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The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

arxiv.org

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Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#901

Post by fennecbutt »

giarc wrote: post #789
rbanffy wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I can imagine is desktop MRI machines, or, at least, much cheaper and less finicky big MRI machines that don’t take days to chill to operating temperature. Maglevs are also a popular guess - safer, faster, and more power efficient ground mass transport would be a huge thing. Maybe even magnetic rail space launches. And, of course, military applications (the last few examples I mentioned involve acceleration…

Those are two I see mentioned the most often (MRI and maglevs). To be honest though, those are great things to improve (especially the MRI), however, the amount of hype in this thread and on the internet tells me there must be more than just improved MRI and better trains....

Brute forcing fusion by using insanely strong magnetic fields I suppose. What CFS is trying to do, smaller tokamak but much stronger magnets

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#902

Post by forgetfreeman »

c1sc0 wrote: post #889
forgetfreeman wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cough long term waste storage and cleanup cough

Reprocess until it’s about 100y unsafe then dump it down a deep shaft and seal with concrete. Done.

Plutonium-239 (just an example) has a halflife of 24,000 years, ground water is a thing and it moves a lot. Modern concrete is both water permeable and has a tendency to degrade aggressively in wet environments over alarmingly short periods of time. Try again?

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#903

Post by fennecfoxy »

alexb_ wrote: post #231
scarmig wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Levitation is to be expected for any superconductor when it's in a superconducting state; that part is banal. The big question is whether it's actually a superconductor at RTP. Their results are strong enough that it's unlikely to be a mistake, though fraud is possible too (although it is so easily uncovered given the simplicity of preparing the material and the strength of the reported effects that fraud seems almos…

Just give it to me straight - when will the levitation give us hoverboards?

When we discover if gravitons exist or not and how to produce/manipulate them so that we can negate the effect of gravity on an object.

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#904

Post by brutusborn »

nine_k wrote: post #147
abtinf wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or go long—such a breakthrough would radically increase demand for energy.

Depending on the expense of making the new material, it may become actually feasible to build solar panels across Sahara and feed both Africa and Europe with the electricity generated, because transmission will become lossless and physically compact.

You can already do that with long distance DC. The problems aren’t technical.

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#905

Post by cactusplant7374 »

BizarroLand wrote: post #329
k2xl wrote: post #94

Can someone explain like I'm five why this is "huge if true"?

If you're not sure what a superconductor is, basically anything that conducts electricity has resistance in it. That resistance turns the energy that is being transmitted through the conductor into heat, essentially wasting it for useful purposes unless you're running a hair dryer or oven. For instance, one of the reasons why power plants have to be near the cities they serve, aside from practical logistics, is that…

Has anyone done calculations on what the savings/gains might look like?

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#906

Post by Amarok »

klodolph wrote: post #689
justahuman74 wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who doesn't follow superconductors, what sorts of things about life/engineering/society would change, how dramatic would it be, and more importantly: which stocks would you pick :)

The direct impact could be relatively limited, at least for a while. Having a room-temperature superconductor is really awesome, but existing high-temperature superconductors are fragile and expensive. You can make motors, electromagnets, and power grids with much better efficiency—but that’s not so useful if the parts break when you look at them wrong. You’ll still get better magnets and sensors, probably. Maybe eve…

Would this revolutionize MRIs?
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