Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?
scanalyst.fourmilab.ch
scanalyst.fourmilab.ch
Not optimistic about replication in the next week too, Solid State Synthesis seems "easy" but in my experience can be problematic. Not an expert in that part though
Especially when they admit to having phase impurities, and it's not really clear how they've gone from bulk sample to measurement sample (are they really measuring just the superconductor or the impurity phase?). Needs addressing, especially when the Cu2S phase impurity seems to have a phase transition of it's own at or around 370K (suspiciously close to where some of their Tc measurements are).
So assuming it's not BS (and I doubt that it is) it would lead me to believe that making the material is difficult to get right? The video they've produced uses a sample that isn't particularly elegant, to be sure.
I guess it's all conjecture at this point and healthy skepticism is warranted. A press conference would be nice.
If you're one of the 7 people who invented room temperature superconductivity, it's not going to matter who has the Nobel Prize. You can take a part time 7 figure consulting gig and be as famous as you want to boot
Jeez I sure hope at least one lab can spare the time to bother reproducing a room temperature semiconductor claim.
Replication attempts don't give you an unambiguous signal, many things can go wrong.
If one lab hasn't succeeded in replicating the paper, does that mean the paper is wrong, or just that a necessary step wasn't documented clearly or followed correctly?
More labs trying to replicate give you more independent signals.
Getting a false negative from a lab is plausible.
Getting a false positive seems very unlikely.
And if this is a diamagnetic that seems to do some of the right behavior, a false positive is quite possible here as well.
Hopefully all corrected in time.
This is a fairly straight forward claim. It’s not like “most science” with dubiously small effect sizes that may not replicate.
From an account created 1 hour ago, claiming to have worked with the author. Take with a huge grain of salt.
There is a world of difference between "anyone who has worked with the guy" and "has worked with the guy + has hundreds of comments on HN identifying career track over the last few years". The former grants each suspect plausible deniability, while the latter pinpoints the true author.
> Anonymity is not a realistic goal.
It obviously is for a throwaway account. Time to reread the classic
https://terrytao.wordpress.com/about/anonymity-and-the-inter...
Anyone with a long HN history is more likely trying to karma farm and chase clout by spinning up some bullshit. Trying to establish themselves as an authority on a trending topic.
But because a throwaway account has no past or future, it is the purest form of communication.
Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36881808 - July 2023 (434 comments)
The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624 - July 2023 (858 comments)
“In 2020, I submitted my research results to Nature for the first time, but Nature felt burdened about publishing the paper because of Professor Dias’ case, and asked for it to be published in other professional journals first.”
That doesn't inspire confidence.
It's learning a craft, constant refinement, iteration, failure, and eventual success. And then luck, that which is out of your control, gets you over the line.
I am more likely to believe that the group to get room temperature superconductivity first (if anyone ever does) will have been learning the hard way about how to maximise that within their control so all that is left to succeed is that outside their control.
I am not saying that I am 100% sold on this being it. It's not 20 years of failure. It's 20 years of refinement.
1. Rushed publication, plot quality, grammar, etc. Get over yourselves. This is a pre-print for an instant-Nobel, next-tier-of-civilization level discovery. The proper publication will come in due time. Waiting for a more complete verification is a sheltered view. Being first matters. Things changed after the J/Psi discovery in 1974. For those that don't know, Sam Ting discovered it first, yet sat on it for months waiting for a complete verification. Then Richter's group also discovered it months later and Ting was forced to publish at the same time and share the Nobel. This changed the publication attitude in the field significantly. Being first matters.
2. "Terrible science." Again, get over yourselves. Just because the preprint doesn't match your taste specifically doesn't mean it's bad science. You can't satisfy everyone- there will ALWAYS be someone who complains about some missing measurement or plot they view as essential. Most of the time, the 'missing' component is directly related to their own work. In other words, people want to see what they understandd as being important to them, also reflected in other publications. That does not mean it's a valid criticism. It's nitpicking.
The most realistic timeline is 2-3 months for a positive verification. 6 months for a negative verification. If it works, it will be quicker because a positive reproduction needs less work. A negative verification needs to be more thorough and will take more time.
