61 ms·
Room-Temperature Superconductivity Achieved for the First Time
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mmastrac 6y agoRoom-temperature superconductivity... but don't forget the crushing insane pressure required. Regardless, this is still pretty cool.
- btilly 6y agoI wonder whether it might be possible to create a material using this and carbon nanotubes worked through it. With the idea that the nanotubes can create and hold the pressure for the superconductor to operate.
- colechristensen 6y agoThis was achieved in a diamond anvil cell, a sample smaller than a millimeter is squeezed between two diamonds in a special apparatus. This is how you achieve world record high pressures, not even remotely in the realm of possibility for engineering a material.
- 1024core 6y agoFirst you demonstrate that it is possible. Then you make it feasible. And then you make it practical. One step at a time.
- pier25 6y agoThat sounds like writing code
- mhh__ 6y agoIt's not far off. Engineers see if it's doable for a given budget, physicists show and analyse that it's possible at all. Similar to a CS paper showing a new algorithm e.g. sorts with x% less swaps than quicksort, it might not actually lead to a performance increase on real hardware.
- whimsicalism 6y agoEh, similar (not quite as impressive) but high-temperature superconductivity had been observed with sulfur+pressure before, it's unclear how you would make that practical.
- handol 6y agoHopefully as we pile on more and more examples of different materials exhibiting superconductivity, we can understand it well enough to find a practical high temperature one. Though I think we could go a long way with the liquid nitrogen temp superconductors now on the market. It's still going to be a real chore to design around, but it's got to be a lot easier to deal with liquid N2 than liquid He.
- postalrat 6y agoYou find some sort of physics that do most of the work for you.
- btilly 6y agoThe bulk modulus of superhard phase nanotubes is 462 to 546 GPa, even higher than that of diamond. Engineering a wire under pressure whose whole length is compressed by a structure made out of carbon nanotubes is clearly difficult, but seems theoretically possible. It is very likely beyond our current engineering capabilities. But in principle it is a technology that we could try to develop. For example at low temperature you assemble a wire that has a high thermal coefficient of expansion down the center of the wire. Then the superconductor around that in a ring. Then a carbon nanotube sheathe around that which traps things. Then when it warms up the core squeezes the superconductor against the sheathe and you get the pressure.
- Someone 6y agoThat sounds like a very large version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Rupert's_drop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Rupert's_drop. When you hit one end the wire with a hammer, or drop something on it, the entire wire might explode.
- btilly 6y agoYeah. When something is under that much pressure, the failure modes tend to be..interesting.
- colechristensen 6y agoMaybe if you’re writing science fiction or have a time machine, not if you’re an engineer. For starters the bulk modulus is about deformation, not strength. Second issue is that you’d be creating explosive cable. Go watch some youtube videos of tempered glass exploding and then imagine what a material under 1000 times the pressure would look like in failure. The whole excitement about room temperature superconductors is getting rid of the difficulty of cooling, the difficulty of this pressure requirement is easily much worse.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nkingsy 6y agoSurprised that they keep breaking the diamonds in their diamond anvils at $3k/pair. Wouldn’t they know the tolerances of their tools?
- Retric 6y agoAt those extreme pressures it’s likely repeatedly applying the same load to the same anvils will quickly lead to failure.
- ISL 6y agoThey're running right at the limits of what is possible. One easy way to see this: these effects only appear at highest pressures, and I believe that the diamond anvil breaking strength isn't terribly consistent (one defect or error in sample-preparation? poof. Got a good one? You can go farther.). I wouldn't be surprised if each promising iteration of the experiment is performed by loading the anvil all the way to failure. They're working in the dark -- nobody knows for sure how much pressure is enough to yield the next step forward in knowledge. If the stars align, a single run of such an experiment is sufficient to yield a quantum leap (sorry) in condensed-matter physics. As an example, this particular iteration may prove career-defining for those involved. That said, if they're constrained on budget, I suspect they think really hard about the way to optimize discovery potential within their diamond-anvil supply constraints.
