181–190 of 1001 posts
For those experiencing this type of "black swan, but good" event for the first time, it is helpful to recognize that the human tendency to believe that all future "big events" will be dystopian downers, is statistically unsound. For a while I've kept a list of the things that could be "good" swan events, but to be fair I didn't have "room temperature superconductor on that list" :-) Other things that could happen: 1)…
So far lab replication efforts are: Two from HUST: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV14p4y1V7kS/ https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV13k4y1G7i1/ One by USTC https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Ex4y1X7ix/ this tiny sample can stand on its pointy side. One by Qufu Normal University https://www.zhihu.com/zvideo/1669820225079070720 One with THU background but claims a personal project https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV14z4y1s7V…
Because all of these replications aren't contributing much; they're bare bones efforts with little to no scientific insight. Not one of these papers is conclusive in terms of showing evidence for it being a superconductor. None of them even contribute meaningfully. This happens in machine learning all the time. Low quality papers rush in after every major release and announcement in order to be first. But in the long…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1) doesn't make a whole lot of sense. A perfect understanding of something doesn't mean you can fix anything wrong with it. 3) has already happened. The AI chat bots aren't very smart, but they're clearly capable of some degree of basic reasoning.
There's a wonderful paper on 1) from a few years ago: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jo... >Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor? >We show that the [neuroscience experimental] approaches reveal interesting structure in the data but do not meaningfully describe the hierarchy of information processing in the microprocessor. This suggests current analytic approaches in neuroscien…
I'm not too familiar with this space. Could someone explain how big of an impact to the world this discovery is? What does the future of this technology look like over the next 5 years?
Superconductors have applications in computers, MRIs, maglev trains, and power transmission to name a few. Superconduction at room temp would all for less current consumption due to resistance inside the metal layer for chips, letting them run cooler and faster. MRIs use massive, supercooled magnets. If you can do the same at room temp, you could potentially have a portable or much smaller and more efficient MRI. If…
Also there are superconductor based batteries that are very efficient, would would become a thing, likely revolutionising batteries.
I get the idea of superconductivity at room temperature in theory. But I don't have enough knowledge to understand in real terms, how will the world change if this is true?
- higher efficiency turbines and solar panels - more clean energy for the same investment
- fusion?
- low-energy computing at higher performance, as we learned recently LLMs so far can't take advantage of hitherto zero marginal cost of software anymore
- democratization of advanced quantum computing?
It's all very exciting and in a truly replicable and industrially-feasible scenario I'm starting to feel this could be another 1960s kind of rate of change. One can dream, no? Maybe we can finally get rid of all the doom & gloom stories we tell ourselves and actually do something with these unexpected presents of our times? Think smartness instead of ignorance, (old) Star Trek instead of the latest Fallout fantasy on the horizon? Why not?
These and many more consequential innovations might develop just in time, as climate change is coming at us much faster than we are willing to admit (don't look up).
That said, even with all of that (including fusion) we will still need to cut our co2 emissions; drastically change our lifestyles / minimize consumption and deal with already locked in impacts hitting us sooner than later.
Enthusiastic midnight edit:
Also what's up with graphene based ICs and optical computing advancements? Competition of new old ideas finally come to be realized? What's next? I want a new breed of superconductor enabled Lisp Machines by 2030! Why not home brew "3D print" the whole thing? That should be the ultimate target here! The handling of "open source" lead would probably suck though %D.
I guess Alan Kay wouldn't be enthused by such a Lisp Machine renaissance in principle yet still stand with his "the best way to predict the future is to invent it" credo.
Let's predict a future for a planet that shifts back into balance!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know all those bird scooters people leave lying around cluttering up the sidewalk? With a room temperature superconductor they will become hover scooters cluttering up the sidewalk! And all of the high voltage transmission lines we want to build but can’t because of permitting reasons would have zero energy loss if we actually built them, which we won’t.
Is this actually true?
Perhaps if the track were arranged in a grid-like pattern, the scooter could use superconducting electromagnets to accelerate and steer.
So far lab replication efforts are: Two from HUST: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV14p4y1V7kS/ https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV13k4y1G7i1/ One by USTC https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Ex4y1X7ix/ this tiny sample can stand on its pointy side. One by Qufu Normal University https://www.zhihu.com/zvideo/1669820225079070720 One with THU background but claims a personal project https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV14z4y1s7V…
For those experiencing this type of "black swan, but good" event for the first time, it is helpful to recognize that the human tendency to believe that all future "big events" will be dystopian downers, is statistically unsound. For a while I've kept a list of the things that could be "good" swan events, but to be fair I didn't have "room temperature superconductor on that list" :-) Other things that could happen: 1)…
It would have been more convincing if you had given real past examples rather than speculative future ones :) Although I'm pretty sure there are plenty that many people can think of, so it doesn't really detract much from your point.
For those experiencing this type of "black swan, but good" event for the first time, it is helpful to recognize that the human tendency to believe that all future "big events" will be dystopian downers, is statistically unsound. For a while I've kept a list of the things that could be "good" swan events, but to be fair I didn't have "room temperature superconductor on that list" :-) Other things that could happen: 1)…