Edited to add: I am not a physicist. I don't know the subtleties of measuring experiments, and it was not my intention to state that there was a measurement error. I just wanted to ask someone for their assessment of the chances it was an error.
It's a little depressing that people are so quick to assume the worst of others, but I get why. The online flamewars fought over every announcement of this type would definitely put people on guard. Heck, on the UAP thread yesterday I immediately leapt to snarking about extraordinary announcements being bogus and I feel bad that I probably attacked it for no reason other than to feel cool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36886221
I'm not well versed in the subtleties of physics experiment measurement, so I figured I'd ask. It's difficult for a layperson to determine which "side" is right when battle lines are drawn after these types of announcements.
Ah well, at least we weren't attacking each other. Thank you for the original comment that was informative, I learned something from reading it.
This isn't some grad students that just stumbled upon something they mistook for something else. There's a really good chance this is legit and that lots of physics will need to be looked at.
Frankly there are too many details missing to trust them. They've fabricated a thin film but not characterized it. It is well known that the properties of a material change when you go from bulk to thin film with a big dependence on the thickness. They don't mention how the resistance of this thin film is measured - that's important for what artifacts you might expect to see in your measurements (van der Pauw vs Hall bar measurements are the standard but they don't mention using either). Without characterizing the thin film it's also difficult to know, chemically and structurally, what you are measuring. I don't see any data confirming the quality of the thin film. The way the data is presented is such that it can be misleading, showing I-V curves instead of resistance when you are really trying to say the resistance is what is changing. The first paper doesn't even mention the insulator-metal transition that is present in the second paper which is bizarre - this is important if you are also claiming a superconductor transition close by and you would expect some discussion of this behaviour.
All of these are things that, one would hope, will be picked up by the reviewers as low hanging fruit before even really delving into the detail of the theory they present.
Decades of experience alone should not be trusted. Anyone can make a mistake, and not all the authors can be present for every experiment.
One thing that is a green flag in my opinion is that apparently they had a sample for a long time (year+) so I find it unlikely they made an obvious measuring mistake.
But as always, most would love to have this be true and sometimes this gets better of us.
Not knowing the precise Tc for the material isn't nitpicking that is pretty basic ("above 400C" isn't a very precise measurement). Questioning if their graph showing the Meissner effect isn't really showing the Meissner effect isn't really some obscure criteria.
Bet we get results a whole lot quicker than that as well.
Hoping it's real... but it doesn't seem like the substance is anything nearly exotic enough. Isn't this somehow supposed to be unobtanium?
Seems to have the right energy
[edit thanks folks] https://nitter.net/i/status/1684433849781202944
Here’s a more colorful play by play as well:
Problem with his approach is that the synthesis requires some materials that are restricted to academic/scientific labs (like red phosphorus), so he’s probably not going to be first to replicate.
We'll have to wait and see if such a move is a good one...
[1]: https://domaininvesting.com/elon-musk-acquires-x-com-domain/
Elon Musk re-bought the domain 6 years ago, after having originally owned it since 1999, apparently being very attached to it [0]. As for the logo, yeah, I agree there.
It's also kind of crazy that one of the authors did over 1000 experiments until he found LK-99, regardless of whether it checks out. Talk about a grind mindset.
The multi-million-dollar measurement apparatus required us to put samples in disposable tubes that cost about a dollar each. They turned out to have the exact same physical properties as a McDonalds straw, so once a week someone made a food run and grabbed a handful on the way out.
Unless they're lying through their teeth, it's hard to believe they would not recognize an actual SC when they see one.
Lee was stuck as an adjunct professor for 19 years. Kim thinks that physicists all have their head up their ass and he knows the shortcut to discovering superconductivity. And nature wouldn't publish their paper.
Combined with their inability to accurately measure Tc and a lot of skepticism already out there that their graphs show what they say they do this looks like poor science.
Which is not to accuse them of lying. It looks like they're just not very good, but think they're geniuses.
