Claim of Superconductivity Above 0C
nextbigfuture.com
nextbigfuture.com
There are really three questions at hand: 1> Does the sample show the Meissner effect, 2> Does it show zero resistance, and 3> Is it stable under addition of impurities. It turns out that for most ceramic compounds, even if 1 is true, 2 and 3 are often not true. For example, the Cuprates (the first to cross the 77K mark) actually have a higher resistance close to the critical temperature than copper. Point 3 is especially damning as sensitivity to impurities also means you can't draw these things into wires (certainly not wires you can bend) as the very act of bending may introduce defects that change local concentration of ingredients and hurt the superconductivity.
So the burden of proof remains very high, and the small blurb is very underwhelming.
Is (Tl4Pb)Ba2MgCu8O13+ a ceramic compound? If not, why mention them? They are claiming superconductivity, so this implies zero resistance doesn't it? We can worry about impurities when we make enough of the stuff to extrude and bend it.
He has professional experience in this field, and his hunches are worth a thousand completely uninformed responses such as yours.
If you want him to dig through data, email the author, and look up stuff on Wikipedia for you, then how about you pay him before indignantly demanding that he do it?
After receiving backbiting chastisements from the popcorn gallery, I wouldn't be surprised if he refrained from commenting at all next time some similar announcement in his field of expertise came up.
That would be a pity, as his expertise, insight, and any time he cares to spend explaining his field to us are certainly valued.
In this case, I'd have to say that it's probably well deserved cynicism, though. An extremely effective first filter when any scientific or mathematical discovery is announced is to ask, "Does it look like science?", where "it" refers to whatever materials have been released.
In this case, the announcement does not look much like most science, and in fact the design reminds me more of all of those "Einstein was wrong, here's the real special theory of relativity!" sites than anything else.
This might not be a 100% correct filter, but I can't think of the last scientific breakthrough where the author didn't bother to at least set the paper in LaTeX and throw up a preprint somewhere. These days, even most incorrect proofs and discoveries look more like science than this does.
That said, as I know nothing about this field, I'd definitely be curious to hear what an expert had to say in about the specifics of these claims, as well as the other stuff at http://www.superconductors.org - it looks very crank-y to me, but then again I have known legit scientists that suck quite badly at web design, so who knows...
The author also reports a "resistive transition", 1°C lower than the Meisner transition. He claims that this signs the superconductivity of the material and confirms the origin of the magnetic transition.
> Is (Tl4Pb)Ba2MgCu8O13+ a ceramic compound?
Most probably, yes. See http://www.superconductors.org/type2.htm.
I believe a great deal in the capability of individuals to accomplish great things, but I don't care how ingenious the methods, how confident the claims, how insightful the theory... I want to see science as a group activity.
Because no matter how good you are, you need replication and criticism, and constant skeptical feedback. I'm not saying it's impossible to get that by yourself, but I certainly don't believe in it so much.
But the peer review process as it stands necessarily entails a certain barrier to entry. While we all would like to believe that every deserving idea gets peer review, in practice, most people don't have the time to bother with a submitted paper unless it's coming from an institution they've more or less heard of. How could it be otherwise? There are huge numbers of crackpots out there, and institutional affiliation is an efficient way of filtering them out.
My wife wants to do theoretical physics research (she's qualified: she has a doctorate in theoretical physics) but unless she's affiliated with an institution, it's unlikely she'll get anything published, or so she says. The problem is that unless you're a rock star, affiliation with an institution entails teaching, which in turn translates into all-out effort for roughly 22 hours a day by my own observations of the past semester. The resulting Catch-22 is that my wife can't reasonably do research at all, and that's illogical; she needs no resources but time and access to books and preprints, which she has at home.
So I'd like to see some research done using these new-fangled informational access tools we have now - research that is both sound and eventually makes its way into traditional peer review simply on the basis of its soundness, and not because the institutional affiliation of the researcher makes it plausible. This is one more thing that I think the Internet can do for us, and I'd like to see it happen.
Of course, the romantic in me just likes the idea of the lone mad scientist in his lair discovering room-temperature superconductivity, because that is the twenty-first century I signed up for. Today room-temperature superconductivity, tomorrow super-intelligent lab rats and cheap immortality. It's all good.
ie. Is there such a thing as semi-superconductive?
Resistance does go lower as temperature drops, but when you hit the transition temperature it suddenly drops to zero.
There are other unusual things that happen too, and only with superconductors.
One of the main ones is that Meissner effect they talked about - that's the exclusion of magnetic fields from inside the superconductor, and regular conductors don't do that.
p.s. I am aware that the article talks about O C and not 0 K.
Think of the thousands (millions?) of useless patents that are created for no other purpose than to extract monetary gain, at the cost of slowing down economic and technological growth, and read through the details of this detailed process that has been released for all to improve on.
No offense intended but it definitely is a more complete list than what I could come up with off the top of my head. There's a wide variety of very practical applications, if a practical one can be found.
It should also be noted that while "room temperature" is the holy grail, there's a gradient of practicality that ranges along the necessary refrigeration technology. Even a superconductor that only require conventional refrigeration (ie, no liquid nitrogen or helium involved) could be put to good use, if it can be made practical in all necessary ways.
It looks legit, but his spec sheet does indicate that there are problems with commercialisation. http://www.superconductors.org/276K.htm indicates how to reproduce and what results to expect. A regular freezer can sustain -5C to 5C. An ammonia freezer can go as low as -27C, so 3C is easy to hold.
And the fact that he has been known for good results in the past shows, at least to me that this is the real thing. But of course, always the skeptic in these kinds of claims. At least it's not cold fusion, yet ;)
And ammonia can go far lower than -27, it can easily go below -60c.
It means that the claims should be taken seriously, since he's competent in the field, but he might have made a mistake somewhere (even though, from what I understand of his report, the results seem clear. But since I'm not even a physicist, my opinion is worth peanuts).
The peer reviewed confirmation of his previous discovery can be found here: http://www.superconductors.org/SDARTICL.pdf.
I see. Well I'll just wait for additional confirmation from the Great Leader's University of North Korea.
Which countries are currently working on their own versions of that project? Uh, North Korea and Iran.
You can be DAMN sure that some of the best scientific minds outside of western main-stream are at the moment toiling away in Iran and North Korea.
Contrary to this, the Iranians and North Koreans aren't working on anything new (at least not under the auspices of the nuclear energy/bomb project). So don't expect many Nobel Prizes to come their way.
They're rehashing a tried and true path, with a lot of information (both in the public domain, along with probably a good deal of stolen classified material) available to them that the members of the Manhattan Project did not have.
That isn't to say that there aren't any brilliant Iranian and North Korean physicists working on the project. I'm sure they've got the cream of the crop in Iran and North Korea. But just because they're working on this doesn't make them world class physicists.
Furthermore, a super-conductor excludes magnetic fields; vacuums do not exclude magnetic fields (otherwise Earth wouldn't have the Van Allen Belts).