Warp drive patented

Courtesy of Paul Hsieh I've "discovered" what seems to be a pretty good blog by someone who understands physics and its associated math better than I do, called rdv live from tokyo.

I saw several good posts illustrating his grasp of the current state-of-the-art concerning quantum computing (and QM in general), as well as one amusing anecdote from his youth, when he attempted to build his first perpetual motion machine.

But this was pretty fascinating, too:

Topic of patent #6,960,975? "Space Vehicle Propelled by the Pressure of Inflationary Vacuum State". A warp drive. Use 10,000 Tesla magnets and a 5meter shell of superconducting material, and you, too, can warp space and time, and travel at "a speed possibly approaching a local light-speed, the local light-speed which may be substantially higher than the light-speed in the ambient space"!

Every time I think I understand what is and isn't patentable something comes along that challenges my thinking.  I was under the impression that, in order to be eligible for a patent, any technology used must be demonstrable.  Evidently not.  It seems that I could patent a Star-Trek-style transporter using whatever esoteric technology I can dream up, if I wanted to.

When evaluating new blogs for possible inclusion on my blogroll, one of the things I do is look over the new blog's blogroll.  It can be quite revealing to see who he thinks is worth linking to.  Interestingly, rdv live doesn't have a blogroll at all.

GeekPress linked with "Has someone patented the warp drive?"

Comments

[Phoenix]

Oh, Obi.... thank you for the link to this blog! :)