I look forward to this historical footnote leading to many clickbait articles in the future.
Many labs around the world are capable of synthesizing the material (which is not that hard, relative to the baseline for superconductor candidates). We should expect to see early chatter and observation from replication attempts within double digit number of hours.
[0]: https://twitter.com/alexkaplan0/status/1684044616528453633
Original paper: http://journal.kci.go.kr/jkcgct/archive/articleView?artiId=A...
Translation: https://www.docdroid.net/UiUrs8c/kci-fi002955269-1-pdf
Translation source: https://twitter.com/andrewmccalip/status/1684700783852556288
<insert "I want to believe" picture>
At one point it was thought impossible to run a 4 minute mile. There were all kinds of scientific sounding explanations why it just couldn’t be done. Then someone did it. Shortly after that, lots of people did it, because now people knew it was possible.
If this is for real, it proves it can be done. Tons of money, work, and innovation will follow once people know the problem can be solved.
But… that seems like such a stupid idea. What evidence could they possibly have suggested?
[0] https://www.scienceofrunning.com/2017/05/the-roger-bannister...
Oral History of Brent Townshend (inventor of 56Kbit PCM modem mode) [Computer History Museum] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqudP6ojEDI&t=6049. Transcript:
they've been trying to get modems to go
faster and there's this whole thing called
shannon information theory which says theoretically given
all the parameters of that copper line
and what's going on that the maximum
speed would be 35 kilobits per second
you can't go faster than that it was
theory they're you know 95 percent of the way to the theoretical
limit and michael had this engineer that
worked with him andy norrell which is like a
genius engineer um he's really amazing
understands modems and everything perfectly and
and michael recounted you know every six
months or so you talk to andy and say
you know you're sure there's no way that
we can go faster andy would say
no you can't go faster than that
this is the limit there's not any way
and so so michael was on the phone with
me and i said i have a way of going
faster and you know well you know a lot
of people think so but we think it's
max p and i say well i've got these
credentials i've been working at Bell Labs
he said wait a second i got to get somebody
else in the room too i get andy and you know
andy comes in on the conference call
and michael asking you know is there
any way to go faster than 33 he says no
35 is the limit and you know theoretically
and i said well you can do it like this you
know i say in like three sentences you
could do this and this and this
and then he says oh yeah that would work
1. Paper submitted hastily without all authors in agreement or even knowing. (Check, two separate papers were submitted with collaborators in the US missing in one paper)
2. Not all due diligence and checks were done, e.g. missing tests or providing half-assed "proofs". (Check, missing phase transition results, provided video proof for superconductivity shows imperfect samples and diamagnetism, no full levitation, no pinning effect in superconductivity. You would imagine they could have made good samples instead of broken ones and completed all necessary tests since the material was obtained at least 3 years ago)
So in all, they seem to be rushing to conclusions and public fame than being cautious and scientific.
Essentially, a clean room check on all claims.
Then they can worry about reproduction, as every materials science lab on the planet would be trying to reproduce it at that point.
We all really wanted that to be true, too.
Patience, is all that is available to us that do not have a lab able to replicate
synapsomorphy 4 minutes ago | prev | next [–]
The lead author says (translated): “In 2020, I submitted my research results to Nature for the first time, but Nature felt burdened about publishing the paper because of Professor Dias’ case, and asked for it to be published in other professional journals first.”
If true, this specific case is only low current, but demonstrates such a thing is possible - almost certainly winning an instant Nobel Prize.
There's many vast amounts of electricity wasted due to transmission losses. Magnets for fusion plants would become much cheaper.
They would get less hot, because there are plenty of transmission losses too.
When the charged stored inside a chip needs to change (like go from high to low), that energy associated with the charge needs to go somewhere. Currently most of the charge is dissipated in the wire and some of it within the transistor.
If the wires have no resistance, the transistor will be the one dissipating the energy, not the energy simply disappears.
So technically both options are right, but my position is the “technically right, but practically wrong” position lol
That said if the interconnects are less resistive, the switching process becomes more efficient and less power will be wasted than the bare minimum required.
