Despite technological challenges ahead, 400K as critical temperatute is Hot!
We are into Hot Temperature superconductivity regime, not room tempearature.
The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
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Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#732Earlier 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 :)
One thing I can imagine is desktop MRI machines, or, at least, much cheaper and less finicky big MRI machines that don’t take days to chill to operating temperature.
Maglevs are also a popular guess - safer, faster, and more power efficient ground mass transport would be a huge thing.
Maybe even magnetic rail space launches.
And, of course, military applications (the last few examples I mentioned involve acceleration of big-ish masses to surreally high velocities, which is popular approach to weaponry).
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#733Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Any news yet?
You could almost make this stuff in a pizza oven.
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#734No one refers to Robust superconductivity in magic-angle multilayer graphene family - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-022-01287-1
How is this better than this?
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#735Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It was supposed to bring us electricity too cheap to meter, but it's actually the most expensive form of generation that anyone bothers to build. 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.
The reason is pretty obvious and doesn't require any kind of conspiracy. Nuclear can be done safely, we know this, because every single time there has been an accident it's because an operator did something wrong. The problem is that nobody has yet designed a reactor that a sufficiently amoral operator could not make unsafe. Even if you have completely automatic and passive safety features, a bad operator could disab…
> The problem is that nobody has yet designed a reactor that a sufficiently amoral operator could not make unsafe.
That's not true. There are many designs (e.g. molten salt reactors) where the operator cannot do anything to cause the reactor to fail.
The reason we're stuck with water reactors is mainly politics, and somewhat laziness.
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#736Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#737Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
>Nuclear power and coal power are both heat engines turning heat into mechanical energy and subsequently electricity. They merely use a different heat source.
Not completely true. There are some experimental nuclear reactors that convert nuclear energy directly to electricity without the heat cycle, such as [Helion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helion_Energy).
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#738Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm quite happy it didn't keep going, though not for lack of trying.
Some how, I read : "I'm quite happy it didn't keep going, though not for lack of _f_rying." Besides, what's the bathing suit name reference ? I don't get it.
The bikini swimsuit was named after the Bikini Atoll. A bit of a mixup from OP though: it wasn’t named after fusion bombs. The bikini swimsuit was announced a few days after the first public fission bomb test there (Crossroads Able) in 1946. The first fusion bomb test there (Castle Bravo) wasn’t until 1954.
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#739Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would superconductivity help to reverse climate change? Honest question.
I'm not sure what the GP envisions but one thing you could use superconducting materials for that don't require a bunch of extra gear to operate is to store energy in loops of it. This may well allow for a relatively high storage density (but probably not nearly as high as chemical ways of storing that energy but with better efficiency, and for stationary applications density is less of a factor than for anything mob…
The figures I’ve seen for superconducting energy storage are in the regime of “10GWh per km of cable”.
Quite a bit more than chemical, in other words, the chief problem being what happens if it quenches. Or the cables break.
And cost.