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When you cool some materials down until they are very cold, something weird happens: Their electrical resistance vanishes, and they start rejecting all magnetic
by Tuna-Fish 3y ago
When you cool some materials down until they are very cold, something weird happens: Their electrical resistance vanishes, and they start rejecting all magnetic fields. It's important to note that this is not a continuous process where things slowly change until it reaches zero, it is a step change after which everything related to electricity works very differently.
This doesn't mean there is no resistance in the wires that move electricity to your house, because superconductors only work when cooled to unpractically low temperatures, meaning they can only be used for special things like the magnets in MRI machines and fusion reactors.
That is, until now. This paper reports on a material that remains a superconductor at 127C.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Their electrical resistance vanishes To put this in further context, RTP superconductors mean compact, low-power MRIs and a massive shrinking, simplification and superpowering of magnetic-confinement fusion and ion propulsion designs. It blows apart chip designers' thermal constraints and opens up entire classes of energy-storage chemistries. If this is real, it will be the defining discovery of our lifetimes.
- bananapub 3y ago> superpowering of magnetic-confinement fusion though worth remembering we still don't know how to stabilise plasma or sensibly generate electricity from it. > It blows apart chip designers' thermal constraints really? much of the heat in chips comes from the /connections/ between transistors etc?