Member-only story
The “Pais Effect”: An Einstein-Level Breakthrough? Or Government-Funded Gaslighting?
How it could be both, and why China is working on it, too.
On February 1st, an article was published by The War Zone, the military subsection of the automotive news site The Drive, reporting that Dr. Salvatore Pais had filed several patents including the following, all enabled by what he calls the “Pais Effect”:
- A high-frequency gravitational-wave generator (for high-speed space propulsion and communication through solid objects);
- A room-temperature superconductor (which would revolutionize power transmission worldwide);
- An electromagnetic force-field generator (to be used to deflect small asteroids among other things), and best of all;
- A craft using an internal mass-reduction device (also for high-speed space travel).
Um, could we please have all that to go, with a side of phlogiston sautéed in snake oil, maybe with a large cup of COVID-killing disinfectant to wash it down? The story would surely have been sentenced to click-starvation purgatory and died in moments except for one little thing: when he filed those patents, Mr. Pais was employed by the Naval Air Warfare Center, Aircraft Division (NAWCAD).
After collectively donning neck braces to recover from “wait, what?” whiplash, millions of scientifically-minded and allegedly-cynical readers (including myself), heartened by the seeming validation of said patents by being associated with a part of the military that deals with hard science, immediately began to scour the news for more information. With all the newly-unclassified news from the military (and especially the Navy) about UFO’s over the past couple of years, there did seem to be room to hope. It was as if we had all heard Pavlov’s bell signaling a Michelin-starred feast, for we began to drool over the prospects of the kind of bright futures we dreamed of as kids watching the Jetsons in their flying car.
And those of us who are retired Navy began to grin. “Hey — that’s MY Navy that might be about to change the world”, conveniently forgetting all the epic bone-headed mistakes we’d all seen the Navy make over our decades in service (I’m looking at you, “Total…