- s0rce 6y agoNot really related but I broke tons of samples during my PhD work where we applied large stresses in an electric field to brittle tiny pieces of ceramic materials. Sometimes you just need to push the limits to do science.
- HourglassFR 6y agoFor the metric people, from the actual paper abstract: > Here we report superconductivity in a photochemically transformed carbonaceous sulfur hydride system, starting from elemental precursors, with a maximum superconducting transition temperature of 287.7 ± 1.2 kelvin (about 15 degrees Celsius) achieved at 267 ± 10 gigapascals.
- mnw21cam 6y agoIt absolutely boggles my mind that a science web site, reporting on a science breakthrough would report the result in such antiquated units. WTF, people?
- newen 6y agoI think it’s because the writers have this thing called “people skills”.
- augusto-moura 6y agoOr they are just americans that forgot about the rest of the world or don't even care
- baud147258 6y agoOr at least they could have added figures in both units. Makes it easier for everyone
- baq 6y agoroom temperature in a diamond anvil doesn't sound as useful as plain room temperature but i guess having a kitchen variety refrigerator instead of liquid helium makes for cheaper experiments :)
- shadowgovt 6y agoThis is interesting for a couple reasons. 1) While I agree with the article's assessment that superconduction along huge distances is a likely no-go given pressures involved, it's not out of the realm of possibility that we could find a way to apply massive static pressure loads to small high-performance circuits. 2) If the pressures are 75% the Earth's core, that raises interesting geologic questions about what's going on in the Earth's core. Perhaps the model for Earth's magnetic field (or the material that causes it) will need to be adjusted to account for the possibility of naturally-occurring superconductors.
- anonuser123456 6y agoEarth's core is pretty hot IIRC.
- formerly_proven 6y ago4500-6000 °C
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- stretchwithme 6y agoAnd probably unlikely for the same material to occur naturally.
- culopatin 6y agoWell, how likely is that we even exist to begin with? And how likely is that we are alive because of a ball of hydrogen and helium really far away?
- unwoundmouse 6y ago
- effie 6y agoRoom temperature superconductivity itself is not revolutionary for anything except academic papers. Lossless power lines and frictionless trains are a gimmick as those losses are small part of their operating cost. Resistance of copper cables is very small and acceptable already. When price of superconducing cables is comparable to copper cables, then it becomes interesting.
- erikpukinskis 6y agoIsn’t superconducting a requirement for fusion reactors (for plasma confinement)? I think all the cooling required for that is a major impediment to both the design and the efficiency.
- effie 6y agoI think you are right for tokamaks, room temp superconductor would change the design somewhat.
- MayeulC 6y agoIn existing superconductors, you break superconductivity if your magnetic field reaches a certain threshold. That limit decreases, the closer you are to the temperature limit. So yeah, higher-temperature superconductors could either give you higher-temperature supermagnets, or same-temperature stronger magnets. The latter is being explored with relatively new materials, for smaller tokamaks, which enabled by stronger magnetic fields.
- anonuser123456 6y agoYou don't need room temp superconductors to make those magnets. REBCO tape can be cooled by liquid nitrogen. It's what they are using for the various tiny Tocamak projects.
- travisoneill1 6y agoWhy is this material not used for MRI's?
- strig 6y agoAchieved at 267 GPa, 15 deg C. Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2801-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2801-z
- Tade0 6y ago"In a diamond anvil" is the "in mice" of superconductivity.
- pfundstein 6y agoHas diamond anvil superconductivity been achieved with other conductors?
- bufferoverflow 6y agoYes, many times, but at significantly lower temperatures. https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/hydrogen-superconductivity-hammered-out-on-diamond-anvil/8100.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/hydrogen-superconductivi...
- gbrown_ 6y agoQuanta's tweet for this included the rather nice pun "But there is a crushing caveat" which gave me a chuckle after reading the article. https://twitter.com/QuantaMagazine/status/1316393708930191361 https://twitter.com/QuantaMagazine/status/131639370893019136...
