'Revolutionary' Blue Crystal Sparks Hope of Room Temperature Superconductivity (science.org) 101
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Has the quest for room temperature superconductivity finally succeeded? Researchers at the University of Rochester (U of R), who previously were forced to retract a controversial claim of room temperature superconductivity at high pressures, are back with an even more spectacular claim. This week in Nature they report a new material that superconducts at room temperature -- and not much more than ambient pressures. "If this is correct, it's completely revolutionary," says James Hamlin, a physicist at the University of Florida who was not involved with the work. A room temperature superconductor would usher in a century-long dream. Existing superconductors require expensive and bulky chilling systems to conduct electricity frictionlessly, but room temperature materials could lead to hyperefficient electricity grids and computer chips, as well as the ultrapowerful magnets needed for levitating trains and fusion power. [...]
On February 22, [physicist Ranga Dias] and his colleagues doubled down on their original claim. In a preprint posted on arXiv they reported synthesizing a new version of CSH that superconducts at a slightly lower 260 K, but at only about half the previous pressure. "This should clear up any questions regarding CSH," says co-author Russell Hemley, an x-ray crystallographer at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who helped determine the material's structure. Now comes the even more promising substance: nitrogen-doped lutetium-hydride (LNH). To make it, Dias's team loaded a thin lutetium foil in a diamond vise and injected a mix of hydrogen and nitrogen gas. By ramping the pressure up to 2 gigapascals (nearly 20,000 times atmospheric pressure) and baking the mix at 200C for up to 3 days, they forged a bright blue crystalline fleck, one that survived even after the pressure was eased.
When they dialed the pressure back up to as little as 0.3 gigapascals, the blue fleck turned pink as the electrical resistance plunged to zero. The substance reached a peak superconducting temperature of 294 K-7-degrees warmer than the original CSH and truly room temperature -- at pressures of 1 gigapascal. Magnetic measurements also showed the sample repelled an externally applied magnetic field, a hallmark of superconductors. The paper, the authors say, went through five rounds of review. Given the U of R group's recent retraction, many physicists won't be easily convinced. "I think they will have to do some real work and be really open for people to believe it," Hamlin says. Jorge Hirsch, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego, and a vociferous critic of the earlier work, is even more blunt. "I doubt [the new result], because I don't trust these authors."
On February 22, [physicist Ranga Dias] and his colleagues doubled down on their original claim. In a preprint posted on arXiv they reported synthesizing a new version of CSH that superconducts at a slightly lower 260 K, but at only about half the previous pressure. "This should clear up any questions regarding CSH," says co-author Russell Hemley, an x-ray crystallographer at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who helped determine the material's structure. Now comes the even more promising substance: nitrogen-doped lutetium-hydride (LNH). To make it, Dias's team loaded a thin lutetium foil in a diamond vise and injected a mix of hydrogen and nitrogen gas. By ramping the pressure up to 2 gigapascals (nearly 20,000 times atmospheric pressure) and baking the mix at 200C for up to 3 days, they forged a bright blue crystalline fleck, one that survived even after the pressure was eased.
When they dialed the pressure back up to as little as 0.3 gigapascals, the blue fleck turned pink as the electrical resistance plunged to zero. The substance reached a peak superconducting temperature of 294 K-7-degrees warmer than the original CSH and truly room temperature -- at pressures of 1 gigapascal. Magnetic measurements also showed the sample repelled an externally applied magnetic field, a hallmark of superconductors. The paper, the authors say, went through five rounds of review. Given the U of R group's recent retraction, many physicists won't be easily convinced. "I think they will have to do some real work and be really open for people to believe it," Hamlin says. Jorge Hirsch, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego, and a vociferous critic of the earlier work, is even more blunt. "I doubt [the new result], because I don't trust these authors."
"I Win" technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Room temperature superconductivity is one of the holy grail technologies that has the potential to fundamentally alter how the world runs, as it would have a profound impact on everything from power delivery to computer design. It's right up there with fusion power in terms of potential impact, and likely even higher.
Here's hoping it's sustained by peer review.
Re:"I Win" technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't start stockpiling lutetium just yet.
First, peer review is not the same as replication.
