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'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

'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 ago
Fundamental 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 ago
  You 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).
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
Quanta is not written for scientists, it's written for lay people. They do good work translating today's science and math into everyday language without too much oversimplification, but it's always a balance. Most American (and many British) readers use Farenheit to describe the weather and room temperatures, and given the context, it absolutely makes sense to use it in this article.
- hilbert42 6y ago
  'Quanta is not written for scientists, it's written for lay people.' This is all the more reason why Quanta should not misrepresent or exaggerate the research. You should read what I have to say above in reply to ISL 4 about the matter. 'Most American (and many British) readers use Farenheit to describe the weather and room temperatures, and given the context, it absolutely makes sense to use it in this article.' You're not trying to tell me that Quanta wasn't hamming up the report by using Farenheit are you? Come on, pull the other one. Next, I suppose you'll be telling me that not enforcing the use of SI units wasn't the reason for Hubble's 'blindness'. The UK is supposed to be metric but unlike Australia the conversion was stuffed up as it wasn't enforced by legalization (in Australia, hardly anyone knows what Farenheit means these days). The fact that the US is so damn backward in this matter is a combination of factors (a) bloody-libertarian mindedness in that people can't be told even if it's for their own good (just look at the US's fiasco over masks and COVID-19 and you'll get the message); (b) industry (mainly heavy industrial/machining) pulled too many strings in Congress saying the conversion would cost too much; and, (c) the US education system is far too fractionalized to agree upon anything let alone the Metric System/SI units. Thus the US is the laughing stock of the world, as it's the only major power left officially with imperial (British) units. It's even more laughable given what took place in the US in 1776! How many more centuries does the US need? That said, the people who write for Quanta and Quanta's editorial policy ought to be in line with the rest of the scientific world. Keeping Fahrenheit only 'absolutely makes sense' if one's still living in a time warp that should have long since gone. Sorry!
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    Wow, this transformed into a weird microrant. I didn't mean to offend - apologies if I have. To be clear - imperial units are awful. Everyone knows this. Americans know it, Brits know it, and while we might occasionally defend this system tongue-in-cheek, we know it's objectively idiotic. We're the ones that have to live with this thing every day. > b) industry (mainly heavy industrial/machining) pulled too many strings in Congress saying the conversion would cost too much This is real the only reason. The U.S. is somewhat unique because it had already heavily industrialized prior to the international push toward metric, and had basically no rebuilding to do after the war. It's similar to the technical debt that affects most giant old companies, but on the nation-scale. An (arguably) poor early design choice in industry-building and nation-building. In history, generally, the largest economic entity gets to use whatever units it wants, and force the rest of its trading partners to deal with it. The British Empire picked their units, which the USA inherited, and kept using due to inertia. If/when either the E.U. or China eclipse the USA's GDP, you can probably expect the USA to try again to shift to metric. This is all unrelated to anything of course. I assume the writers of Quanta articles are scientifically literate, prefer Metric, but know where most of their readers are from, and have chosen to use their language. I have lived in both England and America, and to this day, I still don't know what room temperature is in Celcius. I really don't think this was written with misleading, malicious intent - it's just an article that wasn't written for you, but rather for (the tremendous amount of) people still living in a "time warp" like me.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nl 6y ago
It wasn't obvious until a few years ago that high pressure supercomputing was a thing at all. It's absolutely worth reporting that room temperature supercomputing is achievable. There are a bunch of applications in things like quantum computing that this makes simpler.
- Qwertious 6y ago
  The title definitely should have mentioned the pressure needed though. It's the difference between "revolutionary" and "probably no practical applications, but nice for academia I guess".

ISL 6y ago

Fundamental 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 ago
You 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).

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago

Quanta is not written for scientists, it's written for lay people. They do good work translating today's science and math into everyday language without too much oversimplification, but it's always a balance. Most American (and many British) readers use Farenheit to describe the weather and room temperatures, and given the context, it absolutely makes sense to use it in this article.

hilbert42 6y ago
'Quanta is not written for scientists, it's written for lay people.' This is all the more reason why Quanta should not misrepresent or exaggerate the research. You should read what I have to say above in reply to ISL 4 about the matter. 'Most American (and many British) readers use Farenheit to describe the weather and room temperatures, and given the context, it absolutely makes sense to use it in this article.' You're not trying to tell me that Quanta wasn't hamming up the report by using Farenheit are you? Come on, pull the other one. Next, I suppose you'll be telling me that not enforcing the use of SI units wasn't the reason for Hubble's 'blindness'. The UK is supposed to be metric but unlike Australia the conversion was stuffed up as it wasn't enforced by legalization (in Australia, hardly anyone knows what Farenheit means these days). The fact that the US is so damn backward in this matter is a combination of factors (a) bloody-libertarian mindedness in that people can't be told even if it's for their own good (just look at the US's fiasco over masks and COVID-19 and you'll get the message); (b) industry (mainly heavy industrial/machining) pulled too many strings in Congress saying the conversion would cost too much; and, (c) the US education system is far too fractionalized to agree upon anything let alone the Metric System/SI units. Thus the US is the laughing stock of the world, as it's the only major power left officially with imperial (British) units. It's even more laughable given what took place in the US in 1776! How many more centuries does the US need? That said, the people who write for Quanta and Quanta's editorial policy ought to be in line with the rest of the scientific world. Keeping Fahrenheit only 'absolutely makes sense' if one's still living in a time warp that should have long since gone. Sorry!
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
  Wow, this transformed into a weird microrant. I didn't mean to offend - apologies if I have. To be clear - imperial units are awful. Everyone knows this. Americans know it, Brits know it, and while we might occasionally defend this system tongue-in-cheek, we know it's objectively idiotic. We're the ones that have to live with this thing every day. > b) industry (mainly heavy industrial/machining) pulled too many strings in Congress saying the conversion would cost too much This is real the only reason. The U.S. is somewhat unique because it had already heavily industrialized prior to the international push toward metric, and had basically no rebuilding to do after the war. It's similar to the technical debt that affects most giant old companies, but on the nation-scale. An (arguably) poor early design choice in industry-building and nation-building. In history, generally, the largest economic entity gets to use whatever units it wants, and force the rest of its trading partners to deal with it. The British Empire picked their units, which the USA inherited, and kept using due to inertia. If/when either the E.U. or China eclipse the USA's GDP, you can probably expect the USA to try again to shift to metric. This is all unrelated to anything of course. I assume the writers of Quanta articles are scientifically literate, prefer Metric, but know where most of their readers are from, and have chosen to use their language. I have lived in both England and America, and to this day, I still don't know what room temperature is in Celcius. I really don't think this was written with misleading, malicious intent - it's just an article that wasn't written for you, but rather for (the tremendous amount of) people still living in a "time warp" like me.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nl 6y ago

It wasn't obvious until a few years ago that high pressure supercomputing was a thing at all. It's absolutely worth reporting that room temperature supercomputing is achievable. There are a bunch of applications in things like quantum computing that this makes simpler.

Qwertious 6y ago
The title definitely should have mentioned the pressure needed though. It's the difference between "revolutionary" and "probably no practical applications, but nice for academia I guess".