
The Inventor of the Navy's 'UFO Patents' - peakay
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31798/the-secretive-inventor-of-the-navys-bizarre-ufo-patents-finally-talks
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ggm
The problem I have in this, is that history is littered with things which
without hindsight were crazy-batshit-ideas, and in a world of IPR and patents,
definitely do get flagged as wierd. But.. then turn out to be useful.

Liquid metal refrigerators using electromagnetics to send the fluid around
instead of just pumping ammonia? Thats .. crazy. But also, What Szilard and
Einstein patented: safer by far, no moving parts in the working refrigerant
fluid.

Directed beam weapons: notoriously the 'kill a goat' test for the BRL and Navy
tired of loony inventors, but actually the ground work of Radar and like
activity according to Robert Buderi (yes, this is a gloss, but there are
linkages. The forces people _assumed_ RF beams were weapons, not detection
systems)

Infra-Red for detection of the enemy. No more stupid than what they had, which
is sound, giant sounding dishes to hear bombers. Turns out its harder to do IR
than RF, but didn't stop Lord Cherwell obsessing about it, to the detriment of
other science initiatives, but _NOW_ IR is a stable of all kinds of things.

These UFO patents may contain ideas which make sense in limited fields, or
huge fields, or no fields.

(obviously, if they are based on perpetual motion flawed physics it tends to
no fields)

~~~
willis936
In all of those cases the inventions sounded crazy And no one had really tried
it before. A lot of smart people have been working on plasma physics with the
goal of controlled fusion for 70 years. HTS research has been ongoing for
nearly as long. Suddenly one guy who speaks like a crackpot has discovered
things no one else has thought of? Occam’s Razor.

~~~
Khelavaster
The fusion tractor's control system needs far more EM signal processing and
optics than we understood util recently.

~~~
willis936
You don’t really need a serious amount of computation even for tokamak
feedback systems. The computers of the 90s are adequate. Most other
confinement machines (magnetic or otherwise) don’t even need feedback. It’s
just bog standard industrial automation/control.

We’ve been on the ball for optics for a long time now. Where computation
really comes in handy is in simulation and optimization. Plasma physics is
still a very unfinished field and computation is a very valuable tool in
speeding up the theory <-> experiment loop.

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cbanek
I'd really love some world changing breakthrough technology now. I really
would. But I don't really understand this stuff (not that I'm qualified). I
guess you can actually patent a perpetual motion machine, so the fact that it
is a patent, doesn't seem to require that it be real.

I can't help but think back to the 80's SDI "Star Wars" programs. We said that
we could do a lot of things that we couldn't, and that made the Russians
crazy.

Now I'm not prone to conspiracy theories, but could it be possible this is a
misinformation campaign?

It's interesting the "new IEEE paper" referenced in the paper only has the one
author and no coauthors. I wonder who (if anyone) peer reviewed this paper?
Also in the views, interestingly it's only had 40 views (not sure if this is
paper views, or not, it says PDF and HTML views). Sadly I don't have access to
read it!

[https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8871349](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8871349)

~~~
bra4you
"I guess you can actually patent a perpetual motion machine"

No, you can't because it violates fundamental principles of scientific laws.

~~~
cbanek
Not only can you, but many people have:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion#Patents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion#Patents)

~~~
catalogia
From that what that link says, it sounds like you _could_ but _now cannot_
patent perpetual motion devices, since those applications are now rejected in
America and UK. Perhaps you can patent them elsewhere though.

~~~
ganzuul
IIRC they are not rejected but you have to demonstrate the invention with a
physical implementation. Of course this proves nothing but it does reduce the
amount of paperwork.

There is legitimate research going on into reversing the casimir effect but
the narrative they present is one of tribology rather than power generation.

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smhinsey
I would love to be wrong because this tech is very interesting, but I feel
like I have developed a pretty good bullshit detector in my time online and
quotes such as "VES being the Fifth State of Matter (Fifth Essence -
Quintessence)" stick out to me as being discrediting.

~~~
bra4you
Honestly, I have lost track of state of matters. How many are there? 3? s,l,g?
Plasma? Bode Einstein Condensate? I vaguely remember at least three more.

~~~
Iv
Apparently in physics, there is less talk about states than about phases [1].
There are four fundamental states basically all matter can be in: solid,
liquid, gas, plasma, but then you can get philosophical about what constitutes
a state. Is a superfluid a liquid? I think there is a stronger case for Bose-
Einstein condensate to be a separate state but one could argue otherwise.
Crystalline vs amorphous solids could easily be argued as being different
states etc...

Really, phases are more clearly defined, but more numerous, and change from
one material to another.

And then you are left with the task of defining colloids, gels, aerosols...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_(matter)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_\(matter\))

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Accujack
I like the part where he talks about Quintessence as if it's a valid
scientific concept... not in terms of a hypothetical form of dark energy, but
in the original sense that it's the "quinta essentia" or "fifth element", IE
Aether.

His emails read like a word salad mix of high energy science and medieval
alchemy... very similar to a lot of the "free energy" crackpots on youtube.

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guerrilla
I feel like I'm still reading something from the geocities archive.

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snowwrestler
I continue to believe this is today’s equivalent of “red mercury”: crazy
pseudoscience given the imprimatur of the U.S. military to distract and
confuse adversaries.