- RegBarclay 6y agoSo far, there's always been a caveat. Kudos to Quanta for being up front with it in the headline and being punny with it too.
- djaque 6y agoThis is some nice work, but doesn't really pave the way to what I'd call "practical superconductors". Of course, the material studied here requires some of the highest pressures we can produce and so we can't deploy the technology. More importantly IMO is the fact that we were already expecting room temperature superconductors with this route. There is a theory of superconductivity which accurately describes these materials. The more interesting materials are the unconventional superconductors which have a high transition temperature. From the side of physics, we still have no idea how they work other than something involving many body interactions. Plus with their rising Tc, they might be a route to practical superconductivity.
- pontifier 6y agoDoes anyone have a key understanding of why these extreme pressures enable superconductivity? I'm trying to imagine how these extreme pressures would modify bond angles, nuclei spacing, and constraints on motion. And also tring to understand how that's affecting the behavior and creation of the Cooper pairs.
- djaque 6y agoHandwavey explaination: the particles pair up because of vibrations in the crystal. It's modeled like a bunch of metal balls on with springs between them and you can imagine tapping one end and sending a wave of vibrations through. However, these springs are a bit non-linear and so I imagine that if you pack the atoms closer together then you will change the spring constant. The other knob you can use to change the vibrations is the mass of the balls. This can be done by using different isotopes of the same element and the critical temperature goes down with mass.
- posterboy 6y agothe particles can't pair up, because equal charges repell. That's still the virtual model. I don't quite remember my intro to electrical components, though it's a quick read for the basics. The GP obviously knows about atom models and band gap. The paradox bit is that, as far as I can tell pressure is roughly equivalent to heat, and heat equals decreased intrinsic conductivity. But if I imagine that high preasure restricts the absolute motion of particles, that would equal decreased resistance (like an idealized fixed suspension for your swing, that doesn't take energy out of the system). Since Hydrogen is involved, I suppose there's a channel of Hydrogen rumps without any electrons, and the high preassure is needed to keep the hydrogen from moving apart and recombining outside the ensemble. Surely this involves some form of entanglement? Which I imagine as a kind of clockwork, all cores spinning in unison. Haha, I have no idea what I'm talking about.
- marcosdumay 6y agoType I superconductors (the ones people understand) happen because electrons pair up. The equal charges participate on the problem, but do not stop the electrons from pairing up. There is a lot of virtual particle exchange between them, but that's how forces happen. It's more correct to say that the crystal mechanically constrains the electrons into pairs than that the electrons pair with virtual particles. (IANAP, but this one topic I have studies a little.)
- pvsukale3 6y agoCan someone please share some good articles/videos on the implications of achieving superconductivity at room temperature on day to day life? Thanks.
- mchusma 6y agoThe impact of superconductors https://youtu.be/uq2b4BqKswg https://youtu.be/uq2b4BqKswg Issac Arthur is amazing.
- yboris 6y agoMy favorite quote: > Over the course of their research, the team busted many dozens of $3,000 diamond pairs. “That’s the biggest problem with our research, the diamond budget,”
- nappy 6y agoI like this, too: > “It’s clearly a landmark,” said Chris Pickard, a materials scientist at the University of Cambridge. “That’s a chilly room, maybe a British Victorian cottage,” he said of the 59-degree temperature.
- darksaints 6y agoSounds like prices for gem cut diamonds, which brings in the whole DeBeers monopoly pricing. I wonder why manufactured or rough cut diamonds couldn't be used.
- karpierz 6y agoMy hypothesis is that they have imperfections in them that lead them to be structurally weaker than ones crafted by the natural pressures of the Earth.
