7y agoThe nuclear powered jet engine technically did work both the Russians and the US worked on it and had what you can call a functional prototype; however irradiating the sky wasn’t a good idea after all, it required a normal engine to take off and with the development of aerial refueling and much more efficient jet engines the loitering time you get form superheating air using a nuclear reactor instead of burning fuel just bring enough of an advantage to make up for the cost, complexity and the risk. That said at least for the US the nuclear jet was developed into the liquid metal cooled reactors that became the first submarine nuclear reactors to be deployed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor The US navy stopped using sodium reactors once the small pressurized water reactors have been developed.
- mattkrause 7y agoIf you listen to the story I posted above, it's pretty clear that Feynman's patent was issued well before that--he basically rambled off a list of nuclear <things> to the patent officer, who then ran with it.
- dogma1138 7y agoThe US army (Air Force didn’t exist then) started the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft program in May of 1946, Feynman was 28 at the time however he did work on the Manhattan Project and using nuclear propulsion for submarines, aircraft and surface vessels heck even trains were things that people at Los Alamos and other labs were actively working on since the late 30’s. So it wasn’t that much of a crazy thing to work on, heck while looking back at it I’m sure Feynman was in jest but I’m not sure it was the case when he was in his mid 20’s.
- mabbo 7y agoThere's two distinct possibilities... 1. A lot of physics is about to be rewritten. Travel to other planets and stars is within our grasp. The entire world is about to change. We'll all remember this day for the rest of our lives. 2. The Navy has been paying a very convincing snake oil salesman to make patents for impossible devices.
- mattkrause 7y ago3. Someone's KPIs are linked to the number of patents submitted, and they're willing to take a flier on some very speculative ideas.
- OatsAndHoney 7y agoThis is more than travel to other planets. This is travel to other times, maybe even other dimensions or universes.
- riffic 7y agoTo qualify for a patent, there is no requirement that an invention works.
- _rpd 7y agoIn fact, the opposite is true, but patent examiners are imperfect.
- Mizza 7y agoSmells a lot like the EmDrive. That didn't pan out so well under increased scrutiny! This isn't the first time a physics-violating patent has been granted - anybody else remember the Orbo? https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2011110951A3/en?oq=WO2011110951 https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2011110951A3/en?oq=WO201...
- surak 7y agoHow do you know emdrive did not pan out? It's shown that the used configuration was wrong by the German institute.
- jakobegger 7y agoWell that's going to shorten travel time to Mars! Now we just need a gravitational mass reduction device so we don't need so much fuel for take off and landing!
- 64738 7y agoDone! The device in the patent claims to be a gravitational mass reduction device.
- dvh 7y agoThunderf00t will have field day with this
- simonsays2 7y agoThis is emdrive hoax. Navy got took.
- blancheneige 7y agoFirst it's the USAF pilots that have "creative imagination" when it comes to UFO sightings, then it's the US Navy physicists who don't know what they're doing... man, you armchair nihilists sure get uncomfortable when the boundaries of your assumed reality become visible.
- roywiggins 7y ago100% of other EmDrive-like claims haven't panned out. Short of substantial evidence why this time it's different, this time it's probably not different.
- DuskStar 7y agoEh, there was this weird guy back in the early 20th century that said he could get massive amounts of energy out of some rare metals - I think that one's worked out pretty well so far. Point being, just because something looks like it breaks reality or thermodynamics or whatever doesn't mean it actually does. Of course, this is still probably BS. Unless the US really is flying [0] legit 'ignore gravity and inertia' UFOs... 0: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27666/what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-ufos-and-department-of-defense https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27666/what-the-hell-is...
- roywiggins 7y agoThe problem is a sort of Pascal's mugging. Yes, some breakthrough claims pan out. But if you take every claim equally seriously, you'll be absolutely snowed under amidst claims of breathtaking new discoveries. Extraordinary claims still require extraordinary evidence, because there are so many more extraordinary claims than actual breakthroughs. I mean, how many claims of Revolutionary New Battery Technology (for instance) are we going to get before we get a truly revolutionary new battery tech? Probably many! And those don't even require new physics! Lots of patents turn out to be totally useless (practically speaking), even ones that don't make extraordinary claims. Ones that do probably require heightened scrutiny. A better toaster? Probably works! A cheap and portable mind-control device? Maybe not.
- Rebelgecko 7y agoThis dude has some crazy patents, including for room temperature superconductors. A few comments in previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229584
- ohiovr 7y agoStill can't reverse entropy though.
- powera 7y agoI am going to wait for CERN's research on measuring the gravitational interaction coefficient of antimatter to be published before I even try to understand this.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoI predict that this patent is legally irrelevant, because it will expire (20 years) before there are any (working) implementations.
