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A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

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591–600 of 821 posts

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can I have my flying car now? Let's not forget the flying skateboard of the film "Back to the future". I loved it in the film and it's a dream that I still have today - I'm now almost 50 years old so I would probably crash and get killed by using it, but I would still give it a try :)

There's no need to wait for flying skateboards, you can buy a regular skateboard at any shop around town and crash and get killed by using it. (Said in jest by someone who recently turned 41 and hurt his back playing video games last year)

I remember the feeling, while skateboarding, of the change of the roughness of the ground - some streets (or at least portions thereof) were very smooth and that felt already quite like flying => I wonder how that would feel with 0 surface roughness :)

>hurt his back playing video games last year

Some extreme force-feedback device? :)

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#592
post #432
post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Batteries that don't take any time to recharge Huh? Is this actually a thing that this enables? I don't initially see how

Resistance is what makes things hot, and heat is what makes dumping huge amounts of charge current into batteries a bad idea. No resistance → no heat → no need to charge with low current†. Another way to say it is that, with a superconducting wire, you can make the wire as thin as you want and still pass the same amount of current through it, without melting the wire. Picture using a USB-C cable to charge your car. †…

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Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#593
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the "disappointment" with USA scientists in this thread not having yet published a replication. There has only been one weekday since the LK-99 revelation came to light. Have some patience. The analysis from this article is a publication from Berkeley National Lab that has already come out, and Argonne National Lab has announced they have synthesized the material as of yesterday and will release results f…

One thing that has been constant for at least a decade or more is that every time a lab in China publishes even an incremental advance, a legion of internet commenters descends to declare the end of US hegemony because Americans didn't discover it first.

I guess this is what happened after "the bomb" was developed ? The US could hold the world at ransom.

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#594
post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you thinking of supercapacitors?

There is a theory that with room temperature superconductors you could use an inductor for practical energy storage.

what are the practicalities of storing enormous magnetic fields and then collapsing them to draw power? that seems...not obviously a good idea.

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#595

The ramifications of the inflection point we are currently at is mind boggling. I had a hard time explaining this last night but we may very well be witnessing the beginnings of a technological transformation era much like when the p-n junction was invented. From the 1940s standpoint it would be hard to envision all we had today. - Lossless transport of energy - Batteries that don't take any time to recharge - Faster…

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Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overlooking the cell chemistry issue... ... you cannot just dump unlimited current through a superconductor. Once you exceed the critical current density, your superconductor becomes a regular conductor.

And in any case whatever power source you're using cannot deliver infinite power.

Who said infinite power?

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually appreciate that caution. Things have been extremely up in the air and it would be very hard to properly explain what is happening, how it matters and if it matters. The last part I think is why it's a good thing that they held back. There was enough unknown that it wasn't clear if this would ever amount to anymore than "some scientists may or may not have made a big mistake." I think we are hitting the poi…

After racing with each other to fuel political extremism or push the corporate narratives like how working from home is terrible for the worker or how good it is for us that the rich don’t pay the taxes, how unaffordable housing is good for the economy… this is what they choose to be careful about? Nah, this just doesn’t sell or is not a paid article.

It's hard to not let cynicism like this get to me especially when the argument makes so little sense. This doesn't sell? Isn't sensationalist enough? A possible end result of this is magic flying space trains. This isn't exactly some boring in the weeds things. This is extremely easy to hype if you just want to draw eye balls. But sure, yeah, MSM corporate plutocracy or whatever.

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#598

The ramifications of the inflection point we are currently at is mind boggling. I had a hard time explaining this last night but we may very well be witnessing the beginnings of a technological transformation era much like when the p-n junction was invented. From the 1940s standpoint it would be hard to envision all we had today. - Lossless transport of energy - Batteries that don't take any time to recharge - Faster…

It might even all come fast enough to save us from climate change (But I'm not getting my hopes up)

we already know how to stop climate change: actually stop burning shit and deploy existing technologies quickly. the problem is lack of will, not lack of technology.

corollary: anyone trying to say we need fancy new technologies like fusion/superconductores/supercapacitors isn't actually very interested in stopping climate change.

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#599
post #18

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who thought that the DFT computational preprints were very promising. Unfortunately, they also indicate that the desired substitution will be very hard to achieve — crucially, the "crush and separate the composite" suggestion a few commenters have made is unlikely to work, since the heterogeneity exists within the same crystal, depending on whether Cu substitutes into Pb {1}…

Maybe you can help here, I was completely lost in terms of the Iris (Russian Cat Girl) mention of, "engineering conductivity pili of bacteria into the superconductors" is this a reference to nano scale bio engineering or a means of reliable replication of the superconducting structure itself? Or is this just nonsense? https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685322871306928128

Sounds like nonsense. You can't do atomic-level engineering with bacteria, they are 9 orders of magnitude too big. We're talking about being able to place copper atoms at specific points on a crystal structure, while avoiding placing them at points they'd rather be at. Bacteria? Give me a break.
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