- xyzzy_plugh 6y agoThis is actually not true! This was was true maybe 15-20+ years ago but since then lab diamonds have gotten very pure. So pure that now Big Diamond markets their flaws as "natural characteristics" that make their diamonds unique. Pretty funny if you ask me. That being said, lab diamonds are not necessarily that cheap, depending on the dimensions and qualities necessary.
- raziel2701 6y agoYeah but they still have defects. There is no such thing as a defect-free material, it's thermodynamically unstable. Under stress, the defects (voids, dislocations etc.) lead to crack propagation and the diamond is kaput.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jusssi 6y ago> This page doesn't exist > At least not in this universe. Good one. Did they take it down? Edit: looks to be back now.
- danschumann 6y agoSounds like we should just go to the earths core. Those pressures are maintained naturally
- parliament32 6y agoWe tried that once, didn't get very far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole Turns out the core is very, very far away and still not really reachable with today's tech.
- mosfets 6y agoRoom-temperature but earth core pressure, lol. But still very exciting indeed!
- stretchwithme 6y agoCables will just have to be wrapped super tight.
- unnouinceput 6y agoI guess between economics, room temperature and normal pressure Silver still stays king of conductivity just like it did over a century ago when modern electronics was born with first high voltage vacuum diode.
- ddumas 6y agoSaw the title and thought "oh, I'll bet it is at some insane high pressure or some other exotic condition". Clicked through to an image of a diamond anvil. Not disappointed.
- asdfman123 6y agoI'm actually really happy they put the catch at the top of the article. It's so annoying to read science articles about how X will revolutionize Y, but you have to dig through the comments section to find out why it won't work. Most new research findings only have very specific applications. It's only groundbreaking when something can (eventually) be implemented in real life for a reasonable cost.
- thorum 6y agoQuanta does some of the best science reporting. They have a knack for making highly complex and technical concepts accessible to the general public without sacrificing accuracy.
- Qwertious 6y agoThey don't get points for putting it at the top of the article - all they're doing is correcting their own misleading title. And yes, I say misleading. Technically true but misleading, because their omission is absolutely critical to the nature of their breakthrough and as you implied, anyone who knows the first thing about room temperature superconductors will want to know if the material has a drawback stopping it from functioning outside of a strictly lab setting.
- leeoniya 6y ago> As the temperature of a superconductor rises, however, particles jiggle around randomly, breaking up the electrons’ delicate dance. hasn't this pretty much always been the crux - to fixate the particles? while it's a nice achievement experimentally-speaking, is it really that surprising that materials immobilized by enormous pressures but at elevated temperatures exhibit the same behavior as if they were immobilized via chilling to near 0K? either condition is impractical to attain outside of a specialized lab.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jqpabc123 6y agoImpractical temperature or impractical pressure Pick one.
- ddavis 6y agoIn the 50s a few megabyte hard drive was the size and weight of a refrigerator-- and came with a huge price tag, impractical price and impractical size. It'll be interesting to see what we can do in a few decades!
- phkahler 6y agoMaybe this is a crazy idea. If we put superconducting cables around Mars at say +/-50 degrees latitude, can we create a planetary magnetic field to prevent atmospheric removal from the solar wind? Would the atmosphere start to thicken? I posed this to an EM friend and he estimated 1,000,000 Amp-turns would be required. Never checked his math but that current seems plausible with a good superconductor, plus it's cold on Mars!
- justausefullink 6y agohttps://selenianboondocks.com/2020/06/adding-an-earth-sized-magnetic-field-to-mars/ https://selenianboondocks.com/2020/06/adding-an-earth-sized-...
- unnouinceput 6y agoYou'd make it cheaper by building air cleaning factories around the globe and get rid of pollution on Earth.
- monomyth 6y agoEarth is a single point of failure.
- pydry 6y agoBuilding an ecosystem of O'Neill cylinders is probably more viable means of space colonization than colonizing mars.