If you have two capacitors, say C1 and C2, and say their capacitance is both C.
Say C1 is charged up to 2V. The energy stored in that cap is 1/2 CV^2 = 2C.
Say C2 is not charged up.
The charge on C1 is Q = CV = 2C. The charge on C2 is 0.
Say suddenly you connect C1 to C2 via a lossless wire.
The charge on C1 and C2 must be equal before and after the connection since charge cannot be destroyed.
After the connection, the voltage on both caps will be equal, and the charge on them will therefore be equal.
Charge on each cap is 1C; voltage is therefore Q/C = V, V = 1V on both caps..
Now let's look at the energy on either cap. 1/2 CV^2 = 0.5C.
The combined energy on both caps are 1C. Where'd the energy go? We just said we connected the capacitors with a lossless wire, so it can't be dissipated there, and capacitors by definition cannot dissipate power.
The answer is that lossless wires cannot exist, and if you do the math more carefully, this time with real resistance and take the limit as R->0, you will see that the power-time integral of the wire (dissipated energy) will approach 1C.
The same argument can be made for integrated circuits; as your resistance drops, more and more of the portion of loss will be dissipated in the "other" sources of loss.
edit: superconductors are lossy at AC (but not as much as regular conductors get lossy at AC), and the capacitor connection is an AC phenomena so even with superconductors there will be a teeny loss even with superconducting wires. The rest of the loss will happen in other ways (EM radiation, dielectric loss, loss from capacitor resistance, etc)
I vaguely remember switching current and leakage current as sources of heat, but mircoelectronic circuits has been a while for me...
RTP superconductors still aren't going to magically make computers emit zero heat, though; there are other sources besides resistive losses. I was under the impression that other factors dominated, though a couple people responded yesterday to tell me that resistance is the primary source of heat. Not an expert in that area, would love for someone who does chipset design to clarify.
Essentially, (and very top level) you could produce 30% more power, without adding any more production capactity.
But if that can be solved, then yes, it could make computing way more efficient.
Both of those go to zero. We may see 100ghz CPUs and 3D stacked cpus with almost no need for cooling.
The cherry on top is that the materials and fabrication for this material seem relatively cheap.
We could have a superconducting power grid with solar panels distributed across the planet. Superconducting batteries could give us grid level storage. It also reduces the cost of hypothetical fusion reactors, their magnets can be cooled with unpressurized water instead of liquid helium.
Calling this the most revolutionary discovery of the last hundred years isn't an overstatement. This will affect almost every industry and in ways that we can't even imagine yet. If this material is what they claim, it's going to be a new era for our species.
It should lead to a huge push to understand the physics of this new material and building better materials with more useful properties
Note that there are temperature and magnetic field effects on the value of Ic, which in every other currently-known material is 0 at 300 K.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnet#Magnet_...
Earnshaw's theorem describes why a free-floating (paramagnetic) magnet cannot levitate over another such magnet. There must be at least one stable axis which is not from a magnet. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earnshaw%27s_theorem
> The magnet will induce a current in the superconductor
That's a different sort of levitation. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrodynamic_suspension . We know it's not the same because you can see a magnet floating above a superconductor even though there's no motion.
The relevant reason is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdiamagnetism .
] Superconducting magnetic levitation is due to superdiamagnetism, which repels a permanent magnet which approaches the superconductor, and flux pinning, which prevents the magnet floating away.
] Superdiamagnetism is a feature of superconductivity.
> In both of these magnetic repulsion videos, keep in mind that magnetic repulsion and/or levitation are not, by themselves, probative of superconductivity: a diamagnetic material such as pyrolytic graphite [16], can be made to levitate [19] in a magnetic field without being superconductive.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_levitation#Diamagneti... .
All superconductors are strongly (perfectly, actually) diamagnetic, and its a classic cool demonstation of their properties. However, not all strongly diamagnetic things are superconductors. In fact, diagmagnetism is present in all materials, but it is usually swamped by other magnetic effects (ferromagnetism and paramagnetism).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_applications_of_...
