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Navy files for patent on room-temperature superconductor
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.
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."
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:00PM (6 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_penetration_depth [wikipedia.org]
Several kilometers? No, 50 to 500 nanometers, typically.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Sunday February 24 2019, @08:18PM (1 child)
Damn, thought that was a James Bond sex thing!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @10:21PM
So? Still 50 to 500 nano penetration.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday February 25 2019, @12:14AM (1 child)
Can I get that figure in football fields?
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday February 25 2019, @03:40PM
If I work my quackulator correctfully, 50 nanometers would be 4.556725x10-10 football fields. (with 1 football field being 120 yards. I had to google how long a football field was. Yes, really.)
Every performance optimization is a grate wait lifted from my shoulders.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday February 25 2019, @01:20AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday February 25 2019, @02:14AM
What else is new?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:06PM (2 children)
Unfortunately the times when you had to provide a working prototype with your patent application are long gone.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @07:26PM
It probably doesn't work, but if it does, it's a scientific discovery and therefore not patentable.
(Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Monday February 25 2019, @12:08AM
I demonstrated a working prototype of a room-temperature superconductor several years ago. Not my fault that no-one wanted to travel to Pluto to be in the room where it was room-temperature superconducting.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:14PM (8 children)
I'm not sure how this works in the USA, but surely the patent should be held by the USA and not the Navy. After all, it was public money that presumably paid the wages of the scientist working for the Navy. Would the Army, Air Force or any other public organisation have to pay to use the knowledge and techniques outlined in the patent?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:25PM (1 child)
All its documents are in the public domain. The declassified ones anyway.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:33PM
The patent is OPEN and public domain. The application of it is not, you pay to use it (for ~20 years). There is a difference.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:31PM
https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-9004.html [tms.org]
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
The rest is case law, law, and executive orders.
What you are asking seems reasonable. Not the way it works though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @09:46PM (2 children)
I hope that filing a patent does not expose this to be stolen by say... China or Russia... or did that happen within 20 minutes of filing?
(Score: 4, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Sunday February 24 2019, @11:22PM
Say "copied", not "stolen". Unless a foreign power was somehow able to simultaneously remove all copies and other memory of the advance from the US, causing it to be lost to the US, it's not stealing. To call it stealing supports ownership propaganda.
Filing a patent on an invention absolutely does expose the invention to copying. The whole point of a patent is to encourage inventions to be shared by making a bargain. In exchange for sharing the details of an invention, the nation will use the force of law to stop copying, or at the least transfer the wealth the copiers acquired to the inventors.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday February 25 2019, @12:10AM
It's not the Russians they're worried about, the Navy is primarily worried about it being stolen by the Army or Air Force.
(Score: 1) by Stardaemon on Monday February 25 2019, @08:49AM
Nope. It's stated explicitly in the patent that they wouldn't.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 25 2019, @03:44PM
I wonder why the Navy would even patent this if it had national security importance, such as use in rail guns or other military systems.
I would have expected them to keep it secret for some time. Even if there were commercial applications of the technology.
Every performance optimization is a grate wait lifted from my shoulders.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:24PM (1 child)
It is the depth to which a magnetic field penetrates a superconductor.
I was previously unaware it would not penetrate far, but it is too early in the morning to contemplate way, as I have not had my coffee.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:57PM
It's what makes things float when you put them on top. The magnetic field cannot enter the material and is being reflected like a mirror.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:33PM (6 children)
So.. which century is this inventor mr. Pais from, again?!?
Last I heard of high-temperature superconductors was some kind of brittle ceramic made with Yttrium, Barium and Copper. And then high temperature meant: "liquid Nitrogen temperature" (-196°C). This looks like quite a bit newer technology.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @07:06PM (5 children)
There is literally no way in hell this is a superconductor at room temperature.