- smokelegend 6y agoThis is a major life altering question. If we can't learn to all live together peacefully, learn to help each other solve problems here on earth; what makes anyone think that we will survive in space & beyond... I love everything about space exploration, but I'm not naive enough to believe its the solution to our problems here on earth. One might argue its a distraction from our ongoing global humanitarian crisis. People everyday are dying from lack of food, water, shelter, etc... What time & money is spent on solving the galaxies mysteries, could be brain power backed capital used to solve our dire terrestrial affairs. IMHO... Food for thought...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hilbert42 6y ago'Room-Temperature Superconductivity Achieved for the First Time' Quanta Magazine ought to know better than to lead a story with a misleading headline like that. Moreover, they've even made it worse by 'exaggerating' the temperature by quoting it in degrees Fahrenheit in stead of Celsius (using Fahrenheit is a no-no in science). That superconductivity was achieved at room temperature but at that huge pressure is hardly worth reporting as it's of no practical value whatsoever thus only interest to fundamental research.
- ISL 6y agoFundamental research is of great importance. It is where the breakthroughs of practical value begin. Our understanding of electricity did not emerge with the lithium battery, transistors, nor solar cells. It began with scientists studying static electricity, Leyden jars, and making frog-legs twitch, all without practical value. Superconductivity in any context at room temperature is a substantial breakthrough, doubly so because the experimentalists were operating with semi-viable guidance from theory. This is physics at its best. It may well lead to higher-Tc materials.
- hilbert42 6y agoYou didn't read what I said, I was being critical of Quanta's sensational and misleading headlines, I was NOT being critical of fundamental research. ' That superconductivity was achieved at room temperature but at that huge pressure is hardly worth reporting as it's of no practical value whatsoever thus only interest to fundamental research.' It shouldn't be necessary for me to labor the point, but my quote above does NOT say that that I'm against fundamental research (in fact I'm very much for it and have always been so). Frankly, I'm annoyed that you can even suggest what you have said. Just because you disagree with part of what I've said does not give you the right to twist my words to mean something altogether different—something I did not say. I am very careful in what I say online and usually I labor the point by restating what I'm saying in different ways so that I'm not misinterpreted (unfortunately I did not do that here as what I was saying seemed clear enough). With respect to science reporting generally: sensational and misleading reporting by the media—often encouraged by scientist themselves to increase their changes of getting new grants, etc.—has done a great deal of damage to science and scientific research over the last five or so decades. Probably the 'best' example of this is cancer research which has turned great swathes of the public off science big-time because the enthusiastic promises of cures were never met. You only have to see how science and scientific research has dropped in importance in the eyes of the public over the last half century to know that. In other posts I've even spelt this out with examples. Moreover, I standby what I said, this research into superconductors is so exotic that it is of little practical value now. I am not saying that it won't be value in the future (only time will tell if it will).
- tobmlt 6y agoAre there any ramifications/outlook-changes for metastable metallic hydrogen research? Edit: answer = nope
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- egsmi 6y agoInteresting. I've been putting 0 ohm resistors in my schematics for years. I wonder what took these guys so long. :)
- unnouinceput 6y agono you didn't. you put 1 nano-Ohm resistors in best case scenario, not zero.
- SubiculumCode 6y agoI believe his smiley face is one to one exchangeable for sarcasm tags.
- egsmi 6y agoNo. It's actually a zero (1) ohm resistor. You can buy one too. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/koa-speer-electronics-inc/RK73Z2ARTTD/11629232 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/koa-speer-electro... (1) Please read the terms of the data sheet carefully and consult your local engineer before using. Certain restrictions may apply. 0 ohm not available in all jurisdictions.
- neolefty 6y agoFrom the product description: > Features: Anti-sulfur, ... Imagine the shipping warning labels.
- unnouinceput 6y agoThere is no such thing as a pure zero resistor in this Universe. A resistor made from a single atom it would still require energy to move the electron. It's how physics works in this Universe. Hence no, you'll never have a zero Ohm resistor.
