Patent ID: 7581403

Claim:
A system for energy storage in a metastable energy storage unit, said system comprising: a metallic base material that is metallic at an operating pressure of a system and including a metastable bubble therein; a metastable degenerate Fermi electron gas located in said metallic base material, obeying Fermi statistics, and subjected to a magnetic field, wherein energy is stored by compression of said metastable degenerate Fermi electron gas that is subjected to said magnetic field; a high pressure containment vessel containing said metallic base material and said metastable bubble; a cryogenic cooling system for cryogenically cooling said metallic base material in said high pressure containment vessel; a magnetic system for applying a magnetic field to said metallic base material in said high pressure containment vessel, wherein said metallic base material subjected to a negative pressure exerted by said magnetic field, wherein ∂S/∂V<0, and wherein S is entropy of said metallic base material and V is volume of said metallic base material; and a decay detector unit including at least one of a laser sensor and a black body radiation sensor, wherein said decay detector unit detects whether said metastable bubble is present or not present in said metallic base material by monitoring a cryogenic operating temperature of said system, wherein said laser sensor detects a reflected laser beam from said metastable bubble, and wherein said black body radiation sensor monitors said cryogenic operating temperature of said metallic base material or said metastable bubble via emitted black body radiation from said metastable bubble.