Science?

I this link over at National Review, but it's not more apologia, its a patent on an ... unusual method of propulsion.

A space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state is provided comprising a hollow superconductive shield, an inner shield, a power source, a support structure, upper and lower means for generating an electromagnetic field, and a flux modulation controller. A cooled hollow superconductive shield is energized by an electromagnetic field resulting in the quantized vortices of lattice ions projecting a gravitomagnetic field that forms a spacetime curvature anomaly outside the space vehicle. The spacetime curvature imbalance, the spacetime curvature being the same as gravity, provides for the space vehicle's propulsion. The space vehicle, surrounded by the spacetime anomaly, may move at a speed approaching the light-speed characteristic for the modified locale.


Now I've seem all kinds of crazy patents. When I was in charge of CertCo's protfolio of crypto patents, I had full access to the US Patent office and a staff of Steptoe and Johnson lawyers to bounce ideas off of. One of my favorites was a "device" that provided instantaneous communication by using the "extradimensional properties" of a hot magnet.

and it got a patent!

This one is a little harder to debunk. One link I expected to see in the references was one to something called the Tademaru-Harrison Effect, which causes neutron stars to propel themselves out of hte galaxy via an asymmetric magnetic dipole moment. It's not dissimilar to what this guy is proposing.

(I know it well because I had both Tademaru and Harrison as professors at UMass. Harrison is the same Harrison whom I often quote about democracy. Also Tademaru asked a question on the qualifying exam about it. I got a 2/10 on that problem which, ironically, was the highest score on that problem in almost 2 decades.)

He uses a lot unproven assumptions in his explaination (e.g. the cosmological constant) which, while not science, is fine for a patent. Patents don't care that much how it works or even that it works. It's the fundemental difference between science and technology. Patents are all about technology.
I need to spend some time thinking about this one.