Could someone explain why is this world changing?
The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
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Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#72I see lots of comments saying this is a huge deal if true. Can I ask... well, why? What can we do/make with this?
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#73This is an unreviewed preprint coming out of South Korea. If it’s reproducible it would be the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years. It will literally reshape the world. However, the most likely thing is they made a mistake and the paper will be withdrawn. But imagine if it’s true.
I was with them until I came across Figure D on page 7. It uses Comic Sans and calls the entire paper into question. Please note: this comment is an attempt at humor. Various people seem to have a difficult time discerning humor or sarcasm and choose to downvote. It is also possible (but unlikely) that I am not funny.
Neither humor nor sarcasm advance interesting conversations on their own IMO.
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#74This is an unreviewed preprint coming out of South Korea. If it’s reproducible it would be the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years. It will literally reshape the world. However, the most likely thing is they made a mistake and the paper will be withdrawn. But imagine if it’s true.
Even if we found the perfect material, where it was easy and cheap to create long strong wires for power transmission as well as semiconductor-scale nano wires, we'd be gaining something like (wild ass guess) 20% gain in efficiency. 20% would be nice but would it really beat the last hundred years of discoveries? I don't think so, especially with digital tech's profound world-reshaping continuing to accelerate.
There is no substitute for infinite.
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't agree. Producing something at scale is only relevant if the goal is mass commercial distribution. Communication satellites changed the world and they are practically all (i.e., some exceptions such as space-x constellation) one-off builds of single-shot projects.
Communication satellites only changed the world because they broadcast to mass produced receivers.
Mass produce as many receivers you want and don't launch the ad-hoc satellite. How useful are the receivers?
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#76This is an unreviewed preprint coming out of South Korea. If it’s reproducible it would be the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years. It will literally reshape the world. However, the most likely thing is they made a mistake and the paper will be withdrawn. But imagine if it’s true.
"We believe that our new development will be a brand-new historical event that opens a new era for humankind." Hell of a way to end a paper.
If iron was worth naming an era after this will be.
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#77This is an unreviewed preprint coming out of South Korea. If it’s reproducible it would be the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years. It will literally reshape the world. However, the most likely thing is they made a mistake and the paper will be withdrawn. But imagine if it’s true.
Even if we found the perfect material, where it was easy and cheap to create long strong wires for power transmission as well as semiconductor-scale nano wires, we'd be gaining something like (wild ass guess) 20% gain in efficiency. 20% would be nice but would it really beat the last hundred years of discoveries? I don't think so, especially with digital tech's profound world-reshaping continuing to accelerate.
EMF becomes a fungible energy medium. Imagine storing energy in a field, just as we do with MRI machines, momentarily in the poles of motor windings, essentially anything inductive, or that operates as an electromagnet. Apart from dielectric losses and other environmental factors that are inescapable, the magnetic field becomes elastic like air [in] a balloon. The potential for this to modify energy consumption patterns is mind-boggling.
[edit: typo]
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#78This is an unreviewed preprint coming out of South Korea. If it’s reproducible it would be the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years. It will literally reshape the world. However, the most likely thing is they made a mistake and the paper will be withdrawn. But imagine if it’s true.
> the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years I would say that electronic computers would take take the first spot for me, but I don't deny that room-temperature superconductors would be pretty close to the top.
This (or something derived from it) would be used for power delivery literally everywhere in the world. It might well be bigger in scale and volume than all the computers.
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#79Could someone explain why is this world changing?
I believe MRIs use superconductivity, so I assume any application of superconductors that doesn't require heavy, large, energy-consuming cooling will benefit greatly.
Perhaps MRIs will become ubiquitous and cheap, something we all get every time we go to the doctor?
Superconduction also has some weird magnetic properties I believe, so there could be benefits regarding maglev transport.
And finally and most basically, the movement of electrical energy across potentially large distances with zero loss would be a great thing.
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#80big if true. far from a chemistry expert here, but synthesis looks basically trivial (if you consider 10e-5 torr vacuum to be trivial), and the materials are readily available. hell, from the instructions alone i could probably make it at home. i mean the search space is unfathomably large, so i suppose it’s possible that something like this exists, but the paper quality itself doesn’t.. spark joy? :) i’ll maintain a…
I've made YBCO superconductors in my garage many times and the solid state synthesis method in the paper is very similar to that used by hobbyists. In fact, it seems to not require the usual careful slow annealing under flowing oxygen.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if even simpler methods are feasible.
For instance, there's a rapid synthesis method for YBCO that uses a small alumina boat, some glass wool, a residential 800w microwave oven, and slightly modified mixture of precursors to allow free oxygen to be liberated in the mixture during heating and trapped in the wool around the sample so you don't need to rig an oxygen concentrator up. IIRC it only takes about 15 minutes to prepare a sample.
This is extremely exciting! I've read hundreds of papers on superconductor manufacture and testing over the years and this has all the hallmarks of legitimacy, at least from my citizen-mad-scientist perspective.