A predicted superconductor might work at a record-breaking 200° Celsius

For comparison, atmospheric pressure..

- At the center of earth is around 3.6 million atmosphere.

- Synthetic diamond needs 34,500 atmosphere.

- Deepest point in ocean (Mariana Trench) is at 1,000 atmosphere.

Yeah, this seems like it might possibly be not worth the effort. I'm curious as to applications for this - that's a pressure and temperature that's not practical either.

I mean, unless intel is really committed to it's 14 nm node.

It's been a long time since I learnt this, so I may be misremembering, but superconductors have a current saturation limit. You can only pass so much current.

It doesn't even have to be nanotube? Just regular diamond tube or something else that can hold the pressure. Maybe it could be done in the same way diamonds are made, just put the superconducting stuff inside first.

I think this argument is quite facile. These people are scientists trying to understand superconductivity at a basic level, and this theoretical research (as well as the experimental results posted on this forum earlier this week) are a genuine advancement in that field. You are judging this research based on how it is directly applicable to making handheld devices with room temperature superconductors when that is not what these people are attempting to do at all. The fact that a superconducting state can be maintained at these temperatures at all is, indeed, "record shattering". We do not have the ability to simply engineer a material that can superconduct at ambient temperature and pressure at will. I don't mean to be to confrontational, but reading the comments on these articles it really pisses me off to see the hard work of actual scientists judged by the rubric of whatever science fiction garbage internet commenters think should be possible.

The huge pressure would only be needed during manufacturing no?

From a safety point of view, it depends on how compressible it is. A very stiff material under high pressure still isn't going to release much energy when the pressure gets released because it doesn't move by very much. (This is why pressurised air becomes dangerous at much lower pressures than pressurised water)

What's risky about heating hydrogen, magnesium and lithium and squeezing them hard together? Apart from any addition of oxygen blowing out the building?

It doesn't seem to be a gas, so applying pressure would be as easy as tightening the enclosure, like fastening a bolt. Cables could be made by just sticking a superconducting core inside a compression sleeve, although they'd probably have to be segmented, and breaking the sleeve in any place could make the core stop superconducting and overheat pretty fast. Other than that, it should be perfectly safe.

It's safe. They put the material between two diamonds, the pressure is very high but the size is tiny. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_anvil_cell

The high pressure pre-distorts the lattice making it easier for cooper pairs to form. A cooper pair allows an electron to essiantly be in two places at once, which causes superconductivity:

An electron in a metal normally behaves as a free particle. The electron is repelled from other electrons due to their negative charge, but it also attracts the positive ions that make up the rigid lattice of the metal. This attraction distorts the ion lattice, moving the ions slightly toward the electron, increasing the positive charge density of the lattice in the vicinity. This positive charge can attract other electrons. At long distances, this attraction between electrons due to the displaced ions can overcome the electrons' repulsion due to their negative charge, and cause them to pair up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_pair

I'm not a physicist, but I work adjacent to people who do neat stuff with superconductors... hopefully they wouldn't be too mad about the broad strokes I'm using here.

Superconductivity isn't just a property of a material -- it's a property of an arrangement of atoms. When you put a material under extreme pressures, the atoms are smashed closer together; and the properties of the material can change significantly. For example, diamonds are made by smashing graphite at extreme pressures -- sufficiently high pressure can completely rearrange the crystalline structure.

That prepares us for the question; what's superconductivity? The answer is complicated, physicists don't really know the full story; but here's a simplified intuitive picture. We imagine atoms as being positively-charged nuclei with clouds of negatively-charged electrons. When these atoms are packed into a crystalline lattice, and the resulting material is a conductor, then the electrons are fairly free to move about the whole lattice -- they aren't bound to a single atom. When the electrons move about, they attract nearby nuclei -- the atoms in the lattice shift towards them! In a superconductor, something quite amazing happens: when atoms shift towards one electron, it can make room for another electron -- this process causes the electrons to buddy up, and act in a coordinated fashion. These two electrons quickly make other friends, and in short order they're all acting in concert!

So, back to high-pressure superconductivity. We've applied a high amount of pressure to a material which isn't normally superconducting. Its atoms have rearranged themselves into a new crystalline lattice, which is quite densely packed. The electrons, too, must be densely packed -- so they have greater opportunities to make friends.