That one I can answer for you: because it would reduce the time to go from 'on' to 'off' due to the much more rapid flow on account of reduced resistance. The currents in a buck converter can be very high because they are short, but that is also exactly where you'll find the losses: in the transition from 'off' to 'on' and vice versa. So this won't do anything for the MOSFET losses but it could seriously shrink inductor losses and those are the other major factor.
Is that even possible?
I heard your point nonetheless. It was just a question I asked in the larger thread and wanted more input. Thanks.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprengel_pump
Just imagine some society discovering superconductivity on the cusp of even starting a technological revolution.
If this wasn't real, I would have expected someone who works in the area to have data about something similar and why it isn't real.
Q: Das Layout sieht Scheiße aus!
A: Jo, das ist das historische Default-Layout.
Q: The layout is very shitty!
A: No, it’s the historically default layout.
A: Yes, that's the historic default layout
"Jo" kind of reminds me of Dutch vs. German, where many corresponding words are just slightly different.
E.g., "Yo! Doofenschmirtz! You're new inator has been delivered."
Or: "Is Phineas here?" "Yo!"
As with many things now, there are that small set of people who need to pick a "position" early and then stake a part of their ego on it. Which is super weird and destructive, and underlies many of the bad tendencies of the web.
The shallow dismissal reaction is taking for granted that it's not real and everyone's wrong to give it a chance. The thing is, almost everything is wrong—you can rely on this almost completely, and placing your bet on "wrong wrong wrong" achieves a high batting average—you'll be right almost all the time. The trouble is that your expected value will be zero, and you will be both bored and boring (I don't mean you personally—this is a common pattern and we all do it to some extent).
It's in the low-probability/high-impact quadrant that the interesting things reside, alongside crank material and dross, and it's not easy to tell them apart. That's natural. But one thing we can be sure of is that rejecting everything in that quadrant is a sure way to fail in the long run, and probably also to keep oneself in a bad mood.
I enjoy HN most in times like this.
There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical, but I remain hopeful. All the theoretical critiques are extra interesting if this is real and the data is basically accurate.
Maybe they are the same but could be just copy paste from Reddit.
Assuming the scientists acted in good faith and this isn't a complete scam, maybe we found something else that doesn't conform to our current understanding of superconductors, but does levitate over a magnetic field at ambient temp/pressure.
There are videos of graphite levitating that are circulating, for example.
https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n
All other instances of “quantum levitation” that I have seen has a “locked in” effect: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws6AAhTw7RA .
Whereas the material in this video seems to bounce and warble in a way that appears to me more akin to standard static or magnetic repulsion.
Hope I’m wrong.
HN is an internet watercooler. It's natural and fine for people to talk about the latest interesting things—that's what this place is for, and there's no need to be right all the time.
Sorry, indulging in a little off-topic conspiracy theorizing.
But they are unrelated in reality. In fact they are pretty uncorrelated in terms of timeline. This material has supposedly been waiting in the wings for a while.
I'm not sure if that holds, the tic tac UFO has no actual wings :P
Sorry sorry I know conspiracy theories are a rabbit hole of 'but what if' but damnit I WANT TO BE GEORGE JETSON!
Grusch has talked to people who work in information constrained spaces working on advanced materials with fancy codenames. If he was able to give literally any proof besides words coming out of his mouth and "trust me bro, they could be interdimensional", I would give him some credence, but there is nothing.
I mean, there are some seemingly crazy accusations...but even if only some of them are accurate, they're worth looking in to. And if it's all false, it's still very interesting that so many trusted individuals are making such crazy claims. That is its own huge issue.
Complaining he didn't give up everything he knows on live TV/streaming seems a bit unfair as the guy was active military and wants to keep his clearance.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/23/politics/what-is-a-scif/index...
How, exactly?
Basically utopia.
Also, how does this help fusion become possible?
Currently transistors and connections use a lot of power just to transfer some bits, superconducting wires and maybe transistors would help.
> Also, how does this help fusion become possible?
