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A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

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Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#671

Post by robot_no_421 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #662
robot_no_421 wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is facing severe demographic issues for the next 20-30 years due to their terribly short sighted one-child policy and their poor immigration rates. Literally the opposite of what you're saying. Where on earth did you get your facts from?

With the population edge they have, they will still have more young people than us. More of their output will have to go for caring for the elderly, but that will scale with technology.

Why does having a large population matter? If you look at the top 10 countries in terms of population (China, India, US, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia, Mexico), most of those places are not exactly heavyweights on the international scene.

There are so many factors that contribute more to economic and political success than sheer population. I would even say that a large population is a bad thing in many cases. India would be better off with fewer people. Their infrastructure can't handle their density, they don't have enough jobs for their educated workers, there's a lot of sectarianism conflict between various religions and casts, etc.

High population + low GDP per capita is probably the worst situation a country can be in IMO. So it's not enough for China to have a billion people—those people have to be doing something productive for the economy.

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#672

Post by gerdesj »

bananapub wrote: post #598
taberiand wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nuclear fusion would be quite handy. That's near limitless electricity from minimal input, with mostly safe failure modes and no nasty emissions.

Decent superconductors might enable, less lossy power transmission across distance, Maglev at scale, or perhaps initially, lower power consuming, small devices - every little helps.

I do agree with you though - that lot ain't any good right now. Don't allow yet more licenses in the North Sea etc ...

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#673

Post by Taniwha »

nextaccountic wrote: post #556
fsh wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the things you listed are limited by the conductors in them. The efficiency of high voltage AC power lines is limited by capacitive coupling to ground. Battery charging is limited by the cell chemistry. CPU heat output is limited by the resistance of the semiconductors. Turns out metals (in particular copper) are already incredibly good conductors.

> CPU heat output is limited by the resistance of the semiconductors. Can't superconductor help here?

Only a little, one big limitation in chips is RC wire delays (the distributed capacitance along a wire needs to be charged/discharged for a signal change to pass) - due to edge effects capacitance doesn't scale with the area of the wire - but R does (inversely so wires have gotten slower) - so as chips have got denser wires have not got faster at the same rate, when I first started building chips we mostly only cared about gate capacitances - now RC delays are a big deal - if R went to 0 RC delays would too - things would get faster

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#675

Post by whatshisface »

Taniwha wrote: post #669
nwiswell wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CPU heat output is limited by the resistance of the semiconductors. This is not true anymore. At leading edge process nodes (i.e., smaller conductor pitch), the bulk resistivity of copper changes dramatically because it is increasingly dominated by ballistic electron scattering on the interfaces and grain boundaries: surface area has decreased as a fraction of volume and the average grain size has shrunk to fit ins…

Yes RC wire delays have becoming more important than gate capacitance for a couple of decades now - if R goes to 0 RC delays do too

I guess the next limiting factor would be LC delays.

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#676

Post by micromacrofoot »

bananapub wrote: post #598
taberiand wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yes but with all this power we’ll be able to render much more accurate models of our demise

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#677

Post by postalrat »

xtracto wrote: post #505
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #490

Someone posted this in a comment on another post of LK-99: Wouldn't the first step be verification before replication ? I.e. have the original authors send out some LK-99 samples to other researchers to at least confirm "Yes, this thing is a high temperature superconductor". Wouldn't matter even that much if it were made with unicorn dust: it would be proof that high temperature superconductors are even possible, whi…

This LK99 thing all sounds to me very similar to the Podkletnov Gravity Shielding experiments of the 1990s . There may be something, but the mainstreet media is blowing it out of proportions. Some scientists may get hurt for this.

I haven't seen much of anything on the mainstream media. Just here in hn and other tech sites. Are you making this up?

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#678

Post by mycologos »

wallaBBB wrote: post #407
stusmall wrote: post #284

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 possible that the people responsible for deciding what makes a a good article for the science section are different from the people responsible for the articles you mention.

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#679

Post by soligern »

fsh wrote: post #516
jtchang wrote: post #418

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…

None of the things you listed are limited by the conductors in them. The efficiency of high voltage AC power lines is limited by capacitive coupling to ground. Battery charging is limited by the cell chemistry. CPU heat output is limited by the resistance of the semiconductors. Turns out metals (in particular copper) are already incredibly good conductors.

We’re not talking about charging existing batteries but superconductors where you just “trap” large amounts of electricity in the superconductor for future use.

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#680

Post by chevman »

fzzzy wrote: post #666
yreg wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

naive question: if we can simulate this, can't we brute force other superconductors?

Yes, but the search space is mind boggling.

How so? Just a function of all the different atoms and sub-atomic particles interacting?
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