Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 362 posts

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

#131

Post by dougmwne »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #95
carabiner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

We haven't had "the beginning of AGI" and there is no reason cheaper electricity would "destabilize society".

Aaactuallly…

Our society is build on a foundation of relatively cheap energy. Massive amounts of energy are built into the production of every item of food that reaches your fridge or item that reaches your closet. The unleashing of stored energy was the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

If energy became 1000 or 1 million times cheaper, it would transform society. Global warming would be solved. Food would be solved. Water would be solved. Equal access to all materials goods would be solved. I’d personally be living in a Dr. Evil base on top of an alpine glacier that I myself re-froze. That or a floating city over the South Pacific.

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

#132

Post by hatsunearu »

guerrilla wrote: post #113
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers would still get hot, because the main cause of heat is not resistance in wires, it's that when a transistor switches with charge in the gate, you need to dump that charge, and when you do this it turns to heat. They would get less hot, because there are plenty of transmission losses too.

People were arguing about this earlier (some claimimg the opposite) but I didn't see a conclusion. Do you have an external citation handy?

I was one of the people who said power is wasted in wires.

When the charged stored inside a chip needs to change (like go from high to low), that energy associated with the charge needs to go somewhere. Currently most of the charge is dissipated in the wire and some of it within the transistor.

If the wires have no resistance, the transistor will be the one dissipating the energy, not the energy simply disappears.

So technically both options are right, but my position is the “technically right, but practically wrong” position lol

That said if the interconnects are less resistive, the switching process becomes more efficient and less power will be wasted than the bare minimum required.

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

#133

Post by Cthulhu_ »

willis936 wrote: post #9
23B1 wrote: post #7

Just for fun: Am I the only one who thinks there's connection between this and the UAP news that's coming out? RTSC would probably enable a lot of incredible energy & maneuverability capabilities... Sorry, indulging in a little off-topic conspiracy theorizing.

It is fun to joke about alien technology. But they are unrelated in reality. In fact they are pretty uncorrelated in terms of timeline. This material has supposedly been waiting in the wings for a while.

Rumours about UFOs being hidden by the US government have also been in the wings for a while - like 70, 80 years.

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

#134

Post by dang »

naillo wrote: post #14

You can tell when someone shouldn't be listened to online if they feel a need to give a "take" to this piece of news. Just wait until we get actual results if you don't have a physics phd at minimum no need for any rushed take otherwise.

You're asking people not to be people. Having reactions and opinions and shooting the shit is what we do, and part of how we learn.

HN is an internet watercooler. It's natural and fine for people to talk about the latest interesting things—that's what this place is for, and there's no need to be right all the time.

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

#135

Post by MSFT_Edging »

intrasight wrote: post #116
CyberDildonics wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven't had "the beginning of AGI" and there is no reason cheaper electricity would "destabilize society".

I agree on AGI, but a massive step function shift in energy will certainly destabilize society. The livelihoods of at least a hundred million people depends on fossil fuels.

“It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

--Mark Fisher

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

#136

Post by ccppurcell »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #130
omnibrain wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Jo" is "yupp"

Thanks! I've casually studied German, but I'd never come across "Jo". "Jo" kind of reminds me of Dutch vs. German, where many corresponding words are just slightly different.

Jo (pronounced a bit like your without the r sound) is affirmative in lots of European languages, including Finnish and Czech (it's spelled joo in Finnish iirc)

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

#137

Post by dougmwne »

guerrilla wrote: post #113
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers would still get hot, because the main cause of heat is not resistance in wires, it's that when a transistor switches with charge in the gate, you need to dump that charge, and when you do this it turns to heat. They would get less hot, because there are plenty of transmission losses too.

People were arguing about this earlier (some claimimg the opposite) but I didn't see a conclusion. Do you have an external citation handy?

Citation: thermodynamics.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle

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

#138

Post by fastball »

intrasight wrote: post #116
CyberDildonics wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven't had "the beginning of AGI" and there is no reason cheaper electricity would "destabilize society".

I agree on AGI, but a massive step function shift in energy will certainly destabilize society. The livelihoods of at least a hundred million people depends on fossil fuels.

Efficiency gains are always a win for society.

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

#140

Post by trgern »

RC_ITR wrote: post #112
febed wrote: 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

Interesting that the video of levitation isn't mentioned at all in this rebuttal. Assuming the scientists acted in good faith and this isn't a complete scam, maybe we found something else that doesn't conform to our current understanding of superconductors, but does levitate over a magnetic field at ambient temp/pressure.

The video of “levitation” is one of the things that makes me, a complete ignoramus of the subject matter, skeptical.

https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n

All other instances of “quantum levitation” that I have seen has a “locked in” effect: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws6AAhTw7RA .

Whereas the material in this video seems to bounce and warble in a way that appears to me more akin to standard static or magnetic repulsion.

Hope I’m wrong.

Post reply on HN