Many high-temperature superconductors have low current density, are brittle, and degrade quickly. But this is still promising research and may help us better understand HTSCs.
An Achievement of Some Sort (Score:3)
First, peer review is not the same as replication.
Given the track record of these authors, it's not clear whether this study is a remarkable achievement of physics or one of getting around peer review.
the GIGO era (Score:3)
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considering.
the blind squirrel theory
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It only needs to be compressed to 9869.233 atmospheres or 335 kilometers depth of water
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Dang I had feet. It's more like 102 kilometers depth
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From wikipedia on Prince Rupert's Drops:
That's 6,908 atmospheres.
If they can get something superconducting that can be held in a hand then people can sell them on ebay as novelties. That's when the real money starts coming in....
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And everything will be so bountiful that it is free.
[/sarcasm]
Re: "I Win" technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: "I Win" technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Long distance transmission is pretty much a solved problem anyway. High voltage DC cables only have low single digit percentage losses over hundreds of kilometres.
The more likely applications are things like superconducting magnets without needing to chill them to near absolute zero, high performance computing without insane levels of heat, and high power low voltage DC like car chargers.
Re: "I Win" technology (Score:3)
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That's a good one, and I agree. Maglev is probably the best way to travel long distance.
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Re: "I Win" technology (Score:2)
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The more likely applications are things like superconducting magnets without needing to chill them to near absolute zero
It would free us from dependence on Helium in many applications like MRI machines.
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Interesting one. Computation is currently performed by quickly manipulating resistance so it's a little mind-bending to think about a "superconducting semiconductor" which on the face of it is simply an oxymoron.
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Computation is currently performed by quickly manipulating resistance
But only by pegging it to one of two values. The sub-saturated, analog response regime of a transistor is not necessary for digital computation, which would be way more efficient without one.
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So many diseases like cancer are really not THAT bad if we would catch them very early. So a weekly, quick MRI scan could help with catching them early.
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So a weekly, quick MRI scan could help with catching them early.
There's such a thing as overdiagnosis and overtreatment. You do want to catch cancer early, but a weekly MRI scan could do a lot of harm.
https://www.tandfonline.com/do... [tandfonline.com]
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Indeed. And HVDC uses tech all along that is known, understood, reliable and cost-efficient. Long distance power transmission is pretty much solved with HVDC.
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Working with even a 20st in a hydraulic system is already unusual.
Also, crystalline materials are totally unsuitable to make any cable.
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Also, crystalline materials are totally unsuitable to make any cable.
Well, if you want to get technical, copper is a crystalline material.
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True, solid metals are crystalline, at the same time they are flexible and I'd be surprised this new material is.
Fair enough, although I wonder what the physical properties of a collection of these crystals inside a sheathe that compresses them to 300 MPa would be? The crystals don't have to hold together themselves if they are held in such a sheathe and the composite does not need to be flexible inside a sheathe that surely won't be. Obviously there's an issue if electricity won't pass from one crystal to another through direct contact. Still the normal physical requirements of a metal wire are not going to apply to
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300kpa would be nearly triple standard pressure. I could believe that someone would consider that "not much more", though said someone would not be me. But 300 MPa... holy cow, for practical purposes, that is just categorically a whole different kind of scenario altogether.
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You could just read the summary and see they're not talking about ice.
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Why would fusion power have a huge impact?
I'm very much in favor of researching it, but so far everything suggests it's an enormously complex, expensive technology that's unlikely to be competitive in the energy market.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't research it, and it'll likely find good uses, but I have a hard time imagining it being really world changing. It seems more likely to find a narrow niche where it's superior to alternatives.
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The fact it is complex is not a reason to not use it.
Besides, the complexity would be greatly reduced once the magnets can be powered with a superconductor.
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I'm very much in favor of researching it, but so far everything suggests it's an enormously complex, expensive technology that's unlikely to be competitive in the energy market.
