Embattled physicist files patent for unprecedented ambient superconductor | Hacker News Reader

Embattled physicist files patent for unprecedented ambient superconductor

science.org

45 pointshsnewman57 comments

Claims a world-changing breakthrough.

Doesn't publish.

Isn't reviewed.

Files patent and starts company to get money.

That's the classic pattern of a fraud, same as the cold fusion, "free energy" hacks and frauds. This is science, don't believe anything until it's peer reviewed and independently reproduced.

On the other hand, just because it isn't peer reviewed yet, doesn't mean it is wrong. Peer reviews are laughable these days (well, at least I prefer laughing over crying). If it is truly new and ground breaking, there is a chance that you will get rejected into oblivion, and have to stand your ground and build your case for quite a while. Nothing wrong with trying to make money in the meantime.

Other experimental groups have failed to reproduce his results. There's good reason to be skeptical of this until we get multiple groups confirming it's real.

Ultimately if he had a peer reviewed paper, a patent disclosure could have been filed concurrently. Investors would much prefer to back the team that did X vs the inevitable folks who think X is easy.

The lack of peer review or replication makes this almost a guaranteed fraud.

What makes this a guaranteed fraud is that the guy is literally known in his field for faking data. This shouldn't even be a headline unless someone completely unrelated comes in and confirms it.

Investors are known to throw good money after bad ideas without DD so I guess some will try to see if they get lucky.

Reminds me of the e-cat:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer

Years and years of breathless "we've applied for a patent!" and "we're accepting investors NOW!" all based on hopium and snake-oil.

If you publish your idea before filing a patent, you will not be able to patent it, because your own publication will be held as prior art.

Though I'm not an expert I find this hard to believe because even actual commercialized prior art seems to be no barrier to patenting something[1].

[1] https://homepages.cwi.nl/~paulk/patents/isnot/node9.html

The patent application you link to was never actually patented. The USPTO rejected the application and the applicant abandoned it.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040230959A1/en

I'm a former patent examiner, and from that experience, I know that attorneys frequently write things in applications that they think probably won't be allowed. They're testing the limits of what will be allowed.

Last I checked, you have 18 months after publication to file the patent in the US.

12 months in the US. And many many foreign jurisdictions will use your publication to block your patent

Absence of publication and peer review doesn’t imply anything. That’s only common in academia and a lot of theoretical and applied research happens outside of academia. And frankly peer review has a mixed track record even within academia, though the hard sciences are better than most.

This guy is probably delusional, and reproduction in controlled environments will be essential, but more unusual things have happened. I once worked on a program based on a theory breakthrough that came from a high school dropout with a colorful life history in a very rough part of town — obviously bright but unable to engage with any of the norms of academia.

His history of fraud suggests that he knows exactly what he's doing, and he's moving into the "monetize this shit" phase of his criminal lifestyle.

There's a simple way to find out the truth of these claims, wait a decade, and see if a product comes from it, or if it is replicated. All else is sound and fury, signifying nothing.

From the patent application[1], the method used is

  First, obtaining a material at a first higher pressure that superconducts at that first higher pressure and at a desirable practical operating temperature (e.g., room temperature). Next, while maintaining the material at the first higher pressure, cooling it to a very low temperature. Next, releasing the pressure to a second, lower pressure (e.g., room pressure) and then slowly raising the temperature (e.g., at about 1 K per minute) to a higher temperature such as the desirable practical operating temperature (e.g., room temperature).

Does it work? I don't know, none of us does. It's plausible. Let's just wait and see.

[1] https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO20...

This is one of those very rare "build it and they will come" technologies. All he has to do is make some material samples and send them to the right people making supercolliders at CERN, MRIs and turbines at GE, etc. Those people can trivially characterize the materials for their use case and if he's truly made room temperature superconductors, he'll have an entire horde of customers trying to throw money at him. Even if he can only effectively manufacture the geometries that 1% of those potential clients need, it'd still be a multi-billion dollar a year business.

Unless someone here is planning on investing, it's a complete nonstory. Let's see the goods!

A typical response to this is "I need 20M to make those samples. Gimme." And a response to that is often "Hmm, there's 95% chance this guy is full of shit, but also a 5% chance it's gonna be big." To investors, it's all about estimating whether the ratio is 95:5 (good enough), or worse.

If it works, I would wonder how sensitive the result is to temperature and pressure shocks. If it is very sensitive, this may be a significant limitation on practical applications.

For example virtually all portable devices wind up going through much faster temperature shifts than that. And raising it above the temperature that it was designed to work at, even for a short time, might result in no superconductivity.

That isn't to say that it wouldn't be a very useful substance to have. But again, we need to wait and see.

Your comment reminds me of the chapter 6 of the book "Only the Paranoid Survive" about Signal or Noise. One story is about the X-ray technology from Japan to produce better chips. IBM decided to invest in that technology while Intel didn't. The rest is business history.

