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"
A couple visions for the future (Score:5, Interesting)
The demand for energy will only increase with time regardless of conservation efforts, and this isn't a bad thing. The more energy we have, the cheaper transportation and food is which in turn lets people have more money for charity to help people who need food. So creating a surplus of energy soon could have worldwide benefits instead of just keeping up with demand.
I have a second vision that goes along with solar in the desert and superconductivity lines. It is tidal/solar near the coast, to fuel up hydrogen tanker trucks. These hydrogen tanker trucks could run on hydrogen themselves and take the energy inland. In the same processing plant that creates the hydrogen from electricity, they could also produce clean water for countries that need that as a critical resource.
Both of these visions takes a little bit of technological advancement, but not too much from what we have. My key question would be: Would this new superconductor be possible to mass produce, and could it be used as a new transmission line?
Not likely (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Not likely (Score:5, Interesting)
famous last words? (Score:3, Funny)
"254K should be warm enough for anyone"
Re:famous last words? (Score:5, Funny)
"254K should be warm enough for anyone"
I want one that works at 640 K, so I can use it to replace the heating element in my oven. Because superconductors make everything more efficient.
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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.
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Are you saying that ceramics can't be used because they're not conductive? ... They're super conductive..
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Way back in the 1980s there were many solutions proposed to this: such as encasing it in a more ductile material, or having elbow bits to go around corners similar to what plumbers have been doing for a very long time with brittle ceramics. The major problems keeping these things out of power transmission have been temperature and the problem where superconductivity halts if
Re:Not likely (Score:5, Funny)
I've seen amazing things done with ceramics.
Why am I only seeing that scene from the movie Ghost? Damn you Patrick and your legacy.
Re:A couple visions for the future (Score:5, Interesting)
I too have a vision. It involves electricity becoming mondo-expensive and people switching to energy saving devices en-masse. Governments around the world turning to nuclear, and where convenient, hydro and air power, not because they have low carbon emissions (that's only a plus), but because they are actually cheaper! People finally turning away from 1800's oil and coal based technologies and moving, triumphantly towards 1950's engineering solutions!!
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Energy being more expensive might not be a good thing
Re:A couple visions for the future (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually you don't need superconductors for this. High-voltage direct current [wikipedia.org] transmission lines are very well capable of delivering electricity with high efficiency across long distance without superconductors. Existing projects, like the Quebec-New Englad transmission line [abb.com] are capable of carrying >2GW of electrical energy over distances of >1100km. This is far more than even the largest photovoltaic power plant can generate today.
Re:A couple visions for the future (Score:4, Funny)
High-voltage direct current
Is that you Edison? Look I already won the bet, so whatever you're trying to pull off here doesn't count.
Sincerely,
Nikolai
PS. Jackass DS.
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Sure we'll all be living in a desert by then anyway. You know nothing, Jon Snow ;)
Re:A couple visions for the future (Score:4, Insightful)
Solar panels are stupid right now. They require rare materials, are not very reliable, but very expensive. :) :)
The solution for right now are arrays of cheap, easily replacable mirrors that heat a tube of water so that it can drive turbines. Simple, reliable, and very cheap. And yo only need to fill i tiny tiny amount of some very dead desert with them.
I can't imagine anything beating that. You could build it right now even in the poorest regions of the world. Nearly out of trash.
I agree with the rest of the first vision though.
The second one... well... tidal is bad, because it messes with nature for no reason (compared to above solution). :)
The rest is good.
But I don't think we need any technological advancement at all, to make this come true. Everything except for being able to buy those high-temperature superconductive power lines, and for the acceptable solar cells, already exists and is used right now.
But we can simply use big traditional DC lines until then.
And as I said, we don't need solar cells.
The only question remaining is: Why isn't it being done already? If I were a poor African state, (preferably with a desert) I'd put a big plant into that desert, and tell the oil and other industries, that they can go fuck themselves, because now I'm free! ^^
Then I'd start exporting energy and technology.
Done right this would mean a boom for the whole country.
Then add ubiquitous Internet access, and before you know it, you're surpassing India and are the no 1 country in Africa.
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On the desert-solar thing, It turns out you need to clean the mirrors frequently, which requires water, which requires energy to bring in since there is little in the desert. It's a big problem.
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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.
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I have a vision of beduins making millions from the sale of rare-earth metals.
A few more... (Score:2)
How about a large amount of nuclear power plants located in Antarctica? We could heat the ice in standard water pressure reactors and use all of the power produced to charge up massive superconductive batteries that could be stored at room temperature (room temp in Antarctica) and basically consist of a loop of superconductive material. We could then take the large loops of superconductive material by ship to various locations and feed the power into the grid. We could ship electricity everywhere with powe
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This new superconductor would work fine without any cooling, most of the year...in Northern Canada!