Well, it gets kind of tricky there. IF you can make a power plant that makes 100X the power of a nuclear plant at 10X the cost, and without the same degree of nuclear waste, chance of meltdown, expensive cleanup, etc. then that would be worth it. The problem is that only part of the cost of a nuclear plant is the reactor. The rest, and it's a significant fraction, is a giant steam engine and generators to make use of the head produced by the reactor. While there could potentially be some economies of scale
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Not only that, but it doesn't have the intermittency problems of some renewables, or the fuel problems of fission and fossil fuel power, or the climate impact of fossil fuels, and it can be built almost anywhere.
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Not only that, but it doesn't have the intermittency problems of some renewables, or the fuel problems of fission and fossil fuel power, or the climate impact of fossil fuels, and it can be built almost anywhere.
We don't actually know any of that yet. We don't know that it won't be intermittent. It might, for example, require long cycles where you prep the reactor for days before running it for a few hours. We don't even know what the fuel will be. It it's tritium and deuterium, for example, then we really will have fuel problems. There are some ideas to use fusion reactors to breed their own fuel from lithium, but we don't even know if that will work. If we can use He3 as fuel, then we have to collect that somewhe
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Good points, but by "anywhere" I meant you don't have the concerns with hydroelectric, wind, geothermal, tidal, and to some extent solar, where you have to build where the resource is. Fusion can be built on any large enough flat area.
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The area for a fusion plant needs to be both large enough and, either have access to a _lot_ of water, or it needs to be be much, much larger to air cool. Basically, at the moment, we don't have a way get electricity from a fusion reactor through any easier method. The nature of fusion experiments so far suggests that the bigger the reactor the better. Basically, if you imagine a nuclear plant, and you imagine that the actual reactor and its energy output is free and takes up no space, etc. the rest of the
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Getting down to the specifics: lutetium is not exactly cheap to extract or overly abundant (probably you, like me, have not even hear of it before today). Crystals also don't translate to wires very easily...
All I'm saying is don't expect a commercial revolution coming out very soon of this even if this is "sustained by peer review".
On the other hand there are other avenues of ongoing research in the field of superconductivity, and your general observation regarding the usefulness of superconductivity sti
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Getting down to the specifics: lutetium is not exactly cheap to extract or overly abundant (probably you, like me, have not even hear of it before today). Crystals also don't translate to wires very easily...
It is considerably more common that silver and vastly more common that gold though. As for crystals translating to wires, copper crystals seem to do ok. I'm not saying these crystals necessarily will, but we'll have to wait and see.
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Room temperature superconductivity is one of the holy grail technologies that has the potential to fundamentally alter how the world runs, as it would have a profound impact on everything from power delivery to computer design. It's right up there with fusion power in terms of potential impact, and likely even higher.
Ever wonder what would happen to the person who wanted to come forward with a cure for cancer?
Remember you're attacking trillions in profits with this solution.
Here's hoping it's sustained by peer review.
Here's hoping the solution sees the light of day, since the actual Holy Grail would be finding a cure for the Disease of Greed.
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Ever wonder what would happen to the person who wanted to come forward with a cure for cancer?
I mean, we kind of already know what would happen. A number of cancer researchers have received Nobel prizes for cancer treatments, although the Nobel committee is a little stingy when it comes to considering cancer research. Generally though, they get some recognition, grants, tenure - that sort of thing. Of course, you probably meant one, singular, cure for all cancer. That would be groundbreaking, but so is one treatment that reduces one particular class of cancers by 20% more than the previous treatment
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I'll have to disagree on the relative importance.
Assuming a practical fusion system can be build, even room temperature superconductivity becomes much, much less important for power delivery. a truly practical fusion system means transmission line losses are a don't care. you distribute more fusion plants to make it much less important.
As for electronics/computer design it could potentially be a big boost to quantum computing , but maybe not. There are several competing methods of getting that tech to be r
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Not really. It must be practical in its manufacture, cost, reliability, maximum current, etc. or it remains a scientific curiosity. This thing currently sounds like it has pretty much none of these characteristics. That makes it good research, but predicting practical impact is way early.
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Peer review, schmeer review (Score:2)
How about replicated in an independent laboratory?
Another arXiv submission (Score:2)
Anyone can put anything on arXiv. Let's wait to see if this paper makes it through peer review - or even gets submitted to a peer-reviewed journal - before people get too excited.