~~~
tgflynn
It seems unlikely any serious adversary would be taken in by this.

I think it's more likely a case of gross managerial incompetence where
superiors were taken in by a crackpot making claims far outside of his and
their ability to evaluate.

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mrnobody_67
This quote from another article on the source website is interesting:

“Craft Using An Inertial Mass Reduction Device.” While all are pretty
outlandish-sounding, the latter is the one that the Chief Technical Officer of
the Naval Aviation Enterprise personally vouched for in a letter to the USPTO,
claiming the Chinese are already developing similar capabilities.

...

"That being said, the unorthodox circumstances surrounding the approval of
this patent have us wondering why the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S.
Naval Aviation Enterprise, Dr. James Sheehy, personally vouched for the
legitimacy of this beyond-revolutionary aerospace technology in the Navy’s
appeal to the USPTO. Sheehy assured the patent examiner in charge of this
application that the aircraft propulsion method described in the patent is
indeed possible or will be soon based on experiments and tests NAWCAD has
already conducted. "

~~~
trhway
> the aircraft propulsion method described in the patent is indeed possible

from that patent - they describe there spinning the 2m diameter disk at
30000rpm (ie. 3km/s edge speed):

"... we obtain an energy flux value of 10e33 W/m2. This exceptionally high
power intensity induces a pair production avalanche, thereby ensuring complete
polarization of the local vacuum state."

i believe it - 10e33 W/m2 can do a lot (it is total power output of a million
of Suns concentrated into 1m2), and such EM field would interact strongly not
only with the Earth magnetic field, it will do it with just sheer vacuum as
well (that is the point of their patent is that vacuum isn't really a full
vacuum according to QM).

So everything seems ok from the pure math EM/QM formula POV. There are i think
only minor pesky practical details - like the material able to withstand
30000rpm 3km/s rotation while under the 10e33 W/m2 EM flux (the flux which
would tear apart atoms and may be even protons/neutrons) and a compact energy
source doing all that while fitting into the 2m diameter disk.

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orbifold
As a slight counterpoint (I haven't looked into the claims of the patents too
much): There is the well known Kerr-Newman solution of a rotating, charged
black hole. It is well known that a relativistic rotating charged disk
approximates in the limit of (v = c) the Kerr-Newman solution with (B = 0):
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0410109.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-
qc/0410109.pdf). However the total field energy of such a rotating disk would
be infinite, this is one of these examples in physics, where you run into
pathologies. As is remarked in the paper those might be removed by a quantum
treatment. For v < c the field energy is finite, which is in any case the only
realisable regime.

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mNovak
Trying to think if the DoD has any good reasons to encourage conspiracy
theorists? Besides the obvious US has mystic weapons angle.

~~~
guerrilla
because some of them are conspiracy theorists? It would seem improbable that
Michael Flynn is alone in that.

In any case, I think this is most likely due to incompetence. Whether a few of
this guy's bosses are conspiracy theorists or not, they obviously aren't
qualified to evaluate his work and see that he's a crackpot. It wouldn't be
the first time, with things like MkUltra and that telepathy crap.

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davidhyde
Wait a second. I thought you couldn't patent an idea that couldn't be
demonstrated. For example, you can't patent the concept of faster than light
travel in the hopes that one day, if someone does figure HOW to do it, you
hold the patent. It's just absurd and that's what this all sounds like.

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keyle
You don't patent these things without expecting questions... Either they're
really close to produce something that the public could replicate - hence the
patenting, or they're miles away from anything realistic but patenting like
crazy to remain 'relevant'.

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NiceWayToDoIT
I know, you guys do not understand, it is "Turbo Encabulator"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLDgQg6bq7o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLDgQg6bq7o)

LOL

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Jedd
AIUI, viable room temperature superconductors are an existential threat to the
coal & gas industries.

Worse / better yet, they'd massively disrupt the existing geopolitical power
and wealth distribution.

~~~
orionblastar
Wasn't there some airplane crashes that had engineers on the flight that
worked for Freescale or some other company in the superconductor market? Funny
how those stories just faded away with few questions about how the airliner
crashed. I am not trying to make a conspiracy theory, but they should have
taken separate flights.

edit: Typo and clarification

~~~
mmcconnell1618
Snopes doesn’t indicate this is likely to be true.
[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mh370-patent-
disappearance...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mh370-patent-
disappearance/)

~~~
x__x
Where's the Snopes like site Snoping Snopes?

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NiceWayToDoIT
Maybe just NSA and NAVY covert, keeping Chinese scientist busy wasting their
time with nonsense science ?!

~~~
willis936
Some in the US seem to be keeping their mentally ill off the streets by paying
them to make nonsense secret parents.

