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Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

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Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Q: Das Layout sieht Scheiße aus! A: Jo, das ist das historische Default-Layout. solid.

My German is poor. Does this say: Q: The layout is very shitty! A: No, it’s the historically default layout.

No, it says:

A: Yes, that's the historic default layout

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#62
post #28

A source (German) attributed to the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research thinks the paper is bogus [0] [0] https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=9a3f8740

Pretty sure I read this comment somewhere else (not attributed to Max Planck Institute), I think it was a guy on reddit.

Maybe they are the same but could be just copy paste from Reddit.

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#63
post #6

"this may spark a revolution in electronics as significant as the invention of the transistor, vacuum tube, and induction motor." How, exactly?

Superconductors are in the name. They're ideal conductors. As a corollary, superconductors coiled into a wire, shaped like an inductor, are also ideal inductors. By ideal, I informally mean nearly perfect in a mathematical sense.

A thin superconductor can carry an almost arbitrary amount of electricity with 0% loss. This is a real-world application already for superconductors, but it requires cooling the entire conductor to liquid helium temperature. (It's not truly limitless - enough current will eventually break down the superconducting effect - but ten billion watts down a 1 mm thick wire is doable.)

Similarly, an inductor made out of a superconductor, that is looped back on itself, can hold a magnetic field indefinitely, with 0% loss. Energy storage.

Also, novel ways of manipulating magnetic fields, and as a consequence of that, novel ways of manipulating radiation that interacts with magnetic fields. Really, anything that needs a strong magnetic field could benefit. Maglev trains. Portable MRI scanners would exist today, if the electromagnet didn't need to be submerged in liquid helium.

Superconducting computer circuits would dissipate no heat other than for the work required to physically change the state of the transistors. Power consumption could decrease by several orders of magnitude. Though to be honest, one day printing room-temperature superconductors lithographically is a rather unlikely prospect. But one can hope.

And some proposed realizations of quantum computing would benefit from small, extremely powerful magnets, while other proposed methods exploit the properties of superconductors directly (Josephson effect).

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#64

My issue here is: This new material is essentially standard "high temperature" YBCO superconductor material just slightly modified, or? The authors are not doing anything dramatically new, like a new chemistry. How likely is it that all the other 1000s of labs doing research on this topic just missed this lucky combination of baking, cooling and whatnot?

Kim seems to credit the fact that he’s a chemist, not a physicist.

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#65
post #55
post #28

A source (German) attributed to the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research thinks the paper is bogus [0] [0] https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=9a3f8740

For context, Fefe is a rather famous German hacker and his blog serves as rumor mill for German nerds. So on one hand I wouldn't trust it that much, on the other hand it is precisely where I would expect knowledgeable people ranting about a bad paper anonymously. (And what they are saying sounds like the type of thing domain experts would pay attention to.)

[flagged]

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#66
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone posted a ChatGPT answer, which seems a pretty good response: Energy Efficiency: Superconductors conduct electricity without resistance, which means they don't produce heat as a byproduct. This could make electronic devices more energy-efficient and help them run cooler, which could extend battery life in mobile devices and potentially reduce the need for cooling in larger devices like computers. Processing Sp…

So basically 'more efficient'? I'd dispute the 'dramatically' more efficient power grids, unless that's couched in industry terms - ie a 10% reduction in transmission losses might be 'dramatic' for energy grid engineers. But not really world-changing, for the rest of us. "Aerospace and Defense: Superconductors could be used in a variety of aerospace and defense applications, such as advanced radar systems, satellite…

SQUID sensors would be very feasible, with increased sensitivity. I just learned that extremely directional transceivers would be possible due to some weird quantum effects. Probably propulsion would be affected by higher efficiency motors. So it's a huge deal if it's real.

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#67
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conduct electricity with zero resistance. This has been possible at cryogenic temperatures (powers supermagnets, MRI etc) but running at room temperature _and pressure_ means in theory that you don’t need expensive support machinery. Has been the holy grail for the field. If true, this specific case is only low current, but demonstrates such a thing is possible - almost certainly winning an instant Nobel Prize.

Does this mean there would be no heat waste? And devices like phones and computers wouldn't get hot?

Correct

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#68
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this guy posting anywhere besides Twitter (or... X)? I can't view without an account.

LOL they really renamed it X? I see they even bought x.com which surely they paid some ridiculous amount for, and yet they wasn’t able to spend any cent on original logo, at least X.org logo as an orange O.

> even bought x.com

Elon Musk re-bought the domain 6 years ago, after having originally owned it since 1999, apparently being very attached to it [0]. As for the logo, yeah, I agree there.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#69
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conduct electricity with zero resistance. This has been possible at cryogenic temperatures (powers supermagnets, MRI etc) but running at room temperature _and pressure_ means in theory that you don’t need expensive support machinery. Has been the holy grail for the field. If true, this specific case is only low current, but demonstrates such a thing is possible - almost certainly winning an instant Nobel Prize.

Does this mean there would be no heat waste? And devices like phones and computers wouldn't get hot?

Yes, among many other things.

There's many vast amounts of electricity wasted due to transmission losses. Magnets for fusion plants would become much cheaper.

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#70
post #12
post #6

"this may spark a revolution in electronics as significant as the invention of the transistor, vacuum tube, and induction motor." How, exactly?

Someone posted a ChatGPT answer, which seems a pretty good response: Energy Efficiency: Superconductors conduct electricity without resistance, which means they don't produce heat as a byproduct. This could make electronic devices more energy-efficient and help them run cooler, which could extend battery life in mobile devices and potentially reduce the need for cooling in larger devices like computers. Processing Sp…

Asking the AI in my pocket what the new superconductor technology can do for society.

We’re kinda in the future, and that’s neat.

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