Stronger magnets which you don't need to cool with liquid helium will help achieve better plasma confinement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_fusion_reactor
"The most probable candidate material is yttrium barium copper oxide, with a design temperature of 20 K, allowing various coolants (e.g. liquid hydrogen, liquid neon, or helium gas) instead of the much more complicated liquid helium refrigeration chosen by ITER."
I think the implication is that clock-speed could start increasing again. It would probably require a completely new manufacturing process, but if we assume this superconductor is legit, perhaps an older process could manufacture it.
If so, maybe we could have (just spitballing here, I have no idea) 28nm super conducting CPUs that run at a 1thz instead of 4ghz. That would be quite an improvement over today's CPUs, even with fewer transistors, I think.
There are other losses and limitation in increasing clock-speeds aside from just resistive losses, but I think they are a significant part of the current bottleneck. Other losses involve transistor switching losses, and inductive losses but I don't really know the details, and I think those details change with superconductors.
Processors basacally convert almost all power into heat by resistive losses. With room temparature superconductors you'll only consume energy on the state changes of the processor.
With this superconductive material you could create loops of wire (like a resistor) but instead it would store energy practically lossless in a few seconds.
Superconductivity up to 100c and 1bar would be a historic moment in human ingenuity.
Energy Efficiency: Superconductors conduct electricity without resistance, which means they don't produce heat as a byproduct. This could make electronic devices more energy-efficient and help them run cooler, which could extend battery life in mobile devices and potentially reduce the need for cooling in larger devices like computers.
Processing Speed: Superconducting circuits could potentially operate at higher speeds than conventional circuits, which could lead to faster processors and more powerful computers and smartphones.
Data Storage: Superconductors could also be used to create more efficient and compact data storage devices. For example, they could be used in the development of Magnetic Random Access Memory (MRAM), a type of non-volatile memory that uses magnetic states to store information. This could potentially offer faster and more energy-efficient data storage than current technologies.
Quantum Computing: Superconductors are already used in some types of quantum computers, which use the principles of quantum mechanics to perform complex calculations much more quickly than conventional computers. A room-temperature superconductor could make quantum computers more practical and affordable, which could have a profound impact on many areas of technology and science.
Power Transmission: Superconductors can transmit electricity without any loss, which could dramatically increase the efficiency of power grids. This could reduce energy costs, decrease greenhouse gas emissions, and make renewable energy sources more viable.
Magnetic Levitation (Maglev) Trains: Superconductors can produce powerful magnetic fields, which can be used to levitate trains above their tracks, reducing friction and allowing for higher speeds. Current maglev trains already use superconductors, but they require cooling to very low temperatures, which is expensive and energy-intensive. Room-temperature superconductors could make maglev trains more practical and affordable.
Medical Imaging and Therapy: Superconductors are used in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines to generate the strong magnetic fields required for imaging. Room-temperature superconductors could make MRI machines cheaper, more efficient, and more accessible. They could also be used in other medical technologies, such as particle beam therapies for cancer treatment.
Scientific Research: Superconductors are used in a variety of scientific instruments, such as particle accelerators and detectors. Room-temperature superconductors could make these instruments more efficient and less expensive to operate.
Electric Vehicles (EVs): Superconductors could be used to make more efficient electric motors and batteries for electric vehicles, potentially increasing their range and reducing their cost.
Telecommunications: Superconductors could be used to create more efficient and higher-capacity communication networks, potentially improving internet speeds and reducing latency.
Aerospace and Defense: Superconductors could be used in a variety of aerospace and defense applications, such as advanced radar systems, satellite technologies, and even propulsion systems.
I'd dispute the 'dramatically' more efficient power grids, unless that's couched in industry terms - ie a 10% reduction in transmission losses might be 'dramatic' for energy grid engineers. But not really world-changing, for the rest of us.
"Aerospace and Defense: Superconductors could be used in a variety of aerospace and defense applications, such as advanced radar systems, satellite technologies, and even propulsion systems."
OK, now we're getting somewhere. What new capabilities?
But sure, for specific applications an increase to 'near 100%' efficiency could have important secondary effects, eliminating heat-sinks, etc.