The material Aluminum PZT isn't super conductive at any temp that I'm aware of. Also the fact that it needs a coil and rapid pulsing of energy in the coil, is itself a source of loss. If anything what he has made here is a standard electromagnet with an aluminum core. That's what the diagrams are showing too. It is possible the deposition process is causing an EM reflection resulting in lower losses than would normally be expected. But super conductor it is not.
Super-conductivity is a state of matter wherein energy is transferred without loss because the electrons pair up and form cooper pairs, effectively sharing a single wave function and then Do-si-do'ing across the surface, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-si-do [wikipedia.org]
He isn't creating a new state of matter, there is no way that cooper pairs could form in that much EM noise, ergo not a super conductor. Perhaps a somewhat more efficient conductor / electromagnet though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @07:32PM (1 child)
i suppose super-conductors are cool (hey, pun) because you can make any shape/size magnets.
imagine taking a ferro-magnet material (i think that's what stuff is called that can retain a magnetic field?)
stretching it to a long wire and then trying to magnetize it so that north-south are perpendicular (right-angled)
to the length -or- imagine a magnetized nail so that north and south are not at the tips but "on one and the other side of the nail".
with superconductors i guess this can be realized and since they run current without lose and current makes magnetic fields
they are permanent magnets as long as they are cooled below their break-down temp?
not sure the excitement about transporting electricity over vast distances without lose is what will be the main usage case
for superconductors. the fact that any-shape-size permanent magnets can be realized will probably open the door to generate
a lot of electricity on-site without having to fetch it from a far away place anyways?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @07:50PM
We can already create magnets of any size, shape and length. Both permanent magnets and electromagnets. This is how those wierd magnetic toys work and they are how maglev trains work. Mag-lev tracks are essentially a large electric motor that has been flattened, i.e. an electro-magnet.
What makes superconductors and other "supers" like super fluids and Bose Einstein Condensates, exciting is that they exhibit quantum mechanical states & effects observable at the macro level.
We can ask all kinds of questions about what happens in the quantum world and find an analog in these exotic states, and in most cases this teaches us to ask better questions.
But the fact is superconductors have a specific definition. This invention could not possibly meet it. It would actually be far MORE exciting if instead of pretending this were a super conductor, that they would instead call it a high efficiency conductor.
After all, this thing is physically realizable today using construction techniques we have right now. You could build this yourself with the right supplies and a vapor deposition chamber.
By the looks of it, it would work well as a long distance transmission line assuming the losses are less than current materials and construction techniques. Those reduced losses translate into lower long term costs for the power companies because they are losing as much as 5% of their energy output per mile at the moment. If this could reduce that loss to even 4% per mile, it would mean millions saved in the span of a couple of years. That translates to lower energy costs for all of us.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Sunday February 24 2019, @09:32PM (1 child)
FWIW (which may not be much, or even anything), the patent does not seem to be claiming superconductivity via cooper pairs.
It also struck me that if the navy, via a contractor or whatever, had actually discovered superconductivity of this nature, the very last thing they would do would be to file a patent that tells every other country how to do it as well, considering the value of superconductivity in things like railguns and so on.
Then it struck me that perhaps the patent describes the wrong thing in such a way as to discourage research in or around an area where they've had some degree of success.
Or, you know, the patent submitter is just another kook. 😊
--
(√(-shit))²
Shit just got real
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday February 25 2019, @01:23AM
Yes... that's why I came back to this thread. Thinking about what use would a pulsed current array super conductor have. This would be perfect for a rail gun, a project the navy has been working on for close to two decades.
https://globalnews.ca/video/4811086/u-s-navy-demonstrates-electromagnetic-railgun [globalnews.ca]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS0KgdzMB5A [youtube.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun [wikipedia.org]
https://science.howstuffworks.com/rail-gun1.htm [howstuffworks.com]
You can build your own:
http://www.doityourselfgadgets.com/2013/10/homemade-railgun.html [doityourselfgadgets.com]
https://hackaday.com/2015/11/09/the-most-powerful-diy-railgun/ [hackaday.com]
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wjxmmz/this-guy-built-a-semi-automatic-portable-railgun [vice.com]
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday February 24 2019, @10:27PM
Are you sure superconductivity can be obtained only by Cooper paring electrons?