Still 3000 times the atmospheric pressure (Score:3)
Sure and they released the pressure to 0.3 gigapascals, that's still 3000 times the atmospheric pressure. This rings impracticable for any use outside of laboratory conditions to provide such pressure.
Re:Still 3000 times the atmospheric pressure (Score:5, Insightful)
You're a dumbass.
Calling me a dumbass was really not necessary. I'd have been notified of your answer, I'd have read it anyway; because I pay attention and value what others have to say, even more if they have counter arguments on what I wrote.
Any kind of room temp superconductor is a revolutionary breakthrough. It advances the state of the art in superconducting physics.
Fair point of view; although I was trained to hold my excitement when reading SlashDot posts about break-troughs
Bitching about how "practical" or "scalable" is irrelevant. You don't go from a steam engine to turbofan jet engine in one step. Knowing that this can be done is a very important step.
I agree with you on the incremental aspect of discoveries.
The way this story is told, does not really reflect on any sense of progression though. If it was written less sensational and explain without excess emphasis, I'd probably get more excited or less suspicious about it.
This post is another example of how Slashdot Pundits denigrate real achievements because they want to feel superior. You belittle things you can barely comprehend, and all your really demonstrate is how pathetic you are.
This answer is also an example of how tone can turn personal and, or aggressive when one don't know the person and don't meet face to face.
Not specific to SlashDot, but a very common problem with blogs or other online discussion.
Anyway, I sincerely appreciated you argued against and commented my post.
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You don't go from a steam engine to turbofan jet engine in one step.
You'd never have gone from steam engine to turbofan at all if the requirements involved pressure containment of 3000bar. Unless your plan is for Superconductors to only be relevant on your desk in a very small space where those pressures are maintainable there's literally nothing to get excited about here.
Honestly at this point its easier and more practical to get superconductors working at cryogenic temperatures than anything this "development" enables.
The only thing worse than someone who denigrates every
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You'd never have gone from steam engine to turbofan at all if the requirements involved pressure containment of 3000bar. Unless your plan is for Superconductors to only be relevant on your desk in a very small space where those pressures are maintainable there's literally nothing to get excited about here.
As others have pointed out, this is not only valuable if it can make wires. It's not your desk, but superconductors could be very valuable inside an MRI machine, where you very well might be able to sustain those pressures. Consider that the tensile strength of S355 steel is more than 50% higher than this and the tensile strength of maraging steel is more than 700% higher than this. Crystals like this absolutely could be encapsulated so that they maintain their properties inside the capsule. There are a lar
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It's not your desk, but superconductors could be very valuable inside an MRI machine, where you very well might be able to sustain those pressures. Consider that the tensile strength of S355 steel is more than 50% higher than this and the tensile strength of maraging steel is more than 700% higher than this. Crystals like this absolutely could be encapsulated so that they maintain their properties inside the capsule. There are a large number of potential applications for such capsules.
No not really. The tensile strength of steel is only one part of the equation for pressure. This is why despite hating imperial units I love the unit psi. "Pounds per square inch" is so wonderfully descriptive, it shows that as you increase surface area you increase the amount of force. MRI machines are too big to practically contain 3000 bar without truly insane wall thicknesses that would make the resulting machine unmanageably bulky. Heck 300 bar would already make the machine unmanageably bulky. You're
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No not really. The tensile strength of steel is only one part of the equation for pressure. This is why despite hating imperial units I love the unit psi. "Pounds per square inch" is so wonderfully descriptive, it shows that as you increase surface area you increase the amount of force. MRI machines are too big to practically contain 3000 bar without truly insane wall thicknesses that would make the resulting machine unmanageably bulky. Heck 300 bar would already make the machine unmanageably bulky. You're massively underestimating the engineering effort involved in containing pressures at a large scale.
