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polymer hyperconductors

 
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hanelyp



Joined: 26 Oct 2007
Posts: 343
PostPosted: Sun Dec 30, 2007 3:21 am    Post subject: polymer hyperconductors Reply with quote
Browsing around I spotted http://superconductors.org/ultra.htm which quotes from http://www.ultraconductors.com/primer.html
Quote:
Ultraconductors™ are patented materials being developed for commercial applications. They are made by the sequential processing of amorphous polar dielectric elastomers. They exhibit a set of anomalous magnetic and electric properties, including: very high electrical conductivity (> 1011 S/cm -1) and current densities (> 5 x 108 A/cm2) over a wide temperature range (1.8 to 700 K).

I think that's supposed to be 10^11 S/cm -1 and 5*10^8 A/cm^2 if the formatting worked. Reading closer those figures describe 'channels' within the material rather than bulk properties. But still sounds promising for building magnets when the technology matures.
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scareduck



Joined: 17 Oct 2007
Posts: 552
PostPosted: Sun Dec 30, 2007 4:56 am    Post subject: Re: polymer hyperconductors Reply with quote
And, I want a pony.

The company claims to be a subsidiary of Magnetic Power, Inc.:

http://www.magneticpowerinc.com/index.html

Their claims are pretty hi-larious:

Quote:
Magnetic Power Inc’s mission is to supply the world with clean, abundant, and inexpensive electricity.

The company is developing technology it calls GENIE™ (Generating Electricity by Nondestructive Interference of Energy). Based upon proprietary breakthrough discoveries, GENIE generators (as well as other self-sustaining magnetic systems) are being designed to operate continuously, without fuel. The principle energy source is the Zero Point Field, which permeates the universe and is abundant, renewable and pollution free. When generators are mass produced, the cost of electricity is expected to be less than any competing form of power generation, today or in the foreseeable future.


So having been laughed out of meetings with anybody with half a brain (and money to invest), they latch onto this ultraconductor nonsense. The patent office is populated by halfwits with rubber stamps, and if you write them a check that doesn't bounce, they'll give you a patent for whatever.

Here's their headquarters, 301A N. Main St., Sebastopol, CA 95472:

http://tinyurl.com/3bybgj

I can't tell if it's a private house on a wooded half acre or something else, but everything else definitely meets the "too good to be true" qualifier.
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MSimon



Joined: 16 Jul 2007
Posts: 8780
Location: Rockford, Illinois
PostPosted: Sun Dec 30, 2007 5:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
scareduck,

I'm not even going to waste my time visiting the urls. I'd much rather waste it arguing politics. ;-)

Thanks for pointing out the critical details.

Science is hard. Engineering is harder.
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scareduck



Joined: 17 Oct 2007
Posts: 552
PostPosted: Sun Dec 30, 2007 5:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
I did a Google search for one of the principals, Leonid Grigorov:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Leonid+Grigorov%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

It's not clear if he's the same Leonid Grigorov who took home 400g of plutonium in 2004:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3974851.stm

There's a very interesting thread at the Skeptics Society website on the whole affair, about two and a half years old now:

http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=32984&

It includes a useful BS detection kit:

Quote:
1) Give me an authentic provenance to the idea. Show me the small steps others have made leading up to it.
2) Does it already have legitimate VC funding? (Military money is notoriously dumb, so it doesn't count.)
3) To whom does the principal give his or her time? (I would be much happier to see the AAAS than the American Antigravity folks: see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/americana ... message/64.)
4) Show me a credible reference client with a real application.
5) If you can't show me a reference client, show me a working prototype. If it's on the verge of being commercialized, it must be working somewhere ... in a house, in a car, in a flashlight, in an iPod. Show me! You have to know I will bring a plague of experts to bear on this prototype, so it had better be GOOD.
6) What is the history of ideas of the principals? What else are they involved in? (Zero Point Energy and energy from magnets are very, very bad signs. http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php?nam ... e&sid=1357)
7) Look at the language. Is the development always "on the verge" of being ready? Is the "establishment" always "wrong", and the principal always right? Do they make the "Chinese market" logical fallacy? (Read "Art of the Start" ... not enough space here.) Watch out for firms that miss "whopper deadlines" (http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000045.html) by a mile.
Cool Show me peer-reviewed papers and presentations at mainstream scientific conferences by the principals. Better yet, show me serious scientists who respond to these papers. Papers by other people on collateral topics don't count. A paper on ZPE is not the same as a paper outlining an industrial process to capture it.
9) Give me reproducibility. I won't look at a company with "secret processes"; if you can't show me how someone else can do it, I won't even get up from my desk.
10) Give me competitors. If one person can do it, so can someone else. If one person is working on it now, you can bet two or three others are, too. You are defined by the quality of your cometitors, so the competitors had better look good to the baloney kit. If you compete with Boeing (even in a minor way), I am impressed. If you compete with Johann Bessler, I am much less impressed.


... and a response from the company, the final paragraph of which shows there's no stopping these guys from trying to square the circle:

Quote:
The parent firm, Magnetic Power Inc., began when the late physicist Robert Forward, then at Hughes Aircraft, published a paper in Physical Review during 1984, suggesting electricity could be produced by conversion of Zero Point Energy. We do not expect anyone with scientific or engineering background to accept this as possible without examining a Demonstration Device. We hope to have such devices, both solid-state and rotary, available for purchase, at reasonable prices, during the last half of 2006. We are also planning to license the manufacture of 1 kW fuel-free generators, based on the same laboratory investigations that led us toward Demonstration Devices and toys, by the end of next year.


Well, I guess they missed their deadline.
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MSimon



Joined: 16 Jul 2007
Posts: 8780
Location: Rockford, Illinois
PostPosted: Sun Dec 30, 2007 5:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Scareduck,

I liked "solid state and rotary". Your choice of implementations.

I'm looking forward to their next invention: solid state and rotary transistors.
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Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
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hanelyp



Joined: 26 Oct 2007
Posts: 343
PostPosted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 12:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
After posting that I spotted other stuff on superconductors.org which suggests they don't always do a good job on checking the credibility of the reference. Still lots of good info if you can sort out the occasional garbage.
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