Some motors are already 95%+ efficient, so 99% would hardly be a revolution, though reduced cooling would be a benefit.
Now, the same form factor can do 200-400W and be ok.
So it doesn't change the efficiency of the system (we still use a bunch of wh) but it dramatically changes the form factor of the motor!
We’re kinda in the future, and that’s neat.
Ironically, if this problem does get solved, you could have the whole AI system in your pocket.
It's hard to develop a technology that can't be used by the military in some capacity but as such things go this one seems substantially more useful to everyone than useful to militaries.
https://thebulletin.org/2022/03/how-dolphins-protect-the-us-...
A thin superconductor can carry an almost arbitrary amount of electricity with 0% loss. This is a real-world application already for superconductors, but it requires cooling the entire conductor to liquid helium temperature. (It's not truly limitless - enough current will eventually break down the superconducting effect - but ten billion watts down a 1 mm thick wire is doable.)
Similarly, an inductor made out of a superconductor, that is looped back on itself, can hold a magnetic field indefinitely, with 0% loss. Energy storage.
Also, novel ways of manipulating magnetic fields, and as a consequence of that, novel ways of manipulating radiation that interacts with magnetic fields. Really, anything that needs a strong magnetic field could benefit. Maglev trains. Portable MRI scanners would exist today, if the electromagnet didn't need to be submerged in liquid helium.
Superconducting computer circuits would dissipate no heat other than for the work required to physically change the state of the transistors. Power consumption could decrease by several orders of magnitude. Though to be honest, one day printing room-temperature superconductors lithographically is a rather unlikely prospect. But one can hope.
And some proposed realizations of quantum computing would benefit from small, extremely powerful magnets, while other proposed methods exploit the properties of superconductors directly (Josephson effect).
In a way that could be used to power a car?
> SMES is also used in utility applications. In northern Wisconsin, a string of distributed SMES units were deployed to enhance stability of a transmission loop. The transmission line is subject to large, sudden load changes due to the operation of a paper mill, with the potential for uncontrolled fluctuations and voltage collapse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energ...
That's backwards: the power density is high, but the energy density is low.
But for local/grid storage, it's perfect. Also, infinite magnets, this might allow for less neodymium in renewable. And probably dozen new applications we don't think of yet.
I said 3 years ago on this website that the only techno silver bullet I believed in against climate change was room-temperature superconductors, as this would help tremendously on
- interconnections,
- energy storage,
- efficiency,
And obviously help with plasma research, that would then help with both fusion and space catapult.
I was disappointed way too much by tech news in the last 10 years, but if this is true, I'd be really happy.
I was always curious about that. The ability to hold extreme electrical currents means superconductors also produce extreme magnetic fields, which I presume will happily induce induction currents in whatever conductive material is nearby. If that material is non-superconductive, than it will start sapping the electromagnetic energy from said superconductor as the eddy currents get resisted, getting hot in the process.
What I guess I'm saying is that I'm not sure how you're supposed to build a superconductive grid or motor without also turning everything around it into an induction stove when you turn it on.
Electromagnetic induction involves the inductor, too. With a conventional electromagnet in a changing field, there is a current (an opposite current, in a sense) induced in the electromagnet's winding which is how the energy transfer occurs. The coil's apparent resistance increases as it moves through the field. But superconductors have no resistance :)
Since a superconductor rejects induction from outside magnetic fields (Meissner effect) they do not inductively couple in the same way. Once energized and then looped, a superconducting magnet behaves more like a permanent magnet.
With regard to use in power storage, strong magnets of any kind are rather inconvenient (even dangerous) around anything magnetic.
Could this be used to make a bomb?
If the new material really is as easy to manufacture as it seems, could homegrown terrorists easily create WMDs?
The amount of current generated during the first stage of an EMP detonation is so high it ablates the coil away, which wouldn't happen with superconducting wires. However, it wouldn't protect it against the explosive used to generate the magnetic field, which is the biggest challenge.
A picture is worth a thousand words here.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=superconductor+critical+surface&t=...