After 13 years here, that's one of the biggest issues with the HN-expertee-comment-ism that is so widely remarked upon.

One person asserts a brutalist simplification about technology far outside their education and expertise.

Another, given the brutalist simplification, ties it to something within our common field.

Then, we have 1000s of people reading who are conditioned to spew optimism about "take room temperature superconductor[1] and cool it and lower the pressure and raise the temperature, tada!" and a false analogy like "doubting this would be like IBM failing to adopt [a commonplace technique] in semiconductor manufacturing"

[1] from where?

It seems you need to reread my comment and the well known book I referred to. Based on your answer It seems you don't have idea about what I am talking about.

This is the funniest aggro answer I've gotten on any site in many years.

Reading a book on IBM/Japan will not make the analogy built on sand become built on concrete. I'm not complaining about IBM/Japan, I'm complaining about room temperature superconductors. Also no one will read a book to make sense of a short comment

could someone help me understand why patents like these (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11663824B1/en) get granted? Do patents even work anymore?

Patents are certification that a science-educated federal employee in northern Virginia reviewed a patent application and found it generally plausible that its novel and all the right boxes were ticked. It's explicitly not their role to go beyond "generally plausible"

From there, maybe the company awarded the patent try, idk, litigating a FAANG over this (note I didn't read it). That's when you really start digging in.

I worked as a patent examiner twice in the past. I've written on Hacker News before about how patents are granted in the US:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33506062

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31197809

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31883765

Why was any particular patent granted?

First, keep in mind that the claims are the legally enforceable part of a patent. The drawings, title, abstract, and specification aren't as important. The title and abstract could be really vague and sound like they cover far more than the patent actually does as described in the claims. That's often intentionally done by attorneys because they want as broad coverage as possible. Usually only the claims are amended to be more narrow, so the broad sounding abstract/etc. stays.

Second, you need to check that it was indeed granted. Many times when someone's complaining about a dumb patent, it turns out that they are referring to a patent application which the patent office rejected. Give the USPTO credit where it's due. They did their job properly there.

Third, you can actually read the examiner's logic about why they granted a particular patent in many countries. In the US, you can look up the application on Patent Center and click on "Documents & Transaction" on the left. For the patent you mentioned, that'll take you here:

https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/applications/17873839/ifw/doc...

Now look for the "Notice of Allowance and Fees Due (PTOL-85)". This document will describe why the application was allowed. Usually it'll highlight the difference between the patent claim and the prior art. In this case the "Reasons for Allowance" section of the document seems pretty clear about why the examiner allowed this application.

Fourth, even if the examiner was in error, don't be too harsh on them. Being a patent examiner is a really hard job. They have a quota system and the quota is simply unreasonable. It's impossible in my opinion to do consistently high quality work for most patent examiners with the current quotas. If they can't find prior art in the allowed time, right or wrong, they'll probably have to allow it even if they don't feel that's right.

For those stating their previous claims have not been confirmed or replicated, that was true until about 3 weeks ago https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/science/room-temperature-...

This is different from what I expected. It's for an ambient pressure room temperature superconductor, rather than high pressure. Big if true.

> It’s customary for scientists working on the edge of discovery to patent their findings and further their work as more evidence emerges.

Yes, it IS customary, unfortunately. You can keep amending the claims, as long as they're "supported" by the spec, so as to avoid Allowance or Rejection. Slimy, but sometimes it works.

Even if it's Allowed, you can file a new one and claim Priority to the original date. Legal gamesmanship.

physicists/proper engineers: how useful would the electrical properties of a room temperature superconductor be, say usable as wires and only 10x the cost of aluminium or copper or whatever high tension wires are made out of? the web suggests resistive losses are O(10%), which doesn't seem hugely important in the scheme of things.

or would it be more useful for conductors in some other space? generators/turbines?

Extremely useful!

For one, it would allow current-based forms of memory storage. Right now, non-volatile memory is always stored as a voltage*, because static charges can be held without decay. Superconductors allow that for current. This also is great for sensors. For example whereas a copper ring will have a brief current when exposed to a changing magnetic field, a superconductor will have a current that perfectly tracks and cancels any magnetic flux it is exposed to. It can bring AC effects down to DC. And due to zero losses (and zero Nyquist noise), it could be used to, for example, make more sensitive antennas.

Secondly, even if you don't care about the losses in terms of power consumption, you almost always care about losses in terms of heat. Superconductive motor windings, for example, would allow motors to not only be more efficient, they could also be much more power-dense because of less heat generation.

And then there are the really fun applications, like levitation.

* (Or eg. a ferromagnet)

You could probably make a FAR more compact MRI too, along with hundreds of other massive breakthroughs. A room-temp, ambient pressure superconductor is a world-changer on the same level as a new battery technology with thousands of times the energy density of existing tech.

It's almost impossible for one person to list all of the ways technology would change, and the world with it.

