651–660 of 906 posts
Anyone smarter than me know how this differs from this sham a few years ago? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24777268 Also, I see a lot of people claiming superconductors could become household items. What are super conductors even made of? Are these materials accessible to normal people?
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If the argument is that superconductivity = better efficiency = less energy use, then I am afraid that Jevon's Paradox has some bad news: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
No, the argument is that if this is true and it can be commercialized cost effectively that there may be an energy storage solution just over the horizon that would allow for all kinds of things that are currently impossible, such as summer/winter energy storage and other very nice to haves. It is obviously much too early to say anything about this so think of it as hope rather than anything more solid but it isn't n…
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There are plenty of commercial applications of hydrogen fuel cells though. The biggest issue has been pretty much a constant over the time since it has been invented: keeping the membranes free from impurities is hard. But there are all kinds of transportation devices using hydrogen in production today.
Sure, but the point is that they hardly caused a revolution in energy storage. If fuel cells didn't exist, for the average person life would be exactly the same. Revolutionary tech does change normal peoples lives, and sometimes very rapidly, but a lot of stuff that looks revolutionary just kind of never works out. I'd say nuclear power is probably the prime example of this. It was supposed to bring us electricity to…
That's not a technical issue though.
Cost efficiency of nuclear energy has actually declined over time...which, unless science is devolving, should tell you something hinky is happening.
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No, the argument is that if this is true and it can be commercialized cost effectively that there may be an energy storage solution just over the horizon that would allow for all kinds of things that are currently impossible, such as summer/winter energy storage and other very nice to haves. It is obviously much too early to say anything about this so think of it as hope rather than anything more solid but it isn't n…
It may also make the energy (and economic) costs of fusion make a lot more sense, since superconductors are used to contain the plasma in fusion reactors.
- Step 1: Prepare lanarkite, Pb2SO5, by mixing PbO and PbSO4 powders in a 1:1 molar ratio in an agate mortar with a pestle. Transfer the mixture to an alumina crucible and react it at 725 °C for 24 hours in a furnace. Pulverize the white product with the mortar.
- Step 2: Prepare copper phosphide, Cu3P, by mixing Cu and P powders in a 3:1 molar ratio. Transfer the mixture to a quartz tube and seal it under a vacuum of 10-5 Torr. React it at 550 °C for 48 hours in a furnace. Take out the dark gray ingot and pulverize it.
- Step 3: Mix lanarkite and copper phosphide powders in a 1:1 molar ratio in an agate mortar with a pestle. Transfer the mixture to a reaction tube and seal it under a vacuum of 10-5 Torr. React it at 925 °C for 10 hours in a furnace. Take out the dark gray ingot and shape it into thin cuboids for electrical measurements. Pulverize some of the ingot for other analyses.
These are the steps to synthesize the LK-99 material.
Guys, even if everything in this paper is true, the material as it is might have limited applications. From what they show, the critical field and critical current seem very low. 2500 Oe is like 0.25 Tesla. Even REBCO at 77K is >1T. And 2500 Oe is not even at critical temperature but much lower. From skimming through the article I couldn't find the sample size of the current measurement to get the critical current de…
You can improve the current density a lot if you can make a single crystal, or at least make your crystal grains larger. Impure superconductor samples often come out as a spongy mixture of superconducting and non-superconducting bits, the critical current is limited because less then 25% of the cross section is actually carrying current. When I was DIYing YBCO this is what happened most of the time. Every now and the…
I don't know enough to be sure on the certainty of that model, but it seems well supported. So I'd be surprised if only improving the material quality was enough to make it strong.
Could someone explain why is this world changing?
Superconductors are basically perfectly conductive wire. Wires that transfer 100% of power over arbitrary distances and that don't heat up. Obviously there are limits, you can't put arbitrary power over a hair thin filament but as long as you're under that limit you get perfect efficiency. MRI machines can be made a lot simpler as you no longer need to use liquid nitrogen to cool the superconductors. MRI machines cou…
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Very true. I remember cheering since the mid 80's every time the temperature for superconductivity went up, sometimes with 20 degrees K in one go. And then it was quiet for a long long time with a plateau. More recently, two major jumps, the last one of > 50 degrees (2017, H2S), and now this... https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002...
I've forgotten how many times one of the most important thresholds in our times has been bumped up a bit. Now we seem to be offered heaven on a plate. If superconductance can be reliably demonstrated at RTP (you wear a light cotton shirt, instead of 1cm thick fancy weaves involving an awful lot of rubber) then we are laughing all the way to ameliorating climate change. Even if this result is confirmed then I think it…
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Unfortunately, as soon as you actually use the result of the computation in any kind of practical manner as an output, you break reversibility, though you could make the heat production happen away from the computation.
The idea of reversible computing is that if you only add heat in a few instructions, you can have a much more economical computer. And magnetronics is a good candidate for implementing this, so yeah, computers that use a lot less power are an application too.