Boyd Bushman magnetic beam patent

Boyd Bushman magnetic beam patent

Patent	US 5,929,732, "Apparatus and method for amplifying a magnetic beam"
Inventor	Boyd B. Bushman
Assignee	Lockheed Martin Corporation
Filed	17 April 1997 (application 08/842,850)
Granted	27 July 1999
Claims	18
Status	Lapsed in 2007 for non-payment of maintenance fees
Date	17 April 1997
Topics	Propulsion & physics (topic)
People	Boyd Bushman
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 127
Year	1997 in UFO history
Timeline	1997 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	9

On 17 April 1997 Boyd Bushman, a senior scientist at Lockheed Martin, filed a U.S. patent application for an "apparatus and method for amplifying a magnetic beam".^[1] Patent 5,929,732 was granted on 27 July 1999 and assigned to Lockheed Martin.^[1][2][5] It describes an arrangement of ordinary magnets that, it says, focuses their fields into a narrow beam reaching far beyond a normal magnet's range. Its abstract calls that beam "a magnetic monopole".^[1] The patent drew interest in UFO circles after Bushman's death in 2014, when a video of him talking about Area 51 and aliens spread online.^[3][4][6]

Bushman

Bushman's engineering career spanned more than forty years. It included work at the defense contractors Hughes Aircraft, General Dynamics, Texas Instruments and Lockheed Martin, where he retired as a senior scientist.^[3] He was named on a number of patents: Raw Story counted 28 listed under his name with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and noted that he is recorded as working for the company.^[2][4] The magnetic beam patent itself refers to an earlier Bushman invention, U.S. Patent 5,637,946. That patent, filed in 1995, granted in June 1997 and assigned to Lockheed, describes a "thermally energized electrical power source": a metal base plate with sharp electrode points beneath an insulated collection plate, which it says produces a voltage at room temperature that rises as the temperature rises.^[1][9]

The patent

Design

The patent starts from a practical problem. Strong magnetic fields usually need large permanent magnets or powerful electromagnets, which are heavy and spread wide fields that can disturb nearby equipment.^[1] Its answer is a "focusing magnet assembly". Two pairs of opposing magnets are arranged in a plane with like poles facing the center. A fifth, "unopposed" magnet points the same pole along the axis through the gap between them.^[1] In the main example all five are cylindrical magnets of roughly equal strength, described in the text as "niosyum" magnets, each with a hole down the middle. They are held in place by non-ferrous bolts meeting at the center.^[1] According to the patent, pressing like poles together in a plane, with a like pole perpendicular to it, squeezes the combined field into a single beam running out at right angles to the plane. Without the fifth magnet the assembly gives two like beams, one on each side.^[1]

The patent says the beam's direction and strength can be changed by moving the magnets or altering their strength or shape. It says the beam could even be made to rotate by varying each magnet's strength in turn. It also allows three opposing magnets instead of four, or several focusing assemblies stacked along the axis.^[1] Its 18 claims cover the basic assembly with at least three opposing magnets and an unopposed magnet, versions with south or north poles at the center, and the coil and pin-array additions.^[1]

Claimed effects

The patent reports the following results, without independent test data:^[1]

• A magnet whose measurable field normally reached four to six inches could project a beam five to seven feet.
• A magnet able to lift an iron object about an inch away could lift it from about six inches.
• The assembly could distort a cathode-ray tube about two feet away, make electronic systems inoperable at about six inches, and double the performance of an inductor at about eight inches.
• A Van de Graaff generator placed between a north-facing and a south-facing assembly threw a large spark to the south assembly five feet away. The patent took this as a sign the invention could transfer electrons over a distance.

The abstract sums up the beam as "a magnetic monopole which emits pulses, levitates, degausses, stops electronics and separates materials".^[1]

Detection and pulses

Two variants extend the design.^[1]

• Motion detector. A copper coil is placed in the beam, wired in series with an "unbalanced capacitor" and a voltmeter. Movement through the beam, or even the mere presence of an object, is said to produce an alternating voltage that can be measured. A pin array can take the place of the coil. Both the capacitor and the pin array refer back to Bushman's earlier patent.
• Magnetic pulse. Coils wound around one or more magnets and fed with alternating current make the beam's strength vary with the current's frequency. The patent says that at very high frequencies, such as 10¹⁵ hertz, the pulse simulates a destructive electromagnetic pulse (EMP).