Let’s keep it simple and assume we has a really awesome superconductor: critical temperature of 100C (so it keeps superconducting even if it gets decently hot), a high critical field (so you can make electromagnets and such out of it), good mechanical properties so it makes nice wire, and cheap.

It would be awesome. Off the top of my head:

Big electromagnets would use it: MRI machines, magnetic plasma machines (fusion reactors), industrial magnets (for lifting), etc. A lot of the size and complexity of some MRI machines is the cooling system for the magnets — this would be unnecessary.

There are designs for superconducting transformers that could be smaller and more efficient than current transformers.

Long distance power transmission would be considerably cheaper at high power levels.

I can imagine that some interesting motor and generator designs would become possible.

Useful? It would be a veritable revolution if we had access to room temperature, ambient pressure superconductors. Applications would be everywhere, even new ones would arise from people tinkering with it.

Not a physicist or engineer but I can speak to it as a layman.

Superconductors enable some deep magnetic magic which is used in all kinds of things from fusion reactors to MRI machines.

Current superconductors require cryogenic temperatures to operate though, which limits their applications, makes them extremely expensive to operate, and too complicated for large scale manufacturing.

An ambient temperature superconductor, even if the material itself was hideously expensive, would make these extraordinarily powerful technologies much easier to develop and deploy.

> how useful would the *electrical* properties

Eliminating friction and heat loss from nearly every aspect of transportation industry and electricity transfer.

From The Electrochemical Society [1]: "More exciting is the prospect of finding materials in which superconductivity occurs at higher, more usable temperatures. If long-distance power lines could be made of superconducting materials, for example, electric bills would plummet."

[1] https://www.electrochem.org/superconductors

It would be amazing, but that's precisely why you should be skeptical. This is prime fodder for the 'wouldn't it be great if we could do 'x'' kind of mental trap. But applications of a room temperature superconductor aren't lacking (it would be a gamechanger for everything electrical and electronic), it's the material that we don't have.

So until I can bench test it or someone whose reputation I trust has bench tested it for me it doesn't exist.

O notation for resistive loss is breaking my brain

What ever happened to that demonstration he announced a while ago? Did it go according to plan?

Tangentially related: Can people recommend any scientific publications that target the general public, but that aren’t resorting to clickbait headlines and suffering from repeated embarrassing retractions?

(So, not Nature or Science)

Nature and Science obviously aren't targeting the general public, so sniping at them about retractions is a bit silly.

Quanta, I guess.

They clearly are, take this article, for example.

Literally zero scientists outside this researcher’s circle of 10 related labs care about the political intrigue and name calling around this.

Outline if I wrote the article:

What are the implications of the claims?

What has this lab reported before, what were the technical mistakes they made?

Survey of state of the art in peer reviewed publications.

Technical critique of patent from world experts (“they probably incorrectly hooked up the volt ohm meter again” is in the article, but that belongs in the prior work section, not in the analysis of the patent)

Quanta is horrible. https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=13209

That's a rather uncharitable judgement based on just one article...

Also in case others struggled to understand what the linked article is talking about, I found this one very helpful: https://4gravitons.com/2022/12/09/simulated-wormholes-for-my...

APS Physics often promotes interesting papers which aren't clickbait.

Doesn't exist. Maybe PNAS or the Royal Society if one is generous.

Yawn. Demonstrate it? Get someone to reproduce it?

They did https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/science/room-temperature-...

Preprint is on arxiv

Well it's always profitable to attract the attention of rich tech-bros like Elon Musk, so I wish this scientist a lot of money.

Jesus christ these headlines. Ambient is supposed to mean room temperature and pressure. This alleged superconductor is a high pressure one.

External groups have not been able to reproduce his results.

> In a little-noticed patent filing, Dias claims to have made a material that superconducts not only at room temperature, but also ambient pressure.

The last is no longer true https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/science/room-temperature-...

The preprint is on arxiv but I’m too lazy to find a link

"External groups have not been able to reproduce his results."

The reproducibility crisis is going well. /s

When theories most experts in the field put a lot of stock in cannot be reproduced, it's a crisis.

When theories most experts in the field are skeptical about or downright disbelieve cannot be reproduced, it's a Tuesday.

If the patent relates to a novel material, it'd be unreproducible by definition, right?

At least in principle, for a patent to be valid it must be enabling. If other words, someone "of ordinary skill in the field" should be able to read the patent and implement it. If there's not enough information in the patent to be enabling, then a patent court should find it is invalid. Of course the patent system is pretty broken, especially when patent cases are tried by jury, but that's how it is supposed to work.

Patents protect commercial interests of intellectual property. But this is fundamental physics that hasn't made it out of the lab yet, so any lack of reproducible research is an enormous red flag. In many jurisdictions it shouldn't even have been granted in the first place, but patent offices are notoriously bad throughout heavily lobbied western nations.

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