Except that I am not talking about making an existing /MRI machine contain 3000 bar. Most of the volume of existing MRI machines are not the superconductor, but are areas containing liquid helium, vacuum insulation gaps, etc. You would not need that anymore and would only need the compression structure around the magnet. It would probably have to be thick, yes, but probably would not make the MRI machine any larger than the helium and the insulation do in existing MRI machines. It would almost certainly be
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Putting this operational 0.3 gigapascals pressure in perspective for this room-temperature superconductor:
(please correct me if I get it wrong)
1 GPa = 10197.16212978 Kilogram-Force per Square Centimeter
0.3 GPa = 0.3 × 10197.16212978 = 3059.148638934 Kilogram-Force per Square Centimeter (more than 3 Metric Tons pressing on the surface of 1 centimeter)
Regardless of any practicality, this is a lot of pressure to maintain this room-temperature supra-conductor.
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The calculation seems right. 1 Pascal is 1 Newton per meter squared, so 300,000,000 Pascals would be 300,000,000 Newtons per meter squared and there are 10,000 centimeters squared in a square meter, so 30,000 newtons per square centimeter and a ton is about 9806 Newtons, so about 3.06 tons.
It is a lot of pressure. Around three times the pressure at the deepest part of the ocean. Despite this being a huge amount of pressure though, it is a manageable amount for certain applications. Consider that you're basi
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Sure and they released the pressure to 0.3 gigapascals, that's still 3000 times the atmospheric pressure. This rings impracticable for any use outside of laboratory conditions to provide such pressure.
Can they improve it more though? Consider, for example, that we're talking about the kind of pressure you would find 18 miles under the ocean. Sure, there's no such place, but if they can improve it by 3X then it works in the deepest part of the ocean without needing anything else to keep it compressed. Improve it enough and you can run transoceanic cables across large areas of the Atlantic or Pacific. There may also be ways to bind up the crystals inside compressive structures such as other crystals or wra
It needs to scale (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary says they made "a bright blue crystalline fleck"
That doesn't sound like they made enough to make a short length of wire.
Interesting, but a mass production process will be needed to make it truly revolutionary
(assuming, of course, that they actually did get it right)
Re:It needs to scale (Score:5, Informative)
This research is not really about a commercial product. It's about discovering whether room temperature superconductivity is actually possible. Of course they'd love to find some commercially viable material at the same time, but they don't even know if it is possible. That is the purpose of this research.
If they have found something then the next step will be to understand why it works, and then see whether they can find other materials that do the same. Perhaps something useful will come from that but, again, there is no assurance.
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next step is for more labs to attempt replicating the thing.
Re:It needs to scale (Score:5, Insightful)
Which the original lab is making difficult by not sharing samples or a detailed enough methodology, just like they did last time, because they want to commercialize their product. ...and last time their work was shoddy and they had to retract the paper.
Re: It needs to scale (Score:3)
It needs to actually be low pressure too (Score:1)
The initial text of the article says "at not much more than ambient pressures", but from the article:
When they dialed the pressure back up to as little as 0.3 gigapascals, the blue fleck turned pink as the electrical resistance plunged to zero
(emphasis added)
By my math, 0.3 gigapascal is about 3,000 atmospheres. That's a new definition of "not much more" that I haven't previously been apprised of.
But keep working. Drop that pressure to a third and it'll be ambient at the bottom of the mariana trench.
That is some ambiance (Score:5, Informative)
Practical superconductivity will be huge, if we ever achieve it. Still, " new material that superconducts at room temperature -- and not much more than ambient pressures" is an odd claim.
The substance reached a peak superconducting temperature of 294 K—7 warmer than the original CSH and truly room temperature—at pressures of 1 gigapascal.
1 gigapascal is 10,000 times the average sea level atmospheric pressure. If that is "not much more than ambient pressure", one has to wonder what ambiance the authors are accustomed to.
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Well ya know, there were gunning for room temperature superconductivity. Cuz that's what grabs the headlines. Nobody said they had to achieve it at sea level pressure.
Kind of like claiming you can harness nuclear fusion by detonating a H-bomb.
Re:That is some ambiance (Score:4, Informative)
Re:That is some ambiance (Score:5, Funny)
The authors are obviously quite dense.
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Maybe we just need a different room ... (Score:5, Funny)
'Revolutionary' Blue Crystal Sparks Hope of Room Temperature Superconductivity
It doesn't matter what temperature a room is, it's always room temperature.
