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The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

arxiv.org

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Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#121

One of the authors in a related paper[1] is Hyun-Tak Kim. He has many publications in peer-reviewed journals[2]. One even has > 1500 citations[3]. I can't tell if there is a catch anywhere, this seems pretty legitimate. Also, unlike some previous claims that required sophisticated setup to reproduce, this seems dead simple. I think we will hear from other researchers very soon. 1. Superconductor Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O show…

> Superconductor Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O showing levitation at room temperature and atmospheric pressure

Is it late April Fools joke?

It can’t be true.

Edit: I am not surprised it levitates. I am astonished by how much it will reshape our world if it is real room-temp and ambient-pressure superconductor. Also is easy to produce. Just too good to be true.

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#122

This 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 However, the most likely thing is they made a mistake and the paper will be withdrawn.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.

It could potentially change energy storage. Superconductors with refrigeration are already used for this, but only in niche applications.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energ...

I'm not an expert, and everything that follows comes from a quick reading of this Wikipedia article.

It seems like (counter-intuitively) refrigeration isn't a significant cost compared to all the other stuff that's necessary. So at first glance it seems like high-temperature superconductors might not make a big difference.

However, that Wikipedia article does say this:

> The critical temperature of a superconductor also has a strong correlation with the critical current. A substance with a high critical temperature will also have a high critical current. This higher critical current will raise the energy storage exponentially. This will massively increase the use of a SMES system.

Right now, superconducting energy storage has a lot of advantages, but it doesn't have very good energy density (by mass). Not even a tenth of what lithium-ion batteries have. I assume you couldn't power a car with it. But it has some compelling advantages in other areas. It has unlimited charge/discharge cycles. It has zero self-discharge. It has unlimited (in theory) power density, so you could charge or discharge it arbitrarily fast.

Depending on what the energy density ends up being, it might suddenly become way more useful. It would have to be a gigantic leap in energy density, though.

Also, not needing refrigeration could potentially open up smaller scale applications. Maybe you could have a residential superconductor storage system for your solar panels. (Although I don't know about its safety, so maybe not.)

All this assumes the cost to build it is reasonable compared to other alternatives, that the discovery is real, etc.

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#123
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Can someone ELI5 to those of us who aren't even sure what a superconductor is?

A material with no electrical resistance. Build a wire out of it and the voltage will be the same on both ends.

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#124

Could someone explain why is this world changing?

Superconductors change every assumption about how we harness electricity and magnetism. Beyond reducing the cost of electricity transmission, they enable all sorts of fascinating applications: - They enable low cost, continuous, passively-stable magnetic levitation. Superconductors could replace ball bearings in many applications. - They enable permanent magnets that are far stronger than any we make from conventiona…

What if your PC did not need cooling, because it generated no heat? How much more potent could computers be?

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#125
post #4

If this were true, I would’ve expected to see it on the front page of the New York Times, not hiding in a scientific journal. Color me skeptical, with a hint of optimism.

AFAICT this has not yet been published in a scientific journal, and has not passed peer review of any sort. Having said that, there's been at least one story on HN this past week where researchers were chastised for going to the press before properly vetting their results.

It's very common to post papers to arxiv while at the same time submitting the paper to a journal.

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Specifically you could lay undersea superconducting cables around the world and rely on a global electrical grid which allows for nearly 100% solar generation. Superconducting magnets become cheap and widely available which allows for maglev trains at massive scale. Costs for the LHC and similar experiments would drop dramatically. MRIs would only require air conditioning, if that; Modern cell phones are sufficient t…

I think not just maglev: a lot of typical bearings could possibly be switched from ball / roll to maglev, saving a lot on friction and maintenance.

Undersea cables are a pie in the sky; current high-load cables in urban an industrial areas could be made much smaller, simpler, and lossless.

I wonder if transformers, currently huge and expensive, could be made better with this, too; at least the ohmic losses could be removed, and thus a lot of need for cooling, and the fire hazards.

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#127
post #19

Will they invite a wide range of experts to publicly test their material?

Let's hope so. The easiest way to convince the world that you have a room temperature superconductor is to make up a big batch of samples and offer to distribute them to national labs for testing. First test, does it levitate a small permanent magnet, demonstrating diamagnetism?

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#128

One of the authors in a related paper[1] is Hyun-Tak Kim. He has many publications in peer-reviewed journals[2]. One even has > 1500 citations[3]. I can't tell if there is a catch anywhere, this seems pretty legitimate. Also, unlike some previous claims that required sophisticated setup to reproduce, this seems dead simple. I think we will hear from other researchers very soon. 1. Superconductor Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O show…

> Superconductor Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O showing levitation at room temperature and atmospheric pressure Is it late April Fools joke? It can’t be true. Edit: I am not surprised it levitates. I am astonished by how much it will reshape our world if it is real room-temp and ambient-pressure superconductor. Also is easy to produce. Just too good to be true.

All of those elements are so common - this should be easy to test. We'll see.

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#129
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the paper has experimental results and it should be easily reproducible by pretty much any lab. Do you think they should be hopping on CNN to give a public demonstration with the announcement? If a material with the properties described actually exists, this paper is exactly the kind of announcement and evidence we'd want for it.

No, I agree with you that a quiet “this is what we've found, this is what we think it means, please reproduce or tell us if you find something we've misinterpreted”, rather than a public fanfare, is how a potential scientific breakthrough should be done IMO. I think I cross-pollinated this thread with another where someone was asking “if this is true why isn't it on the front pages”. The extraordinary evidence I'd wa…

But this is exactly the quiet please reproduce? It's a preprint posted to arxiv, with a very easy to follow material synthesis process in the supplemental materials section?

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#130
post #127
post #19

Will they invite a wide range of experts to publicly test their material?

Let's hope so. The easiest way to convince the world that you have a room temperature superconductor is to make up a big batch of samples and offer to distribute them to national labs for testing. First test, does it levitate a small permanent magnet, demonstrating diamagnetism?

They have photographs of that on page 7 of the sister paper: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2307/2307.12037.pdf

Would love 3rd party confirmation as well, of course.

Edit: Here's a video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtVjGWpbE7k

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