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Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

Even if it does, it's a ceramic which makes its very limited for usability and you won't see it in an MRI machine or transmission line like the media wants you to believe. Also we actually already have some high temp super conducting ceramics.

We need a metallic high temperature super conductor.

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What room+ temperature ceramic superconductors are there? Why would this not still be immensely useful anywhere a ceramic superconductor is currently used?

I said high temp. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth_strontium_calcium_co...

And we already have room temperature conductors...

~104k is a world of difference from ambient room temperature.

LN2 is cheap and can be maintained below 77k without a lot of infrastructure.

So, a 104K superconductor is well within the range of being practically useful.

I didn't say other superconductors were not useful. I was saying that one that can be used at higher, room temperature temps is at the very least a new, useful thing. That calling it "limited in usability" is odd when existing ceramic superconductors with considerably cooler temperature requirements are already useful?

There is also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttrium_barium_copper_oxide which was discovered in 1986 and is above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen.

But there are no applicable uses as of now outside a lab.

Still technically in a lab for now, but eventually not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_fusion_reactor

> ARC uses rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) high-temperature superconductor magnets in place of copper wiring or conventional low-temperature superconductors. These magnets can be run at much higher field strengths, 23 T, roughly doubling the magnetic field on the plasma axis.

This will be sufficient as soon as you can find a way to market a smartphone that only works while standing in a freezer. There's a world of difference between "above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen" and "in a room that people can use consumer electronics in."

Because liquid nitrogen is fairly cheap, and is usually needed anyway for cooling other components of complex systems.

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