Live data from Hacker News

The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

arxiv.org

691–700 of 906 posts

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

#691
post #164

Insane if true. Unlocks a completely new chapter for the human tech tree.

This is too soon. We don't even have monopole magnets but we have superconductor fusion powered AGI. This will destabilize society.

Monopole magnets probably aren’t allowable in our current understanding of physics since the magnetic field is just a consequence of a relativistic E-field.

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

#692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that thing does really want to stay in a constant level on the magnetic field. That would dispel every other explanation on the GP, as it's not simply being repelled or attracted.

I found that video very compelling. If it was eddy current, the float standoff distance would have decayed. It sure looked to me like there was no decay at all, and wow! if true.

What is float standoff distance?

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

#693

Ohh ... this could actually be relatively big. From abstract: "The superconductivity of LK-99 originates from minute structural distortion by a slight volume shrinkage" There was previously research done investigating how changes in atomic structural alignment affect superconductivity (such as by cooling). I think researchers were trying to maintain the spacing that superconductors had while cool even when it was hea…

[deleted]

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

#694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it’s been a pretty solid trend line, new superconductor, first batch is usually kinda shitty, but proves the basics, refining the mix nails down its exact performance characteristics. It’s spongy grainy crap indeed… but as long as their analysis holds up to scrutiny and replication… and whoa boy do I bet there are people already trying to replicate this result as I’m typing my reply and reading the rest of the…

As someone who doesn't follow superconductors, what sorts of things about life/engineering/society would change, how dramatic would it be, and more importantly: which stocks would you pick :)

The changes would be more dramatic than the discovery of fire, but would occur gradually.

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

#695
Good news if true, but are there any comprehensive accounts of what actual benefits/applications ambient superconductors would have?

It seems to me the hype is along the lines of 'free electricity', 'levitating trains', 'magnetic space launches', 'climate change solved', etc, etc, but these seem either wrong or unrealistic to me.

Electricity transmission efficiency can improve a little, for some routes. Same for electric motors, but they're already 95%+ efficient in some cases.

Maybe it would be useful for energy storage, maybe not - depends on capabilities and especially cost.

Might be useful for levitating trains if suitable, but even then this would be a relatively minor part of any overall design.

I can see a lot of applications/possibilities in research, and in sensors, and maybe it enables some things that aren't currently possible, but what?.

It's undeniably neat and interesting, but it seems over-hyped; maybe someone can enlighten me? Is there a 'killer app'?

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

#696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuel cells are just another transformer like the dynamo, or any kind of motor. They turn one kind of energy into another and in the context of hydrogen (which you could produce out of water using electricity as a means of storing energy) it serves to reverse the storage step. This is nice to have but just like nuclear power it's a variation on stuff that we already have, it is at best a quantitative change (and hopef…

> This is nice to have but just like nuclear power it's a variation on stuff that we already have By that logic a super conductor is just a variation of a conductor. Nuclear power is more distinct from burning coal than any superconductor is distinct from copper wire.

Nuclear power and coal power are both heat engines turning heat into mechanical energy and subsequently electricity. They merely use a different heat source.

They share a lot of qualities because of that. They are relatively centralized and best run in a base-load rather than a load-following mode to reduce mechanical stress and increase longevity.

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

#697

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…

I mean, come on. It's still a fantastic achievement! No one is expecting fusion magnets and 10kA power lines from this tomorrow!

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

#698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what we are doing is in fact to re-create conditions roughly on par with what is happening in the core of the sun My understanding is we are not. (Not an expert!) The Sun's core runs around 15 MK [1]. A tokamak, 150 MK [2]. Orders of magnitude rarely come for free in physics. We need those higher energies because we can't, like the Sun, swaddle with the mass of a hundred thousand worlds a low-temperature, low-frequ…

If you start to think of 'temperature' of individual particles as 'speed with which they move' that is a useful rough approximation of trying to figure out what it means that something has a particular temperature. Containing the plasma is hard not just because of the temperature it is at but simply because it tends to destroy anything that contains it and that doesn't really change all that much for 15 million degre…

Larger reactors may simplify the plasma physics, but it complicates the materials engineering significantly. A huge problem already is creating a structure that can bear the weight of the reaction vessels and the gigantic magnetic fields used for containing the plasma, and also continue to do so for a decent amount of time after being exposed to the constant neutron bombardment of D-T fusion.

I very much doubt currently known materials and structures could be used to construct a reactor 10 times the size of ITER.

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

#699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While a room temperature superconductor would potentially have some uses in building a CPU… it’s not as relevant as you might think due to the semiconductor being the operating physics at play to make the transistors and perform the electrical switching and everything stemming from that underlying electrical unit. You could absolutely use superconductors for all the connecting wires, and with a little engineering it…

I found a Wikipedia article about the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_computing Turns out that some research groups have already built superconducting CPU, albeit tiny ones.

I thought there was something out there like this but I wasn’t sure if it had actually built practical devices yet, cool to see where the state of the art has gone since I was last deeply involved in the ASIC & VLSI world. From what I read there I’d expect significant developments based on a number of the technologies outlined in that article if we do indeed have a room temperature superconductor we can build miniature circuits with…. But one issue I don’t think they mentioned will be grain sizes our transistors are getting very very small with current lithography technology. And it may be difficult to get equivalently small features (to use the industry term for the wires and bits we build silicon chip transistors out of) using superconducting materials where we have to control grain sizes and multi element mixtures, there will be lots of work on it so I’m sure it may change, but there will be a fundamental difference in how small we can make the conductor if it involves having multiple elements and crystal grains in specific structural arrangements, unlike a pure metallic wire which can be as thin as a few atoms (at this size your limits entirely depend on how tolerant you are of electrons accidentally tunnelling to other nearby conductors)

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

#700
Yeah, this is a grift.

https://www.wowtv.co.kr/NewsCenter/News/Read?articleId=A2015...

Don't want to translate because it's a waste of time but they are using some crazy buzzwords to raise money for their unlisted stock.

Gems like how they extracted some miracle material from plant matter that exhibits "Quantum Energy Living Body" and it apparently has self-healing properties and emits UVA rays (I cannot translate how ludicrous this is, this is some biosteel cyberpunk 2077 shit)

Post reply on HN