New Superconductor World Record Surpasses 250K 271
myrrdyn writes to tell us that a new superconductivity record high of 254 Kelvin (-19C, -2F) has been recorded. According to the article this is the first time a superconductive state has been observed at a temperature comparable to a household freezer. "This achievement was accomplished by combining two previously successful structure types: the upper part of a 9212/2212C and the lower part of a 1223. The chemical elements remain the same as those used in the 242K material announced in May 2009. The host compound has the formula (Tl4Ba)Ba2Ca2Cu7Oy and is believed to attain 254K superconductivity when a 9223 structure forms"
Not likely (Score:3, Informative)
NO PATENT PROTECTION (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
This discovery is being released into the public domain without patent protection in order to encourage additional research.
Amazingly cool. (No pun intended.)
Re:We're getting closer (Score:5, Informative)
Reaching room temperature super conduction would bring huge benefits to modern day technology. Power usage of chips would plummet to almost nothing and allow a brand new generation of processors. Amongst several other very useful things.
I thought most energy losses in chips were in the actual transistors rather than in the wires? Now, if they find a way to make this stuff switch very quickly between "superconducting" and "very good insulator"...
Ceramic cables (Score:5, Informative)
...it is a ceramic, which can hardly be used as a cable conductor.
You mean except for the ceramic cables that are [wikipedia.org] already [redorbit.com] in [amsc.com] use [superconductorweek.com]? I think your "information" may be a wee bit out of date.
Re:Bad summary (Score:5, Informative)
What is "the upper part of a 9212/2212C and the lower part of a 1223?"
9212/2212C and 1223 are structure names. Would you like an introductory crystallography text with your summary next time? It would, after all, save you the onerous effort of following the article link.
And I don't believe there's an element known as Oy.
O-sub-y, indicating an indefinite ratio of oxygen.
Re:Possible applications (Score:4, Informative)
Alas, as others have pointed out upthread, the high-temp superconductors don't work well for magnets. All superconducting materials lose their superconductivity at a certain magnetic field-strength threshold; for high-Tc materials, that threshold is much lower than it is for "conventional" superconductors.
Even if that weren't an issue, the ceramic materials are generally too brittle to stand up to the mechanical forces inside a high-field magnet coil.
Our lab has experimented with high-Tc superconducting probes for MRI. Even though they're high-Tc, we still end up cooling them to the liquid-helium range.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
I agree. No mention of a paper, or any corroboration. Is this guy ( http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/view_profile.php?userid=4422 [berkeley.edu] ) claiming that he's discovered it? By the way, comedy quote from that page:
"I think there is a strong possibility of extraterrestrial life based on a passage in the Bible. The Lord talks about gathering His creation from the ends of the Universe."
Re:We're getting closer (Score:5, Informative)
Sigh... I know this is Slashdot, but how about reaching as far as your keyboard and throwing a few obvious keywords at Google?
From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission:
"Transmission and distribution losses in the USA were estimated at 7.2% in 1995"
Re-sigh.
Re:Bullshit (Score:2, Informative)
Re:We're getting closer (Score:1, Informative)
Not manufacturable yet... (Score:5, Informative)
I actually noticed the original source research on the web a couple of months ago, and it should be mentioned that what these guys are creating is not a bulk material that you can pop into a freezer and levitate magnets over or whatever.
Their strategy is to produce a mix of many different variations of their target substance by carefully crystallizing it so that slightly different ratios of the constituent elements turn up in small crystals that are a part of a larger aggregate. They then test the conductivity of the mix as they lower the temperature. If any one crystal superconducts, then they observe a small drop in the conductivity graph at that temperature. With complex mixes, you get multiple drops, at different temperatures. They pick the highest temperature at which they observed a drop, and they try to isolate the crystal.
This method is very clever because it lets experimenters test a large number of related compounds 'in parallel', but what it doesn't do is provide a method for actually making bulk quantities of a discovered compound. It's almost like those mathematical proofs, where you can show that a solution exists, you just can't actually determine what it is. In this case, making significant quantities of the pure superconductor might be quite challenging, possibly harder than finding it in the first place.
On the other hand, once they do succeed, we'll have superconductors within the temperature range achievable with solid-state chillers like the Peltier Coolers [wikipedia.org] familiar to overclockers. That's big. If the superconductors have decent max current limits, expect superconducting power-electronics to be commercially available in 15 to 20 years.