- ben_w 6y ago1. Smiley face ii. In schematics != in reality c. Lots of things are within a useful margin of error of $impossible_standard δ. This entire post is about superconductors
- choeger 6y agoWriting about scientific papers and using Fahrenheit should be a punishable offense.
- SubiculumCode 6y agoWouldn't high pressures create high temperatures, just like in earth's core? Hard to believe on 59° at that pressure
- zbrozek 6y agoNo; those are independent state variables. If they weren't, your air conditioner wouldn't work. Compressing something does work, which raises temperature, but you can extract that heat and cool it down without reducing the pressure. That's half of the refrigeration cycle right there!
- andrewflnr 6y agoI realize this is probably a dumb question, but the bit about combining hydrogen and carbon made me wonder: has anyone tried just, like, compressing high-density polyethylene and seeing what happens, maybe with some sulfur or whatever else involved? If you want hydrogen and carbon in close quarters, I would start there.
- adamiscool8 6y agoCan someone much smarter than me clarify if this is supportive of, or related to, the US Navy patent from several years ago for Piezoelectricity-induced Room Temperature Superconductor? [0][1] [0] https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190058105A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190058105A1/en [1] https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/02/us-navy-patent-makes-room-temperature-superconductor-claim/ https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/02/us-navy-pa...
- Panoramix 6y agoThis finding is real science. The patent you cite is unrelated and 100% bullshit. For example, it states preposterous sentences such as this: "The fact that the fine structure constant can be expressed as a function of (2e) shows how important the notion of electron pairing is in the composition of the Universe, and gives credence to the theory that the fundamental cosmic meta-structure may be thought of as a charged superfluid, in other words, a superconducting condensate." This guy is a scammer who was able to bamboozle his patent attorneys, presumably he gets some incentive to publish patents?
- adamiscool8 6y agoIs that preposterous? The idea that "spacetime"(?) may have superconductive properties doesn't seem facially outlandish, but again I'm not a fancy scientist. He is an awarded US Navy scientist though, and these patents were specially requested by Navy brass, so I'm not inclined to think he's a scammer that slipped one by his attorneys.
- ben_w 6y agoI have met someone who got a stupid patent — IIRC it was a two bit binary adder — because the patent lawyer messed up what he sent to them. He didn’t check before it was filled because he didn’t care (the point of the patent was “we needed a patent protected system to be granted a license to a codec”), and it was granted anyway.
- 6y ago
- 0-_-0 6y agoNote: 59 degrees Fahrenheit is 15 degrees Celsius
- sabujp 6y agoWhen you increase pressure aren't you also increasing temp? So even though the ambient temp may be 59 isn't the localized temp where the atoms are being crushed super high? Which is also the opposite of how i thought superconductors work, i.e. the liquid nitrogen dumped on the superconducting semiconductor experiment that phys. prof's love to do.
- konschubert 6y agoNo, pressure is independent of temperature. If you take a gas as an example: When you compress a gas, temperature increases, but you can cool it down again while maintaining pressure. (And then when you release the pressure it gets even cooler, that’s how a fridge works.)
- sabujp 6y agohow do you cool a gas while increasing pressure? by PV=nRT you have to reduce volume linearly.
- konschubert 6y agoYes, you reduce the volume.
- m3kw9 6y agoLooks like the new term to strive for in superconductors is room-conditions
- joncrane 6y agoI wonder if this has implications for fusion. In fusion, you have trememdous pressure outwards from the containment vessel due to the magnetic field "squishing" the plasma to a density that's enough to promote fusion and redirect scattering forces back inward. Of course to create that magnetic field, you have to have superconductors very close to this superheated plasma. So the first thing to relate to this is there may be less cooling required. The second thing is, and this is both a stretch AND possible a huge gain, but perhaps the required pressure for the superconduction can be provided by the inherent pressure of the fusion reactor core.
- MayeulC 6y agoThat's an interesting idea. I wonder if that couldn't be used to bootstrap a room-temperature superconductor: cool it down, start a magnetic field, and let the magnetic field reaction compress the material so that you can let it heat back to room temperature. Could an external or room-temperature field also possibly be enough?