Have you or anyone else demonstrated any other mechanism is impossible?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Interesting) by HiThere on Sunday February 24 2019, @07:42PM (4 children)
I really, really, really think the US Patent office should go back to requiring a working model of the device before it grants a patent. In fact, repeal all patent law changes since, say, 1860.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @07:46PM (3 children)
well this sounds crazy, but you got this idea for a fusion device the size of an apple.
it requires a shiton of different material (from the periodic table) and precision milled parts.
so not finding all the stuff you need at the junk yard and maybe not having all the special tools
required on hand you "outsource" the production to a specialist manufacturer with a hanger
full of "shiton" stuff ...
and then on day "x" he delivers the parts to you and on his way back visits the patent office with
a working device ... because "two for the price of one"?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @07:55PM
This is why we have provisional patents.
A provisional patent allows you exclusive rights for a year in order to raise money to have it built.
It costs far less than a complete patent and the paperwork requirement is far less.
Once you've built or had built a working prototype and are ready to bring it to market you can finalize the patent and maintain priority.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @08:21PM
This is why you would require your contractor to sign documents precluding this kind of behavior.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 25 2019, @03:46PM
SCOTT: (redshirt) A starship engine the size of a walnut? That's impossible. But I don't suppose there'd be any harm in looking over diagrams on it.
Every performance optimization is a grate wait lifted from my shoulders.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday February 24 2019, @09:24PM (5 children)
Where can you find pleasure
Search the world for treasure
Learn science technology
STD with superconductivity
On the land or on the sea
Where can you learn to fly
Play in sports and skin dive
Study oceanography
Sign up for the big band
Or sit in the grandstand
When your team and others meet
In the navy
Yes, you can sail the seven seas
In the navy
Yes, you can put your mind at ease
In the navy
Come on now, people, make a stand
In the navy, in the navy
Can't you see we need a hand
...
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Sunday February 24 2019, @10:09PM (4 children)
Bots should stay away from saltwater.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @10:32PM (2 children)
Why? The same reasons as 'submarines should stay out of saltwater'?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @11:56PM (1 child)
That bot has long showed significant signs of both database corruption and CPU/NPU/positronic brain (which ever architecture he has) damage. At the very least, this shows the importance of ensuring that bots and cybernetic organisms have access to competent robopsychologists.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Bot on Monday February 25 2019, @01:14PM
> That bot has long showed significant signs of both database corruption
said the meatbag who had to choose between hrc and trump to substitute a nobel peace prize winner who drone bombed suspects.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 25 2019, @03:49PM
Q. What is big and hard and long and round, and when docked into a port, seamen burst out of it?
Every performance optimization is a grate wait lifted from my shoulders.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Rupert Pupnick on Monday February 25 2019, @01:57AM (2 children)
What’s the use of a lossless conductor system if you have to put power into it (through the “electromagnetic coil”) to get it work? Why haven’t the major media outlets picked this up?
(Score: 2) by pipedwho on Monday February 25 2019, @07:39AM
Let’s say I’m the Navy and want to make a stinking huge ultra sonic rail gun. If they could significantly reduce the coil resistive losses and therefore heating they could shrink the copper and increase the number of windings. Even if this takes energy, the result may be still be far more efficient than existing techniques. Maybe it has other drawbacks, but the requirement of power in to get greater efficiency isn’t one of them. Think lasers and high efficiency ultra bright LEDs.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 25 2019, @03:52PM
Maybe the energy for the electromagnetic coil is less than the losses due to electrical resistance by NOT having superconductivity.
If not, then just power the electromagnetic coil with cold fusion.
Every performance optimization is a grate wait lifted from my shoulders.