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Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

science.org

81–90 of 501 posts

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#81
post #75

If this material does just what they say it does, what would it revolutionise? Or as the article talks about, is this just a pointer at other possibilities that would be the real game changers?

A lot of people are talking about very cool practical use cases, but I'm here just thinking 'all of our trains could float, wouldn't that be neat?' [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCMaglev

I'm excited about the ball bearings.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#82
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a few from the top of my head: - A global power net. No solar power during the night? Just produce it on the other side of the planet. - A superconducting computer. Less resistance when pushing bits around = 500x less power consumption. - A Superconducting magnetic battery. Store power indefinitely with high efficiency.

Most power loss in a computer comes from MOSFETs, not resistive loss. Which isn't to say that RTP superconductors wouldn't open up wild new possibilities. ETA: wrong

Much of the power consumed, and heat dissipated, by conventional processors comes from moving information between logic elements rather than the actual logic operations. Because superconductors have zero electrical resistance, little energy is required to move bits within the processor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_computing#Fund...

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#83
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a few from the top of my head: - A global power net. No solar power during the night? Just produce it on the other side of the planet. - A superconducting computer. Less resistance when pushing bits around = 500x less power consumption. - A Superconducting magnetic battery. Store power indefinitely with high efficiency.

Most power loss in a computer comes from MOSFETs, not resistive loss. Which isn't to say that RTP superconductors wouldn't open up wild new possibilities. ETA: wrong

I don't think this is true. Most of the power is dissipated in the metal interconnect.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#84

While we’re waiting for experimenters to reproduce this, it’s worth comparing this amazing announcement to the Cold Fusion affair of 1989[1] It’s notable that the first publications about attempts to reproduce the Cold Fusion experiment all reported positive results. It’s probably because experimenters who got negative results decided they might have done something wrong so they kept trying, and delayed, and they did…

Another example of this was Millikan's determination of the fundamental electric charge (of one electron). The first, famous experiment had a major error; and subsequently everyone who independently replicated the experiment, for two decades, came up with the same error, in the same direction. The people whose experiments got the correct value probably self-selected themselves out of publishing it. https://en.wikiped…

Room-temperature superconductors have so many urgent commercial uses that if this fake, I doubt the error will persist for that long. There's too much at stake.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't require the kind of equipment that you have to justify to accountants and run at full capacity. And while the reactants are things that I believe most labs won't have at hand, they are the kind of thing anybody can buy on the web to arrive this week. Whether people will stop what they are doing to verify it is literally a matter of people stopping what they are doing. University labs are usually quick on t…

One of the elements used here is phosphorus (P) which is regulated by the DEA in the United States, and can't just be purchased online

Hell, Sigma Aldrich will sell you LSD. Established labs have no trouble with lightly restricted drug precursors, they've done all the paperwork.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#87
post #17

This video ( https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n ) showing the Meissner effect should be the easiest to replicate: just send a sample to another lab and put it over a large magnet. As far as I know, the only explanations for this occurring is room temp superconductivity, or a strong diamagnetism (which would also be very cool to see)!

That video reminds me of the way pyrolytic graphite floats on strong magnets.

https://scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/magnets/pyrolytic_graphi...

https://youtu.be/Wk3seHNmNs8

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#88
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the actual proposed superconductivity mechanism is the relevant part of this paper. It is much easier to prove that this is superconducting than to prove why. And in a sense it is a bit less relevant. Although developing a working theory for room temperature is also probably worth a Nobel prize, so I am willing to bet some theorists are also running to their blackboards as we speak.

Ding ding ding! We still don't know how bikes work, we have a pretty good but incomplete model for lift on airplanes, and no one has the faintest why Tylenol works. We should figure that out! But we can definitely keep using all the applications until then. (Except for Tylenol, we keep learning how bad that stuff is) EDIT: It won't let me post more, so here's the answers to responses. For sure! https://www.cbc.ca/new…

Do you have a link handy for "we don't know how bikes work" ?
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