- maxander 7y agoFrom the description: > Matter is confined energy, bound within fields, frozen in a quantum of time. > Polarization of the local vacuum is analogous to manipulation/modification of the local space tie topological lattice energy density. > If we can engineer the structure of the local quantum vacuum state, we can engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level If real physics sounded that cool, it would convince me I took the wrong major in college. :)
- didgeoridoo 7y agoI’m pretty sure that last quote is direct from the Alpha Centauri datalinks... Prokhor Zakharov, maybe? “Time dilates as the speed of light approaches. To the extent that light consists of particles, it is in its own way, timeless. Through simple perturbations of the temporal manifold, we can refract or repel photons most efficiently.”
- deytempo 7y agoThose were the days!
- fncypants 7y agoBeing a patent lawyer, I had to dig a little deeper because there is a record behind every patent. As you some of you already know, the patent office does not freely give patents for impossible devices. No perpetual motion machines, no magic invisibility cloaks, nothing that an ordinary person in the relevant art could not build after reading the patent. This is a doctrine called “enablement”—the patent, plus what is already known in the art, must be enough to enable one to build a working device without undue experimentation. This is the quid pro quo of the patent system: to get ownership of the invention for 20 years, you must tell everyone enough about it to build it themselves. This patent almost suffered the fate of non-enablement at the patent office. What led to its issuance is the interesting part because patent examiner tried and tried to reject this patent as not “enabling” the invention. Yet it issued anyways. I cannot link directly to the patent prosecution documents, but the files are public and you can find them at the USPTO database[0] by searching for the patent's application number 15/141,270. The patent was filed in April 2016. The first action by the USPTO was in November 2017 with the usual delay and it rejected all claims as not enabling the invention. Simply put the examiner said: “You’re claiming a perpetual motion machine, good-bye.” The patent examiner and the applicant held an interview in January 2018, which is an ordinary event to try to convince the examiner is wrong. The examiner pointed out “that he still felt there were enablement issues.” The applicant disagreed. No agreement was reached. A few days later, the applicant filed his formal response to the rejection. He attached a published article under his authorship in AIAA Space Forum[1]. He also cited other publications on how to “generate extremely high EM flux intensities.” Basically, he's saying I'm peer-reviewed here is some other peer-reviewed articles, and it being peer-reviewed that's all you need to know. But most interestingly, he attached a letter from Dr. James Sheehy, Chief Technical Officer of the Naval Systems Air Command, indicating that the amount of magnetic field and electricity described as being required by the patent “can be created, and thus the invention is enabled.” Dr. James Sheehy is a real dude, with that real title and corresponding resume.[2] Dr. Sheehy’s letter is fascinating. It asserts that the applicant is currently one year into a project to demonstrate the feasibility of high EM field-energy and flux and has begun experimenting with associated propulsion systems. Dr. Sheehy says he believes the research shows the invention will be a reality. Then he says (seriously, he says) “China is already investing significantly in this area and I would prefer we hold the patent opposed to paying forever more to use this revolutionary technology.” The examiner at the patent office (who is typically kind of knowledgeable in the field) nevertheless called B.S. Peer-reviewed, shmear-reviewed. He rejected the application again finally in March 2018. He pointed out "for a high energy electromagnetic field to polarize a quantum vacuum as claimed it would take 10^9 teslas and 10^18 V/m." He said "these levels are not feasible with current technology so how would someone of ordinary skill be able to know how to create this craft? The largest magnetic field ever created is 10^3 teslas and a neutron star is 10^ teslas so how are you using a microwave emitter that produces a magnetic field that is three orders of magnitude greater than a neutron star?" And so on... Basically, the examiner said this is bullshit. As is often done in this situation, the applicant filed an appeal from the patent examiner’s rejection. This is usually a procedure that is next addressed by a board of patent judges, with more briefing, typically oral argument, and takes months to years. But the appeal was never picked up after it was lodged, and it is unclear why. Two months after the appeal was filed, on October 31, 2018, the examiner (for no reason apparent in the file) allowed the patent to issue without comment and on the same day the government paid the fees it owed. The patent was issued in due course. Whether or not the named inventor was a crank, and whether or not the invention was equally frivolous, this was a patent prosecuted by a Navy attorney, vouched for by the Navy CTO, and pushed through under atypical circumstances, in a public forum. What's even more intriguing is that, if the Navy wanted, it could obtain the patent under a secrecy order that would keep it from the public's eyes until it was declassified. Knowing all this, now ask yourself why this impossible sounding patent issued in a public forum with high-level brass support under tax payer dollars. [0] https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair [1] https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2017-5343 https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2017-5343 [2] https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-sheehy-28437a8/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-sheehy-28437a8/
- equalunique 7y agoAny vessel that burns fuel reduces it's total mass.