- joncrane 6y agoYeah you'd still need a bootstrap to get the reaction going, and therefore generate the pressure. The question is, does this material have two superconduction modes: one at low temperatures and pressures, and another at high temperatures and pressure? The idea would be to create a superconductor with a pressure/temp curve that is amenable to the pressure/temp curve of the starting sequence of a fusion reactor.
- ganzuul 6y agoAnd why can't I find any research on using the magnetocaloric effect to achieve superconductivity? It's an obvious idea to try.
- throwaway316943 6y agoI wonder if this could benefit from a “magic angle” or some other structural layout that makes quantum effects possible. More and more advancements seem like they would benefit from precise atomic manufacturing, that could be the key technology that unlocks all of these futuristic applications.
- nashashmi 6y agoThere was a previous article posted on HN about a new record being set for speed of sound. The medium that transmitted the sound was high-pressure hydrogen. I don't know what rabbit hole I stepped into, but it let me to an article about solid hydrogen acting as a metal and becoming an awesome super conductor at room temperature. I thought we had reached this record with solid hydrogen. But I cannot find this online anywhere. The material this article goes over is hydrogen-carbon-sulfide. The previous record for superconductivity was using hydrogen-sulfide. I wonder what other materials can be added to lower pressure at room temperature and maintain superconductivity. Lithium? Nickel? Copper?
- MayeulC 6y agoMetallic hydrogen is predicted to be a room-temperature superconductor. And if my understanding is correct, it is related to the speed of sound ("phonons") in that material. Stressing the material further increases the speed of sound. However, metallic hydrogen is pretty much theoretical at that point, although it looks like we are getting closer. No other material that I know of had achieved >0°C superconductivity before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallic_hydrogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallic_hydrogen
- flubert 6y agoHoly smokes, HN has become quite the tough crowd. A record breaking scientific achievement, and it's meh, where's my flying car?
- The_rationalist 6y agoIs there progress on the ratio temperature/pressure? I feel like every progress on the temperature incur a regress on the other side
- londons_explore 6y ago267Gpa isn't unreasonable to achieve 'in the home'. For example, if you had a rod of the superconducting material 1mm in diameter, and you wrapped it tightly with a strand of Kevlar (tensile strength 3.6GPa) until it became 100mm diameter, then the center would have a suitable pressure...
- bdamm 6y agoThis doesn't seem right, how does a rod go from 1mm in diameter to 100mm in diameter under pressure? Also, how does one "wrap tightly"? The material would fracture under the stress of the first wrap.
- londons_explore 6y agoYou're right - I assume that kevlars spring constant is << the rod's. If that's the case, you just set the tension in the thread so the Kevlar is near its breaking point, and start winding, like winding thread onto a bobbin...
- flubert 6y agoNot being a mechanical engineer, I don't have an intutive feel for how the additive nature of the pressure develops as you describe. I would have thought that the outer layers would start to compress the inner layers, relaxing some of their stress. Is the a mech-e 101 type of link you could pass along to help get me up to speed? Or maybe you are saying that 3.6 GPa times the ratio of 100 mm to 1 mm gets us to the 360 GPa mark? So you don't need to have layers of Kevlar as your "anvil", you could use something else more rigid, and just wrap one layer of Kevlar around it and develop the needed pressure. Thanks.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ganzuul 6y agoTensile strength is pulling. The diamond anvil needs compressive strength.
- hacknat 6y agoDumb question: Shouldn't "room temperature" include in its definition about one atmosphere of pressure? I can tell you that I wouldn't want to experience "room temperature" 30,000 km above sea level.
- Arnavion 6y agoRoom temperature plus one atm pressure is a separate term, STP - "Standard temperature and pressure". (Of course it's hilariously not "S" at all, because no one can agree whether the "T" is 0 deg C or 25 deg C or somewhere in between. But when we're talking about room-temperature superconductors that's not really a big deal.)