Superconductors operate within the bounds of their critical surface. The max current depends on the temperature and field density, it's never arbitrary.
superconductors can't carry arbitrary current. A lot yes, but dependent on the material, temperature, magnetic field, etc. And on the subject of the material, can it even be made into a wire? Is it stable? How much does it cost? So assuming it costs about the same as copper, what are the benefits? 0% loss, vs, maybe 10%? So the grid is 10% more efficient? I mean, that's definitely useful, but...
Again for energy storage, what's the energy density? How much does it cost, if it's even possible to configure for that use? It sounds like you expect to power a car from an AA-sized cell - not happening IMHO.
Microelectronics; Can you make IC's with this? What is the feature size? We now have 10^11 transistors on a chip, can this do that? How costly? Even if it can, what's the actual benefit? Just power-saving, or can this ramp up to terrahertz speeds? Again, IMHO, not happening, except maybe for a few specialized switching applications.
Super-strong magnetic fields? Ultra-sensitive magnetic detectors - OK, these make sense.
I mean ambient superconductors would be a major thing, useful across many fields, and perhaps creating entirely new capabilities, but let's not get carried away that suddenly climate change is fixed, fusion will happen tomorrow (It'll never happen economically, IMHO), we'll all be moving around on levitating chairs like Wall-E, powered by AAs, etc, etc.
> what are the benefits? 0% loss, vs, maybe 10%?
With current lines, yes, rarely over 10% in practice. But what might be built without that barrier? There are many tens of gigawatts of undeveloped hydroelectric power in northern Canada, but that power has to be brought over some 5000 kilometres to New York or Chicago or Toronto. That can't currently be done. The losses are too high.
America's primary solar power generating regions in the future, likewise, appear to be far from the major cities.
> Again for energy storage, what's the energy density? How much does it cost, if it's even possible to configure for that use? It sounds like you expect to power a car from an AA-sized cell - not happening IMHO.
Yes, it's already used, real-world actual applications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energ...
The energy density is too low for anything like domestic use. It will probably be most useful at grid scale. The economics may not work out.
> Again, IMHO, not happening, except maybe for a few specialized switching applications.
Switching at just under 1 THz has been demonstrated recently. Anyway, I agree. I already said as much -- "a rather unlikely prospect".
C'mon. I'm just excited about superconductors. They're cool! Except hopefully not anymore! I don't believe anything I said was factually wrong. Your primary gripe seems to be that I'm not sufficiently pessimistic about the likelihood of some of the possibilities. So -- room temperature superconductors are probably not real. And everything I spoke of must be understood as conjecture and hypothetical, with large and unknown variables, regarding things like the practical cost and material workability of the room temperature superconductors, which may not even be possible. Better?
And a bit fed up with the hype - along with fusion it's been the holy grail, and presented as some kind of salvation, for 40 years or more.
If this is real, you're going to know about it very soon.
How likely is it that all the other 1000s of labs doing research on this topic just missed this lucky combination of baking, cooling and whatnot?
There is no Pb in YBCO, what are you on about?
Anyway, I am not an expert. I hope they have a win here, but hard to believe at this point.
Not an expert either, and extremely skeptical myself. The poor videos claiming to demonstrate levitation just seemed to show diamagnetism and eddy current reactions.
> modified lead-apatite (LK-99) structure
> The superconductivity of LK-99 originates from minute structural distortion by a slight volume shrinkage (0.48 %), not by external factors such as temperature and pressure. The shrinkage is caused by Cu2+ substitution of Pb2+ (2) ions in the insulating network of Pb(2)-phosphate and it generates the stress.
> Pb10(PO4)6O
It's just Lead, Phosphorus and Oxygen all the way.
(That said I don't believe it works)
That said, I see now that I should have made this point clearer. See below for my comment with C60. That was a truly different approach (that failed).
Again, the last time this planet was positioned as such radical technological world-changing innovation happened (Industrial Revolution). Rewind a few hundred years, and we see it happen again (Scientific Revolution). Another revolution is incoming.
You could find patterns like “when wave B intersects wave K, there’s a global pandemic within 5 years”!