Re:A couple visions for the future (Score:5, Funny)
After the proletarian revolt, all the women kill most of the men in their sleep. They go off and create the solar/hydrogen economy that the grandparent mentioned, creating a solar Amazonian paradise. Where are the men that are left? Well, they keep small villages of them where the men sit around and drink beer and watch Spike TV all day. Then when the women are ready to mate, they have a champion from each village fight one another to the death. Then said champion mates with all the Amazons that want to have a child. After which, he is torn from limb from limb in a Baccean orgy - still alive and conscious.
For pleasure of course, the women are really lesbians and the men aren't allowed to watch.
See what your proletarian revolt leads to! Female happiness!
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"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.
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Re:Simply generate electricity locally. (Score:5, Insightful)
depends on the power generation source. If we can make a stable fusion system that fails safe then yes. Pebble bed fission isn't bad. in fact on or two per 1 million people would stabilize the power grid.
The big problem with the power grid is that it is a really simple target. The 2003 blackout of the north east USA, was testament to the fact that one little screw up and the whole thing shuts down in beautiful cascading failures. a targeted set of attacks at key points at the right time of the year could kill millions with only a handful of targets. and I am not talking about destroying any nuclear plant, just the right transmission towers in the right sequence and suddenly the north east of the USA, some 40 million people are without heat and electricity for a month. Target for a second attack for the north west, shortly afterwards, and then rolling blackouts in the south and no one will be able to fix it for a year. 20 maybe 30 bombs around the country and the USA is worthless for the next couple of years.
partial local generation is the only viable long term solution to our future power needs. Big plants will be needed, but small plants will save lives. Even partial solar and wind generation in each region would be enough to help.
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Re:Simply generate electricity locally. (Score:4, Informative)
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There a quite a few power plants built on rivers, using the rivers for cooling, that have to run at reduced output during the summer; because, there isn't enough cold water to dump the waste heat into.
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Why waste all the time, money and materials to drag out miles upon miles of superconducting "wire" to get from the generation site to the end user?
1. Solar plants are really big, and land is scarce and/or expensive near urban centers. Few places on the surface of the earth have enough insolation (or, equivalently, the number of sunny days per year) to make solar effective, and they don't happen to be near urban centers.
2. Nuclear plants are big (land, again) and potentially dangerous, so are a bad idea to have near urban centers.
3. Hydro plants are wherever mother nature makes it advantageous to build them, which often isn't near urban centers.
4. Coa
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:Simply generate electricity locally. (Score:4, Insightful)
Studies here in Denmark have shown that birds adjust their route ~200 m from the mill. It has also shown that the high voltage cables connecting the windmill to the grid kill many more birds than windmills, even windows kill more birds than windmills. There are examples of Falcons nesting and breeding on windmills here.
The only known wind mill farm with a lot of bird killings is in the altamont pass where a huge number of small windmills have been placed in the middle of a raptor hunting ground. Ensuring that the birds are preoccupied with their prey and don't have time to look for moving obstacles.
We're getting closer (Score:2)
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"...
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Well, just "heat" them (on a quantum level), and you got your switch. Should be doable.
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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.
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Funny, I couldn't remember the source of my 1/3 loss, so I threw a few words at google, and found the same reference that you did - 7.2%.
But the funny part is that THAT citation isn't exactly authoritative, either. Further searching found that in India, the rate is as low as 70% [outlookindia.com] while the state of Deleware declares that "70 percent of the energy in the fuels used to generate electricity is lost" [delaware.gov] and in the UK it's supposedly about 2% lost in transmission [bwea.com].
Wikipedia isn't the definitive answer, folks, even
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In New Zealand it's about 5% on the national grid. I imagine it's similar again for local networks. Step down losses are 1-2% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer#Energy_losses [wikipedia.org].
It's highly dependent on how you define transmission losses though isn't it? Do you count losses associated with charging batteries? That's a form of energy transmission. What about the transformers in electronics' power supplies?
1/3 doesn't actually feel that far off.
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 d
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Further searching found that in India, the rate is as low as 70% while the state of Deleware declares that "70 percent of the energy in the fuels used to generate electricity is lost"
Note that the generators themselves don't work at 100% efficiency. Those numbers strike me more like "burning coal isn't a particularly efficient way to gather energy" than anything else.
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Yeah, but that's with distributing the production. If we could transmit the power much better then we could centralize the production to a much greater extent rather than building the production so close to the consumption.