-- Steven Wright
Reduced Resistance (Score:3)
Skepticism must be proportional to excitement. (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, any number of errors, illusions, and fallacies may be present and still have found something important. So, valid or not, and thorough or not, any work (that isn't deliberately fraudulent) is useful.
I, for one... (Score:2, Funny)
...welcome our new room temperature superconductor overlords.
Here is a picture of the scientist with the crysta (Score:1, Offtopic)
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Modern-day alchemy (Score:2)
In the middle ages, chemists experimented with all kinds of mixtures to try to turn "base" elements into gold. Today's alchemists are on a similar quest to achieve "room-temperature" superconductivity. From time to time, somebody comes out with an exciting claim that "we finally did it!" But...there is always a but.
Even if these guys have done what they say they've done, needing 3,000 atmospheres of pressure is not much more practical than needing temperatures of -250 degrees.
inappropriate analogy (Score:2)
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Your statement, and mine, can both be true at the same time.
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For cables it's useless, for small fixed configuration devices high pressure superconductors could still be useful.
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Of course! And low-temperature superconductors can be equally useful. I'm not saying that there's no place for high pressure superconductors, I'm saying that the claim of "room temperature" might be a little over-hyped. When people use that term, others may envision replacing cross-country power transmission lines with these new superconductors. That is far from the truth.
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Maybe even in cables it could work. Depends on well crystals of this material conduct between each other when compressed tightly together. You could, in principle, make a compression sheath that holds a whole series of crystals in compression and also tightly against each other, either as individual, larger crystals, or as many small grains pressed together either as a homogenous mix or with some kind of binder that holds it together, but still allows individual grans to contact each other directly. Grains
3,000 atmospheres is actually easy (Score:2)
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Putting that thin wire in a tube of liquid nitrogen (which is a gross oversimplification of how superconducting power cables work) sounds a heck of a lot easier.
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It's certainly easier to do any day of the week, and it will last for hours. Encasing it a compressed capsule is a lot harder but, it could last a century. Basically you're trading of difficulty producing a thing in the first place against constant required maintenance for the entire time you need to use it. So, on the one hand, a simple, modular, encapsulated superconductor. On the other hand, a complicated cryogenic plumbing project.
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In the middle ages, chemists experimented with all kinds of mixtures to try to turn "base" elements into gold. Today's alchemists are on a similar quest to achieve "room-temperature" superconductivity. From time to time, somebody comes out with an exciting claim that "we finally did it!" But...there is always a but.
Ok, but have you taken a look around with all that came from the research those alchemists did? Their theories were garbage, but they did a lot of empirical work. Modern scientists might want to distance themselves from alchemy:
“Rutherford, this is transmutation!”
“For Mike’s sake, Soddy, don’t call it transmutation. They’ll have our heads off as alchemists.” --purportedly Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy after determining that transmutation happens naturally in
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You are correct, there are both positive and negative parallels between the search for room-temperature superconductivity, and alchemy. Though the former may prove to be as futile as the latter, there are likely to be interesting and useful discoveries from each.
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You are correct, there are both positive and negative parallels between the search for room-temperature superconductivity, and alchemy. Though the former may prove to be as futile as the latter, there are likely to be interesting and useful discoveries from each.
Futile is an interesting perspective. We can, in fact, turn lead into gold all day long now. It's a lot more expensive than just mining gold, and you have to chemically separate it from other nuclear byproducts, and it's especially hard to separate the radioactive gold from the stable isotopes. Aside from those little issues though, one of the big dreams of alchemy has been fulfilled. The other one, the elixir of life, we're still working on, incremental step by incremental step. Every cure for every diseas
Don't forget (Score:4, Interesting)
convincing (Score:2)
They don't have to convince anyone. The outcome is so interesting that others will want to try it if only to use it as a starting point to investigate other materials.
As an engineering issue, I wonder how much pressure can reasonably be locked up in a pre-stressed or post-stressed structure, even concrete is often under nominal compression
Resistance is not futile (Score:2)
Psychadelic Superconductivity (Score:2)
They may have a crystal blue superconductor, but they will have to persuade me.
Maybe they can model it using a recursive fractal "crimson and clover" algorithm, over and over.
Superconductor (Score:1)