Re:A couple visions for the future (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A couple visions for the future (Score:3, Informative)
In your solar plant: you don't heat a tube of water, but a tub of oil that doesn't change state during the process. Much more efficient. California has a powerplant that works this way, providing base load power (it burns natural gas when the solar power falls off, but in practice is >90% solar) for decades now. Beats me why we don't build more of them, but then it's California so rationality doesn't come into play.
Re:Simply generate electricity locally. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Simply generate electricity locally. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Bad summary (Score:5, Informative)
My PhD thesis was on studies of these materials. Some things the guy says make it sound like he has some bit of a clue (like the fact that such materials are indeed very sensitive to water). other things he says make him a crackpot (his webpage for instance says: "Since outer space is full of superconducting elements and compounds, I think they could help explain the increasing expansion rate of the universe (through strong diamagnetism).").
Making high purity materials like these takes big expensive furnaces and people who know how to use them (very few in the entire world). The method he describes is unsuitable for making decent single crystals and so his samples will not yield much meaningful bulk information. Working with stuff like Tl is tough because it is so toxic and so making these crystals is doubly difficult, especially in the US with so many safety regulations. Just on that basis alone, it is hard to believe he has the material he says he does. When he says "The volume fraction of this material is very low." it is a huge red flag that he knows not what his sample is. The research community has been all about getting purity up over the last couple of decades and many results with less pure samples did not hold up to these refinements.
As far as physics goes, there is much research out there suggesting that some superconductivity survives in established cuprates above bulk T_c. Even besides that, the electronic states in these materials above T_c are screwed up. My research showed some very interesting electronic phases directly. Thus, a small jump in a poorly evaluated variable may be there but cannot necessarily be taken seriously as an indication of bulk superconducting order even if it is measured carefully.
On top of which, his graphs are your typical crank type graphs. What am I supposed to conclude from voltage vs. temperature? How is that related to resistivity? What are the units? If the material is just synthesized, then how is crystal structure already known? Which beamline was used?
In short, wake me up when one of three or four reputable sample growers (BSCCO crystals are mostly grown in Japan btw, and Tl stuff used to be grown in Russia a lot, from what I heard because of lack of safety oversight there) makes a good crystal and shows something interesting going on.
Re:Simply generate electricity locally. (Score:3, Informative)
You're reading that chart wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
You're reading that chart wrong.
27% of all energy used is rejected as part of the electric generation process, which by the chart looks to be more than 68% of all energy actually used to produce electricity. Unless those numbers are quads, in which case the percentages are pretty close since the chart represents nearly 100 quads anyway.
That figure includes, presumably, waste heat, coupling losses, overproduction, transmission losses (not necessarily in that order, but waste heat is the lion's share).. It doesn't go into detail.
Re:Simply generate electricity locally. (Score:4, Informative)
People really need to get past this "kills birds" thing. There was ONE specific wind setup that used high speed mills in an area filled with birds that YES killed lots of birds. And bats too as I recall. Newer mills spin more slowly and while tip speed is quite high birds avoid them, they can see them spinning. A number I've seen quoted is something like 1-2 birds per YEAR per big mill.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/04/common_misconce.php [treehugger.com]
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~insrisg/nature/nw04/0509Windmills.htm [buffalo.edu]
Anyway, the problem isn't nearly as severe as opponents would like you to believe, not with larger mills anyway. It will be interesting to see how the larger mills fare long term. Your point stands though, none of this removes the need for power transmission. Generation that isn't constant is especially going to require the need to shuffle power all over the place.
Re:LHC? (Score:3, Informative)
Quite the contrary. High temperature superconductors can withstand stronger magnetic fields than low temperature ones. The reason you still use liquid helium to cool them is that it allows even greater field strengths. Now it is true that many magnets use low temperature superconductors instead, but the reason for this is mainly that the high temperature ones are ceramics that can be expensive and difficult to manufacture.
Re:A couple visions for the future (Score:3, Informative)
"Houston, Houston, Do You Read" by James Tiptree, Jr. (male pen name, a woman in real life)
Story wasn't quite like parent post, but contained elements of it, in a more realistic and less inflammatory way.