- Qwertious 6y agoOkay, should we be talking about "STP semiconductors" then? I doubt anyone envisioning 'room temperature superconductors' was envisioning a diamond anvil.
- drdeca 6y agothere's the concept of "standard temperature and pressure" , "stp" , which iirc is 0 celcius at the same pressure as there is at sea level. Room temperature means room temperature. Room temperature and 1 atmosphere of pressure means room temperature and 1 atmosphere of pressure.
- jjtheblunt 6y agoI'm misunderstanding how, given the entirely not normal contrivances to cause this, they can call it room-temperature. I mean, for what definition of "room"?
- Gustomaximus 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_temperature#Definitions_in_science_and_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_temperature#Definitions_i...
- jjtheblunt 6y agothank you
- dchasson 6y agoI'm wondering, doesn't the concept of temperature change with pressure? For example, homemade fusion reactors operate at low pressures but at a temperature higher than the sun. So, if this circuit is operating at a high pressure, then isn't surrounding room temperature relatively low? At the mechanical level, a substance held between carbon diamond anvils isnt free to change momentum or kinetic energy due to the kinetic impacts of room temperature air, vapor, or plasma. Second question, do virtual particles have the same Casimir effects in this apparatus, as we would see in low pressure experiments? If you're interested, also checkout the results published recently on measuring the Casimir force. Reference: “Casimir spring and dilution in macroscopic cavity optomechanics” by J. M. Pate, M. Goryachev, R. Y. Chiao, J. E. Sharping and M. E. Tobar, 3 August 2020, Nature Physics. DOI: 10.1038/s41567-020-0975-9
- Zenst 6y agoTemperature was one way to change the properties to enable superconductivity, pressure now being another. So in effect we have shifted the - can we get superconductivity at room temperature towards - can we get superconductivity at room temperature and pressure. Whilst many will view the whole advance here is not going to make nice long wires, it does show that for some small devices, there is another avenue beyond changing just the temperature.
- ben-schaaf 6y ago> So in effect we have shifted the - can we get superconductivity at room temperature towards - can we get superconductivity at room temperature and pressure. Not really though, right? We all already own things under higher or lower pressure than normal and they can be kept that way essentially indefinitely. Light bulbs, hard drives, thermoses, etc. On the other hand keeping something below room temperature - especially really far below room temperature - takes constant work. In theory you could make a cable that keeps the conductive material under high pressure, but you're probably not going to have any luck attaching an air-conditioning unit to your cables.
- egypturnash 6y agoThis is what happens when you use your last wish on asking a genie for room-temperature superconductivity.
- peterfield 6y agoWTF using Fahrenheit in a scientific article??
- jack_riminton 6y agoI like the way the article has been written; knowledgeable without being dry
- bg117 6y agohow is this different from the same claim made by a team of Indian scientists in 2018/9?
- ben_w 6y agoIt’s about 28 Kelvin warmer
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoSurely such pressures can be created in a composite matrix material, perhaps with diamond nanoparticles or some such?
- dagurp 6y ago"What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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- dharma1 6y ago"With this kind of technology, you can take society into a superconducting society where you'll never need things like batteries again," said co-author Ashkan Salamat of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Didn't know superconductors can be used for energy storage! What kind of energy density are we talking about?
- Jemm 6y agoRoom temperature yes, but not room pressure.
- throwaway189262 6y agoI'm completely convinced that future superconductors and stronger magnets will lead to desktop sized fusion generators. It's so exciting because there's no obvious limitation to why it wouldn't work. If superconductors improve at current rates we'll just end up there in 30-40 years naturally. To think in another generation humans might have cheap limitless power, it's tantalizing
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- dang 3y agohttp://web.archive.org/web/20210831210214/https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-discover-first-room-temperature-superconductor-20201014 http://web.archive.org/web/20210831210214/https://www.quanta...