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The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

arxiv.org

881–890 of 906 posts

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

#881

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can you? The proposed model implies this relies on non-periodic impurities to achieve superconductivity, and the displayed strength is consistent with superconductivity only appearing on some places spread inside the material. This seems qualitatively different from YBCO. 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 qual…

You are probably right about the details, but as a general observation: industrial products tend to get better over time as people learn how to make them more properly. The first batches coming out of a lab are usually terrible compared to what's coming out of factories a few decades down the line.

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

#882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite example is the hydrogen fuel cell. It was invented before the lead acid battery back in the 1800s. PEM gave it a boost around the Apollo era, but that wasn't enough to make it widespread either. Lead-Acid went through its whole 100+ year character arc and hydrogen fuel cells still haven't found product market fit. Sometimes that's how it is.

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.

Well, the other 'biggest issue' is that hydrogen is only a terrible battery.

You need an energy source to make hydrogen (eg out of water, or you make it via fossil fuels etc). When you use up the hydrogen, you get some energy back out. A lot less energy, to be honest.

So it's equivalent to a battery. Not to an energy source.

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

#885

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay I can believe super conductivity, but having LK-99 a registered trademark already is where I draw the line.

Is it even possible to have super conduction at room temperature? I always thought it was highly associated with cold temperatures.

Until and unless this story gets proven true, it's unknown. We can't reliably predict what materials will have what properties.

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

#886
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two of the authors are the same. A little odd.

I mean- not really? They have developed / synthesized the material, and they collaborated with another lab that had the skills and equipment to conduct and interpret specific experimental techniques and results. Fairly common, especially in life sciences, and I suspect chemistry and materials science. Added in edit: This doesn’t make the result any more or less credible; for that, the true test is independent replica…

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

#887
post #573

This is almost certainly a sham. I had hopes before watching the videos, but the only effects shown are normal paramagnetism (from the copper substrate) and diamagnetism (pyrolytic graphite).

Copper is diamagnetic, not paramagnetic

Thanks for the correction - yes of course!

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

#888
post #453

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…

Im thinking transportation pipelines for small packages. A superconduction railway inside a vacum tube.

step forward for hyperloop-like transports

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

#889

Earlier 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.

cough long term waste storage and cleanup cough

Reprocess until it’s about 100y unsafe then dump it down a deep shaft and seal with concrete. Done.

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

#890

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 elec…

Ideally you build an international power grid. Solar in the Sahara powers Europe but then you loop it around the world and we have 24 hour power from Australia and the Atacama, tied into hydro, nuclear and wind.

Put it in your battery anode and you can charge your car in a few seconds.

Computers won't need cooling and can be way smaller. Quantum computing becomes more practical. AGI is more likely.

Huge implications for Fusion, which then means we can start pulling CO2 from the air since we'll have more power than we need...

'good news' doesn't begin to cover it :)

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