LastExitToSalvation t1_is1fr1y wrote on October 12, 2022 at 4:37 PM

This is only new in as much as they are publishing their research. But they came up with this nickel addition nearly 2 years ago: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210118113126.htm

Good for them publishing their findings now, but I'd hardly call two year old science a "breakthrough" in the way this article suggests. If it were that transformative, a ton more cash would have been dumped into this over the last two years. Look at the funders - DOE, DOD and US Air Force. They're funding basic science research (which is not uncommon) in hopes of getting a breakthrough tech that can be commercialized and sold to the government. The breakthrough was years ago, scale is the challenge, and since it isn't scaled today I question whether it could be. Also, academic researchers are notoriously bad at commercializing their inventions, and government orgs are not in the business of commercializing tech. Maybe a third party manufacturer will swoop in and go for it.

1purenoiz t1_is1vf2r wrote on October 12, 2022 at 6:19 PM

Universities commercialize quite well by licensing their discoveries after they patent them.

LastExitToSalvation t1_is20lav wrote on October 12, 2022 at 6:52 PM

Sometimes, sure, but I've seen so many great ideas that the PIs then try to take to market and it fails because they don't know anything about building a business. Licensing of course works too but again, for everything that gets farmed out to a manufacturer under a license, there's 100 basic research projects that never escape the lab. The list of patents available for commercialization just from NASA is enormous, and few of those are consumer available, for the same reasons.