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Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

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Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#271

Post by nate_martin »

simmanian wrote: post #168
swader999 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear fusion much easier, quantum computing, lossless electricity transmission, insane batteries. Dirt cheap MRIs, Basically welcome to the Jetsons. Much easier to mitigate climate change to the point where we can just deal with it.

How would this make climate change easier to deal with? Because it would make everything that much more efficient? I'm honestly trying to understand the implications.

It takes energy to remove carbon from the atmosphere. With abundant energy from fusion you could just remove the carbon added by humans.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#272

Post by gus_massa »

jacquesm wrote: post #243
gus_massa wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, "replication" in this experiments usualy means foloeing the oficial recipe and many small variants. Publishing an exact reproduction is difficult, but a new record a few degrees hotter is easy. (And even another variant with a lower temperature and more tolerance for current or magnetic field can be published with the right text.)

> but a new record a few degrees hotter is easy Assuming one exists. Assuming it is real.

Yep. Easier to publish, assuming it exist and you can find it.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#273

Post by bandrami »

dkqmduems wrote: post #248
aeternum wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh really, so why do the Navier-Stokes equations work?

Conservation of momentum?

There's no a priori reason conservation of momentum would apply; for that matter in 0-angle-of-attack aviation it doesn't.

Maybe to put it differently, the "Newtonian" model of flight comes out of assuming CoM applies, which we know isn't universally true.

EDITING: of course it always "applies" in the sense that there is a definable system in which total momentum will be unchanged, the point being that there is no guarantee that's a system in which the plane gets lift greater than its weight

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#274

Post by m463 »

tamimio wrote: post #134
jonplackett wrote: post #11

If this material does just what they say it does, what would it revolutionise? Or as the article talks about, is this just a pointer at other possibilities that would be the real game changers?

I would build a drone that levitates indefinitely.. for a starter.

but not above 400 feet.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#275

Post by ethn »

akjssdk wrote: post #54
mmastrac wrote: post #12

This is an extremely useful summarization of the original paper. > The authors believe that the modified/strained structure of their material creates a large number of “quantum wells” between particular lead atoms and the adjacent oxygens of the phosphate groups bound to them, in effect making a two-dimensional “electron gas”. They propose that electron tunneling between these quantum wells, which are between 3.7 and…

I don't think the actual proposed superconductivity mechanism is the relevant part of this paper. It is much easier to prove that this is superconducting than to prove why. And in a sense it is a bit less relevant. Although developing a working theory for room temperature is also probably worth a Nobel prize, so I am willing to bet some theorists are also running to their blackboards as we speak.

They made a synthetic a priori prediction proven by experiment. In science, that's the strongest type of claim.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#276

Post by reaperman »

SkyBelow wrote: post #105
mthomasmw wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a link handy for "we don't know how bikes work" ?

I'm assuming they mean the balance mechanism, and specifically what allows us to balance. How much is it the rider shifting their weight, how much is micro steering adjusts as we move forward, how much is the gyroscopic forces of the wheels, how much of it has to do with the angle of the handle bars to the wheel verse the center of weight. That said, I'm guessing this one is well understood by experts, but more compl…

We have self-balancing bicycles. We clearly know it well enough to replace the human with a computerized machine.

Maybe we don’t know how humans use the bicycle but we know how bicycles balance, we can write programs to balance them physically.

0: https://youtu.be/Ya7iacmVjUM

1: https://youtu.be/2Z67NkvXIF4

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#277

Post by elihu »

jonplackett wrote: post #11

If this material does just what they say it does, what would it revolutionise? Or as the article talks about, is this just a pointer at other possibilities that would be the real game changers?

I think it'd be valuable for anything that conducts electricity, and where resistive losses are significant or where strong electromagnets are desired.

So, long distance electricity transmission, motors, generators, MRI machines and magnetic confinement nuclear fusion reactors for example.

That said, the material as synthesized might not be very good for some particular application. The current handling capacity might not be good enough, or it might not be physically strong enough to use as motor windings.

I don't know enough to do the comparison, but I'd be curious how this new material holds up when compared to copper or aluminum wire in terms of current capacity, weight, strength, and cost of materials. One of the big reasons for skepticism about humanity's prospects for converting to a non-fossil-fuel based energy system is that there just isn't enough of the important metal resources to build all the batteries/EVs/transmission lines/solar panels/windmills we need. I myself am skeptical of the skeptics because I think the resource bottlenecks are overstated and there are usually acceptable workarounds, but I do think copper is going to be in very high demand over then next several decades. If we have a good, cheap copper alternative then that solves that problem. (It also introduces another, as we would then have to deal with enormous quantities of lead-based cabling.)

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#278

Post by phyzome »

bluGill wrote: post #101
scarmig wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. BCS was proposed a half century after the first conventional superconductor was discovered, and even today we don't have a convincing mechanism for "regular" high-Tc superconductors. But if it superconducts, it superconducts, and research into the how is useful but not a blocker to using it.

That depends. If it super conducts, but it isn't useful in the real world, then we will be waiting for theory to - hopefully - give us some insight into how to improve things to useful. This only can carry a small amount of current. I'm not sure how to figure out what small means (numbers are given in the article if you know how to use them!), but if the losses using regular wire are less than the energy needed to ma…

Unfortunately, most companies seem to have little compunction about exposing workers, consumers, or the environment to toxic materials. The use of lead is not in any way a blocker, for better or worse.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#279

Post by Terr_ »

akjssdk wrote: post #54
mmastrac wrote: post #12

This is an extremely useful summarization of the original paper. > The authors believe that the modified/strained structure of their material creates a large number of “quantum wells” between particular lead atoms and the adjacent oxygens of the phosphate groups bound to them, in effect making a two-dimensional “electron gas”. They propose that electron tunneling between these quantum wells, which are between 3.7 and…

I don't think the actual proposed superconductivity mechanism is the relevant part of this paper. It is much easier to prove that this is superconducting than to prove why. And in a sense it is a bit less relevant. Although developing a working theory for room temperature is also probably worth a Nobel prize, so I am willing to bet some theorists are also running to their blackboards as we speak.

> I don't think the actual proposed superconductivity mechanism is the relevant part of this paper.

Plus even if the proposed-mechanism is incorrect and even if the effect is not strong enough for practical engineering... There's value in a "real" (if weak) superconductor which is both easy to fabricate and easy to run tests on.

It could become a starting-point for dozens of other tweaked formulations, enabling all sorts of not-so-expensive experiments and fresh data about how different parameters lead to different electromagnetic outcomes.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#280

Post by swader999 »

simmanian wrote: post #168
swader999 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear fusion much easier, quantum computing, lossless electricity transmission, insane batteries. Dirt cheap MRIs, Basically welcome to the Jetsons. Much easier to mitigate climate change to the point where we can just deal with it.

How would this make climate change easier to deal with? Because it would make everything that much more efficient? I'm honestly trying to understand the implications.

Batteries and nuclear fusion. With easy energy, you can pull the carbon out of the air.
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