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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?

#161

Post by p1mrx »

yetihehe wrote: post #107
l33t233372 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> I don’t understand how superconductors will make phones into supercomputers. Currently transistors and connections use a lot of power just to transfer some bits, superconducting wires and maybe transistors would help. > Also, how does this help fusion become possible? Stronger magnets which you don't need to cool with liquid helium will help achieve better plasma confinement.

We've already passed the point where superconductors need liquid helium:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_fusion_reactor

"The most probable candidate material is yttrium barium copper oxide, with a design temperature of 20 K, allowing various coolants (e.g. liquid hydrogen, liquid neon, or helium gas) instead of the much more complicated liquid helium refrigeration chosen by ITER."

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

#162

Post by nemo44x »

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…

Agreed. Skepticism is not only necessary but welcomed. But some of the comments are painting these guys like they are clowns. A bit of digging shows they've been working on this in some part since 1999 and that they were able to secure funding a few years back. And since then they've brought on other highly credible people and have in fact have been able to build this material awhile now.

This isn't some grad students that just stumbled upon something they mistook for something else. There's a really good chance this is legit and that lots of physics will need to be looked at.

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

#163

Post by [deleted] »

gameshot911 wrote: post #153
retrac wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Could this be used to make a bomb? If the new material really is as easy to manufacture as it seems, could homegrown terrorists easily create WMDs?

[deleted]

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

#164

Post by rcpt »

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…

Portable MRI is sort of possible now

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0811222106

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

#165

Post by mrbonner »

I’m a noob when it comes to SC. Sorry to ask this question here and hope someone could explain. I can’t get any answer from Google. What is the excitement around seeing floating magnets? My understanding is that we can have 2 regular magnets float if position them in opposite polarity, right?

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

#166

Post by rcpt »

DrBazza wrote: post #38
bhaak wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe it will be the thing that gives the US a nudge towards building a high speed train network. Commodity maglev would be generational leap over existing high speed rail. It would be an economic driver for the US, and take a lot of planes out of the sky, and even freight off the roads.

Ultra efficient super fast maglev trains between our most important cities? Not in MY backyard!

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

#167

Post by ceejayoz »

mrbonner wrote: post #165

I’m a noob when it comes to SC. Sorry to ask this question here and hope someone could explain. I can’t get any answer from Google. What is the excitement around seeing floating magnets? My understanding is that we can have 2 regular magnets float if position them in opposite polarity, right?

Levitation demonstrates the superconductivity, but that's not all it's useful for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_applications_of_...

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

#168

Post by bick_nyers »

l33t233372 wrote: post #74
bhaak wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The clock speeds are 100x higher so we don't need to match 1 for 1 with silicon transistors to have advantages.

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

#169

Post by rcpt »

MaintenanceMode wrote: post #156
l33t233372 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With apologies for being the pedantic person, you're not really asking the AI in your pocket. You're just using the web browser on your pocket computer to compose a message to the massive AI system running in some datacenter somewhere. Ironically, if this problem does get solved, you could have the whole AI system in your pocket.

Oh ok so all he had to do was send a message from his hand to fucking space before he talk to the AI. Basically the dark ages here.

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

#170

Post by bick_nyers »

rcpt wrote: post #166
DrBazza wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it will be the thing that gives the US a nudge towards building a high speed train network. Commodity maglev would be generational leap over existing high speed rail. It would be an economic driver for the US, and take a lot of planes out of the sky, and even freight off the roads.

Ultra efficient super fast maglev trains between our most important cities? Not in MY backyard!

You want to bury a power cable connecting my city to a solar farm in the Sahara desert? Not in MY backyard!
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