The improvements would trickle down to improve other things, like making a computer chip to better deal with heat. The improvement itself doesn't matter much for what it actually improves but it makes a lot of other things possible like not having power plants located in residential neigh
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A couple problems with your theory:
- A large portion of the energy dissipated in modern ICs involves leakage through increasingly small insulating layers, in addition to energy already dissipated through capacitive effects (energy stored on FET gates being dumped). Superconductive materials do very little to help this, as the losses aren't resistive in nature. What you really need are superinsulators that have desirable electric field properties to deal with this... Look up high k dielectr
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Reaching room temperature super conduction would bring huge benefits to modern day technology.
The fact is that you only need to be able to do it with standard refrigeration. That's cheap enough to accomplish. While room temperature is a good goal, it's just not really required for most applications.
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In David Letterman's bedroom, this is above room temperature.
Fixed.
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.)
You're being taken for a ride (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You're being taken for a ride (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, he may be a crackpot. But even if the data presented are 100% accurate, it's not really clear that the phenomena he observes constitute superconductivity.
The first chart (labeled "4-point resistance test") seems to show a slight but noticeable jump in resistivity at 254 K. Okay... why is the jump so small? High-temperature superconductors generally have /some/ measurable resistivity just below their transition temperature, but this appears to be much greater than that.
The Magnetization Test graph is totally unclear. The y-axis shows only relative values and no data is showed *below* the supposed transition temperature. I'm not entirely clear on what he's claiming to measure here. The Meissner Effect? The disruption of superconductivity in a strong field?
So, even if these measurements are correct, it's not clear at all to me that they demonstrate superconductivity.
Possible applications (Score:2)
Some cursory research [wikipedia.org] suggests the following applications:
-- electric motors, possibly for vehicle propulsion
-- maglev devices
-- magnetic refrigeration
It sounds to me like the primary application of superconductivity is in devices that incorporate magnets. Medical imaging devices like MRIs may also be affected by this discovery.
All of this is due to the fact that superdoncuting magnets produce stronger magnetic fields than conventional electromagnets and are cheaper to operate [wikipedia.org]
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.
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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.
The beauty of Scientific Research is that it is always a moving target. When these superconductors research expands to composite materials that provide more exotic properties you'll see them being used in said applications that currently don't seem optimal.
"Antarctica is Cold Enough" (Score:2, Interesting)
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
You want me to believe a wildly high superconductor Tc claim using a link to a shady website that looks like it was designed in 1996, without any link to a paper or an author, without any reference to where the discovery was made, without any notes about secondary confirmation, without any other reference in the media except one lamo blog and without any real formal publication at all? Here's what every physicist reading this article right now is thinking: STFU. If you get a near room temp Tc superconductor working, you better be on the front page of a rushed to print edition of Nature that someone just ran down the hall to shove in my hand, or I'm not even going to give you the time of day.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
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."
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oh I think that's him alright. I accidentally replied to someone below posting the same link first and ....WOW I literally loled when that picture popped up.
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But it's on the INTERNET, it HAS to be true!
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lololooooooooooollllll oh my fucking god, you win the internets sir! that is HILARIOUS. Mod above up.
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Oh my. I looked at the site. And you were understating it.
It's ONE guy. I wonder who posted it on Slashdot. But.. Are they freakin' kidding?? Is that a joke?
Did he build some time-machine? That site looks ancient.
I'm a professional, and I nearly went blind.
Also with those "quotes" on his front page:
"A great place to start learning about superconductors. Start here!"
- Arizona State University
One of "the top Internet education sites..."
- Innovative Teaching
"The best information online about superconductivity."
- Energy Science News
"Superlative...invaluable...endlessly informative."
- Netsurfer Science
"The greatest Superconductor site on earth."
- Michigan State University
Yeah right... I bet they are all... real... LOL.
He should replace his "Bichalk Best top 2%" badge with a "cheesy AND fake sites top 2%" badge.
Even if it's real, that site design destroys it all.
He could just as w
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Except that this guy is not publishing his data. As GP said, if he was right he would corner the front page of Nature. Some jotting on a website do not amount to a something others can verify and use.
What? (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Ok. I now physics and chemistry. But WHAT? Those numbers make no sense, and is about the most useless quote ever quoted on slashdot. And that's saying something.
Re:What? (Score:4, Funny)
Don't buy shares yet. :) (Score:2)
This is a long way from practicality, particularly for applications requiring bulk materials. They don't say what fraction of the material was superconducting, just that it was low, and the compound itself is pretty unstable: "The copper-oxides are strongly hygroscopic. All tests should be performed immediately after annealing."
Wow... if its true (Score:2)
The linked page, looks like its from a amature research group, and none of the earlie
Crackpot? (Score:2)
Missing tag (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow only -254K (Score:2)
This means superconductivity is possible without any equipment just about any January day in Winnipeg MB.
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Wow. Winnipeg MB must be really damned cold.
