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Comment by dermesser | Hacker News Reader

MRIs or anything with very high magnetic field requirements become a lot easier to build once you don't need to cool them down as much. Inversely, Generators etc. would benefit.

Magnetic levitation (Meissner-Ochsenfeld) would also not require such low temperatures.

Even Quantum computing using superconducting qubits might become easier (although there, superconductivity is not the main reason for low temperatures).

"Only" better conductivity is a big deal, after all.

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Along the same line of thought, but flywheel energy storage would become quite appealing when the rotating mass can maintain stable levitation without any energy input (in the form of electromagnets or refrigeration as needed today).

better electric motors in general, they can be smaller when they have less waste heat to worry about, and higher torques. The navy was playing around with miniaturization of vessel motors more than a decade ago[0] but I haven't run into how that projects gone in the intervening years.

[0]https://www.powermag.com/superconductor-motor-for-navy-passe...

Flywheels main problem is already just energy density, they're more similar to a capacitor than a battery. There are situations where they would certainly be better, but as it is for the situations where they are useful I don't think the very low rate of power loss the best ones currently have is that big a deal.

It would be nice if MRIs weren't so fucking loud. It's like a Chemical Brothers concert inside one of those things.

Yes although I find it strangely comforting. I have fallen asleep inside an MRI machine more than once.

I remember that listening to all the harmonics was very interesting. I thought I could hear the vertical and horizontal refresh frequencies. Maybe I was imagining that though.

What form would magnetic levitation take? Could we have silently cars, floating houses, flameless rockets, etc?

Maglev trains and the like.

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