11 ms·

My high school physics teacher (~2006) told us once when discussing career prospects that if you could build/discover a material that was a superconductor at ro

by auto 7y ago

My high school physics teacher (~2006) told us once when discussing career prospects that if you could build/discover a material that was a superconductor at room temperature, you'd probably end up the richest person in the world. I've never forgotten that, and it sounds like the challenge still stands.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Yeah, well, that can be said for a lot of things that are probably impossible. FTL dirve? Teleporter? Working lightsaber?
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  Well, from those 3 a teleporter would probably have some economical use, the other 2 not so much. Besides, "probably impossible" seems to be a large overrating of our knowledge of superconductivity.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    You don't think there would be an economical use for FTL travel? I mean I guess it depends on the details (it requires a spaceship that is a billion metric tons and requires a dozen working fusion cores to power it to get to 1.1C for example), but I can imagine a ton of uses for FTL technology. Transporters would be more useful in a day to day setting, but that doesn't mean FTL is academic.
- notTyler 7y ago
  A working lightsaber would make you rich for a week until people started accidentally chopping off their limbs and suing you.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    “It’s a sword. They’re not meant to be safe.” Probably be a really useful piece of industrial equipment, not just a really strange weapon.
    - jandrese 7y ago
      It's just a fancy plasma cutter. The defining feature of a light saber--being able to stop other light sabers from passing through it--seems of limited utility in an industrial setting.
ArtWomb 7y ago
The Holy Grail of Materials Science indeed! Despite the visions in our heads of super sonic maglev trains spanning NYC to Shanghai, the real boon is probably in something like plasma containment for fusion generators ;)
LeonM 7y ago
I always said that one of these things would probably make you one of the richest (or powerful) persons on the planet: - Practical nuclear fusion (that outputs more power that it takes to run) - Superconductivity at room temperature - Artificial general intelligence - Practical high-density energy storage
- blueboo 7y ago
  one of those things can solve all the others
  - atq2119 7y ago
    Assuming you're talking about AGI, keep in mind that we're general intelligences and haven't solved the other three yet. It's not self-evident that AGI would do so quickly.
    - Depooty 7y ago
      Imagine if you could run N agi all day though. You could have the knowledge of all scientists thinking of solutions 24/7 and all N agi would be talking to each other about their solutions. You could even have a small subset of them improving on themselves. So you get rapidly better thinking agi and then they brute force the nuclear codes and decide that life is meaningless and try to help us out.
      - ben_w 7y ago
        Unclear at this time. Humans are GI, but it takes more than one human-level GI to make an AGI or it probably would’ve already happened. Simulation of a human mind has various estimates of computational cost (we don’t know what’s missing from out models, and won’t until we’ve got a working AGI), so taking an arbitrary estimate, all the iPhones in the world might be able to do tens of thousands of real-time human minds [1]. This is comparable to the entire population of the AI research community [2]. It is also expensive not only to put together that much computer power, but also to power it. It is very plausible we will run out of room for Moore’s Law (0.1 nm features) without having figured out how to go from narrow AI to general AI, even despite the fact that transistors already outpace synapses the way wolves outpace hills [3]. [1] https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/pocket-brains/ https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/pocket-brai... [2] https://jfgagne.ai/talent/ https://jfgagne.ai/talent/ [3] https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/you-wont-believe-how-fast-transistors-are/ https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/you-wont-be...
m463 7y ago
stretch goal: room temperature and pressure

by auto 7y ago

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

Yeah, well, that can be said for a lot of things that are probably impossible. FTL dirve? Teleporter? Working lightsaber?

marcosdumay 7y ago
Well, from those 3 a teleporter would probably have some economical use, the other 2 not so much. Besides, "probably impossible" seems to be a large overrating of our knowledge of superconductivity.
- jandrese 7y ago
  You don't think there would be an economical use for FTL travel? I mean I guess it depends on the details (it requires a spaceship that is a billion metric tons and requires a dozen working fusion cores to power it to get to 1.1C for example), but I can imagine a ton of uses for FTL technology. Transporters would be more useful in a day to day setting, but that doesn't mean FTL is academic.
notTyler 7y ago
A working lightsaber would make you rich for a week until people started accidentally chopping off their limbs and suing you.
- ben_w 7y ago
  “It’s a sword. They’re not meant to be safe.” Probably be a really useful piece of industrial equipment, not just a really strange weapon.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    It's just a fancy plasma cutter. The defining feature of a light saber--being able to stop other light sabers from passing through it--seems of limited utility in an industrial setting.

ArtWomb 7y ago

The Holy Grail of Materials Science indeed! Despite the visions in our heads of super sonic maglev trains spanning NYC to Shanghai, the real boon is probably in something like plasma containment for fusion generators ;)

LeonM 7y ago

I always said that one of these things would probably make you one of the richest (or powerful) persons on the planet: - Practical nuclear fusion (that outputs more power that it takes to run) - Superconductivity at room temperature - Artificial general intelligence - Practical high-density energy storage

blueboo 7y ago
one of those things can solve all the others
- atq2119 7y ago
  Assuming you're talking about AGI, keep in mind that we're general intelligences and haven't solved the other three yet. It's not self-evident that AGI would do so quickly.
  - Depooty 7y ago
    Imagine if you could run N agi all day though. You could have the knowledge of all scientists thinking of solutions 24/7 and all N agi would be talking to each other about their solutions. You could even have a small subset of them improving on themselves. So you get rapidly better thinking agi and then they brute force the nuclear codes and decide that life is meaningless and try to help us out.
    - ben_w 7y ago
      Unclear at this time. Humans are GI, but it takes more than one human-level GI to make an AGI or it probably would’ve already happened. Simulation of a human mind has various estimates of computational cost (we don’t know what’s missing from out models, and won’t until we’ve got a working AGI), so taking an arbitrary estimate, all the iPhones in the world might be able to do tens of thousands of real-time human minds [1]. This is comparable to the entire population of the AI research community [2]. It is also expensive not only to put together that much computer power, but also to power it. It is very plausible we will run out of room for Moore’s Law (0.1 nm features) without having figured out how to go from narrow AI to general AI, even despite the fact that transistors already outpace synapses the way wolves outpace hills [3]. [1] https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/pocket-brains/ https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/pocket-brai... [2] https://jfgagne.ai/talent/ https://jfgagne.ai/talent/ [3] https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/you-wont-believe-how-fast-transistors-are/ https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/you-wont-be...

m463 7y ago

stretch goal: room temperature and pressure