Proposed uses

The patent proposes several uses:^[1][5]

• smaller magnets, or lower-power electromagnets, in commercial devices
• more miniaturized inductors
• better separation of iron from non-ferrous materials
• stronger propulsion or levitation in electric motors and magnetically levitated trains
• detecting motion
• interfering with computers and other electronics at a distance, by stopping analog circuits, degaussing digital circuits and memories, and emitting EMP

The monopole claim

A magnetic monopole is a hypothetical particle with only one magnetic pole, a north without a south or vice versa. Some particle theories, notably grand unified and string theories, predict monopoles, and the physicist Paul Dirac showed in 1931 that their existence would explain why electric charge comes in fixed units.^[8] But there is no experimental or observational evidence that they exist. Ordinary bar magnets and electromagnets do not work through monopoles, and Gauss's law for magnetism, one of Maxwell's equations, states that they do not exist in classical electromagnetism.^[8] An assembly of ordinary magnets, however arranged, is not shown in the patent to contain one. The patent describes a shaped field, not an isolated magnetic charge, and gives no independent measurements.^[1][8] The patent's examiners were Michael L. Gellner and Raymond Barrera.^[5]

Legal history and citations

The application was assigned to Lockheed Martin on the day it was filed.^[1] It cites nine earlier patents as prior art, including:^[1]

• a 1962 Siemens permanent-magnet system for focusing an electron beam
• a 1972 Raytheon radially magnetized magnet
• a 1993 Oxford Instruments magnet assembly for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)
• a 1995 "magnetic energy reinforcing device"

Later filings that cite it include:^[1]

• a Dutch anti-theft magnet (2001)
• a Varian sputter ion pump (2006)
• a Chinese NMR logging probe (2012)
• two international applications by a Portuguese inventor for a "propulsion system using the antigravity force of the vacuum" (2009) and an electromagnetic propulsion system (2010)

The patent was not kept in force. A maintenance-fee reminder was mailed on 27 July 2007, and the patent lapsed for failure to pay the fee, effective that day. The lapse was recorded in August and published in September 2007. Had the fees been paid, it would have run until about 2017.^[1] The earlier thermal power-source patent also expired for non-payment of fees.^[9]

UFO connection

The testimony this article draws on notes that magnetic monopoles have not been proven to exist in the public scientific literature. It says the patent's technology matches devices that some UAP "experiencers" claim craft occupants possess. It also notes Bushman's claim, before his death, that he had worked on UAP research at Lockheed using debris and retrieved craft.^[6] The patent itself makes no such claims. It presents the invention as a way to focus ordinary magnets for commercial and military electronics.^[1][2]

The 2014 video

Bushman became widely known only after his death on 7 August 2014. A 32-minute video recorded shortly before was posted online on 8 October that year by someone calling themselves "Mark Q. Patterson", who claimed to be an independent aerospace engineer.^[3][4][7] It was watched more than three million times. Much of it was later taken down over copyright claims, and the footage was offered for licensing.^[3][4]

In the video Bushman talks about Area 51, aliens working with the U.S. government, and anti-gravity. He says Area 51 had been giving him material since 2000, and shows what he calls "documentations": blurry photographs of supposed craft, one said to be 115 feet across, with no explanation of where they came from.^[3][4] He describes the aliens as follows:^[4]

• They are about five feet tall, with hands about 30 percent longer than human hands, and communicate telepathically.
• They come in two groups: friendlier "wranglers" and cattle-stealing "rustlers".
• Their home planet, "Quintumnia", is 68 light-years away, yet they can reach Earth in 45 minutes.
• They had no cameras, so he lent them one to take the photographs.

He also held up a photograph of a supposed alien. Observers quickly pointed out that it looked very much like a commercially sold Halloween alien doll. A Canadian outlet traced it to the toy maker HalloweenFX, and a side-by-side comparison circulated online.^[3][4] The Black Vault rated the story a hoax. The site's author obtained Bushman's FBI file after his death. The file showed he had been investigated over contacts suspected of passing secrets to foreign parties. The author suggested this might have been a motive for the story, while saying it could not be known for sure.^[3] At the time Raw Story reported that Wikipedia editors were considering deleting Bushman's biography because so little about him could be confirmed.^[4] His patents, by contrast, are genuine engineering documents on file with the patent office.^[1][2]

People and topics

• Lockheed Martin — The aerospace company whose Skunk Works built the U-2, SR-71 and F-117.
• Boyd Bushman — Lockheed Martin engineer who gave a disputed deathbed interview about aliens.
• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
• Area 51 — The secret Nevada test site where spy planes and stealth aircraft were developed.

On the Timeline

• Jonathan Weygandt's Peru crash claim (March 1997) — Marine Jonathan Weygandt says he guarded a crashed craft in a cliffside.
• The Day After Roswell (June 1997) — Philip Corso claims he helped seed recovered UAP technology into U.S. industry.

See every 1997 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Magnetic monopole”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.