Salvatore Pais

Salvatore Cezar Pais is an American aerospace engineer and inventor, currently working for the United States Space Force. He formerly worked at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River. His patent applications for the US Navy attracted attention for their potential energy-producing applications, but also doubt about their feasibility, and speculation that they may be scams, pseudoscience, or disinformation intended to mislead the United States' adversaries.

Education and doctoral research
Salvatore Pais attended Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, getting an MS in 1993 with a thesis titled "Design of an experiment for observation of thermocapillary convection phenomena in a simulated floating zone under microgravity conditions". He got a PhD in mechanical and aerospace engineering in 1999 with a thesis on the subject of "Bubble generation under reduced gravity conditions for both co-flow and cross-flow configurations" for which he endured a number of parabolic flights to produce a low-gravity environment. His doctoral advisers were Yasuhiro Kamotani and Simon Ostrach, who carried out spacelab experiments in low-gravity aboard the space shuttle STS-50 in 1992. Pais's research was sponsored by NASA.

Career
Pais worked as a scientist and aerospace engineer at the United States Navy's Naval Air Station Patuxent River. In June 2019 he left the NAWCAD and moved to the US Navy's Strategic Systems Programs organization. In 2021, he transferred to the U.S. Air Force.

Starting in 2015, he began filing patent applications on behalf of his employers with futuristic-sounding names suggesting potential military and energy-producing applications. No working prototype of any of these concepts was ever developed. These attracted attention, as well as speculation that they may be disinformation intended to mislead the United States' strategic adversaries about the direction of United States defense research.

His patent applications include:
 * A "piezoelectricity-induced room temperature superconductor" with the function of enabling "the transmission of electrical power with no losses."(2017). The Institution of Engineering and Technology commented that no evidence was presented to show that the device worked, and that the highest temperature superconductors so far created worked at around -70 °C.
 * A "plasma compression fusion device" (2018), described by Popular Mechanics as a "compact nuclear fusion reactor" that "stretch [es] the limits of science."
 * An "electromagnetic field generator and method to generate an electromagnetic field" (2015), the principal stated application of which is to deflect asteroids that may hit the Earth. The patent is assigned to the US Secretary of the Navy.
 * A "craft using an inertial mass reduction device" (2016), one embodiment of which could be a high speed "hybrid aerospace/undersea craft" able to "engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level", the patent application for which was supported by the Naval Aviation Enterprise's chief technical officer on the grounds that the Chinese military were already developing similar technology.
 * A "high frequency gravitational wave generator" that may be used "for advanced propulsion, asteroid disruption and/or deflection, and communications through solid objects."(2017).

Testing on the feasibility of a High Energy Electromagnetic Field Generator (HEEMFG) occurred from October 2016 to September 2019; at a total cost of $508,000 over three years. The vast majority of expenditure was on salaries. The "Pais Effect" could not be proven and no further research was conducted. Brett Tingley wrote for The Drive that "Despite every physicist we have spoken to over the better part of two years asserting that the "Pais Effect" has no scientific basis in reality and the patents related to it were filled with pseudo-scientific jargon, NAWCAD confirmed they were interested enough in the patents to spend more than a half-million dollars over three years developing experiments and equipment to test Pais' theories". Pais remained defiant regarding the veracity of his theories, in an email to The Drive he wrote that his work "culminates in the enablement of the Pais Effect...as far as the doubting SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) are concerned, my work shall be proven correct one fine day...".