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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?

#71

Post by _joel »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #39
misnome wrote: 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?

and faster

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

#72

Post by jacknews »

candiddevmike wrote: post #43
jacknews wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Think of all the workarounds that we have to use to offset the waste heat and signal degradation of electricity (everywhere, including your computer/phone), and now imagine those things not existing.

This assumes superconducting wires everywhere. I don't really see it happenning in microelectronics for example. You'd have to replace the entire silicon ecosystem with this new material. Not happening soon, probably never.

But sure, for specific applications an increase to 'near 100%' efficiency could have important secondary effects, eliminating heat-sinks, etc.

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

#73

Post by omnibrain »

l33t233372 wrote: post #46
TheRealPomax wrote: post #34

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.

"Jo" is "yupp"

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

#74

Post by l33t233372 »

bhaak wrote: post #11
jacknews wrote: post #6

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

Maglev trains, fusion power plants, fanless super computers in your pocket that charge in a minute and don't get hot. Basically utopia.

I don’t understand how superconductors will make phones into supercomputers. There is a still the limitation of the number of transistors in a given volume.

Also, how does this help fusion become possible?

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

#75

Post by phoenixstrike »

bloopernova wrote: post #52
phoenixstrike wrote: post #26

I am going to attempt to address the common nitpicks in one fell swoop: 1. Rushed publication, plot quality, grammar, etc. Get over yourselves. This is a pre-print for an instant-Nobel, next-tier-of-civilization level discovery. The proper publication will come in due time. Waiting for a more complete verification is a sheltered view. Being first matters. Things changed after the J/Psi discovery in 1974. For those th…

What do you think the chances are of it being a measurement/instruments error? Edited to add: I am not a physicist. I don't know the subtleties of measuring experiments, and it was not my intention to state that there was a measurement error. I just wanted to ask someone for their assessment of the chances it was an error. It's a little depressing that people are so quick to assume the worst of others, but I get why.…

Small. Imperfect contact, unplugged terminals, etc. These are not 1st year grad students who don't know what they are doing. The authors have decades of research and fabrication experience, and publications to back it up. Comments that insinuate it could be those kind of novice mistakes (other comments on HN/reddit, not yours) are frankly insulting and speaks to a profound arrogance in being unable to accept a new discovery.

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

#76

Post by airgapstopgap »

ChemSpider wrote: post #24

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?

No, there's no YB and they propose an entirely novel mechanism for how generic metals (a whole host of possible combinations) can achieve superconductivity in these conditions. At least check out the formula or open the link.

> modified lead-apatite (LK-99) structure

> The superconductivity of LK-99 originates from minute structural distortion by a slight volume shrinkage (0.48 %), not by external factors such as temperature and pressure. The shrinkage is caused by Cu2+ substitution of Pb2+ (2) ions in the insulating network of Pb(2)-phosphate and it generates the stress.

> Pb10(PO4)6O

It's just Lead, Phosphorus and Oxygen all the way.

(That said I don't believe it works)

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

#77

Post by ChemSpider »

jeepers6 wrote: post #65
yk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

Anonymous or not, the "MPI guy" explains why he came to this conclusion, and it sounds legit.

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

#78

Post by saberdancer »

phoenixstrike wrote: post #26

I am going to attempt to address the common nitpicks in one fell swoop: 1. Rushed publication, plot quality, grammar, etc. Get over yourselves. This is a pre-print for an instant-Nobel, next-tier-of-civilization level discovery. The proper publication will come in due time. Waiting for a more complete verification is a sheltered view. Being first matters. Things changed after the J/Psi discovery in 1974. For those th…

I completely agree. I see many people commenting that the document has bad grammar or charts, completely ignoring that they probably authored it in Korean. Also looks like Kwan and HT Kim are fighting who gets to be 3rd Nobel winner so any problems with quality of the layout are easily explained by this.

One thing that is a green flag in my opinion is that apparently they had a sample for a long time (year+) so I find it unlikely they made an obvious measuring mistake.

But as always, most would love to have this be true and sometimes this gets better of us.

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

#79

Post by petesergeant »

retrac wrote: post #63
jacknews wrote: 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 condu…

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

In a way that could be used to power a car?

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

#80

Post by saberdancer »

phoenixstrike wrote: post #75
bloopernova wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the chances are of it being a measurement/instruments error? Edited to add: I am not a physicist. I don't know the subtleties of measuring experiments, and it was not my intention to state that there was a measurement error. I just wanted to ask someone for their assessment of the chances it was an error. It's a little depressing that people are so quick to assume the worst of others, but I get why.…

Small. Imperfect contact, unplugged terminals, etc. These are not 1st year grad students who don't know what they are doing. The authors have decades of research and fabrication experience, and publications to back it up. Comments that insinuate it could be those kind of novice mistakes (other comments on HN/reddit, not yours) are frankly insulting and speaks to a profound arrogance in being unable to accept a new di…

Plus apparently they worked on it for several years, you don't have a terminal unplugged for a year.
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