Undersea/underground cables? (Score:2)
I wonder if this superconductor is 'warm enough' that you could create practical underground/undersea conductors now? I mean, granted, it's not that cold underground, undersea, but this conductor is high-temperature enough that I suspect you could create a refrigerated 'housing' for the conductor, and manage to keep it cold enough underground or undersea. You wouldn't run the power the 'last mile' with such a superconductor, most likely, but perhaps refrigerated conductors would be suitable for connecting p
Well, duh! (Score:2)
And here I was trying to combine 90210 with 8675309...
1223 (Score:2)
"Believed"?! (Score:2)
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.
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Why? One lab result (not yet repeated AFAIK) does not represent a workable magnet technology. The magnets at CERN didn't even use the highest temperature available at the time of their design in any case; so it obviously doesn't follow that 'the higher temperature the superconductor, the better the magnet'
Enough with the LHC bashing, please. Europe is taking a lead in particle physics, and unsurprisingly being at the absolute bleeding edge comes with some technical pitfalls.
Re:LHC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. I'll bet the guys at Cern are feeling pretty foolish right about now.
No, "high temperature" superconductors cannot be used in magnets. That's why they're using liquid helium (or was it liquid hydrogen?) instead of the much cheaper liquid nitrogen -- all the superconductors that work at the warmer liquid nitrogen temperatures will stop working in a moderately strong magnetic field.
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superconductors ... will stop working in a moderately strong magnetic field.
If that's the case, I have to wonder about the guys, above, suggesting we should use these for power lines. All you'd need is a kid with a couple of hard drive magnets to bring down a whole power grid. All they'd have to do is tie the magnets together, throw them up to the power line (so they wrap around), and the resistance of that portion of the line would become non-zero. Then, the hundreds of amps of current flowing through tha
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All they'd have to do is tie the magnets together, throw them up to the power line
Except that superconducting power transmission lines are likely to be buried along with their cooling systems. There are a couple of places on Earth where overhead superconducting power lines might work year round, but there's really not much call for a power grid in Antarctica.
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Actually, the problem is that putting electricity through a wire generates a magnetic field. The high-temperature superconductors are very sensitive to magnetic fields, which quench the superconductivity. Consequently, they suck at getting any significant amount of power through them.
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So what's the big deal? (Score:2)
No, "high temperature" superconductors cannot be used in magnets.
Are you suggesting then that work in high temperature superconductors will have few applications? That is, this work is intended to further theoretical progress to develop an understanding of the underlying reason that substances superconduct at all?
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No, "high temperature" superconductors cannot be used in magnets. That's why they're using liquid helium (or was it liquid hydrogen?) instead of the much cheaper liquid nitrogen -- all the superconductors that work at the warmer liquid nitrogen temperatures will stop working in a moderately strong magnetic field.
It's liquid helium. There's a ton of problems with LH2 that nobody wants to mess with.
Regards,
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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.
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> No, "high temperature" superconductors cannot be used in magnets.
[citation needed]
Hmm, after looking it up, I apparently misremembered slightly [gsu.edu]. Materials with higher critical temperatures do tend to have higher critical fields, so you would want to use the high-temperature materials to make magnets. But, you can have either high temperatures or strong magnetic fields, but not both.
So you can use "high temperature" superconductors to make magnets, but the mangnets will still only work at low temperatures.
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The LHC is an accelerator project, not a superconductor project. The reason their magnets didn't work is down to physical engineering not faulty theory or blue sky thinking. The LHC will still piss all over any other collider project in the world when it's run at full power. They're starting at lower energies to "run it in". They have also advanced the state of understanding in ultra low temperature electro-magnets.
Re:substitute a mineral or two here and there (Score:5, Funny)
it will take a lot of hard (nobel prize winning) effort
Yeah, but Nobel prize winning effort isn't what it used to be.
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Yeah. They gave one for acting in a movie a few years ago. (A Nobel Prize in Science, in fact.)
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Yeah, but will it be classified as a toxic material or break down into toxic materials according to California?
Also, how durable is this material? What's its operative lifespan? How long can it be stored after manufacture before use? If your fridge fails, does your superconductor die?
RESEARCH NOTE: The copper-oxides are strongly hygroscopic [absorbing or attracting moisture from the air]. All tests should be performed immediately after annealing.
So there's the requirement that it be a dry cold.
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:Bad summary (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to know what you're talking about, care to clue the rest of us in as to whether the link is at all plausible? Given the nature of the source, I have difficulty believing so.
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Alas, there's a big gap between knowing enough to snipe at an AC and knowing enough to evaluate the claim itself. Sorry...
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:Bad summary (Score:5, Funny)
What is "the upper part of a 9212/2212C and the lower part of a 1223?" And I don't believe there's an element known as Oy.
When combined with the element Vey, it forms Exasperatium.