4 ms·

When I were a lad ... I remember the first superconductors (long predicted) being announced in the mid '80s. They stayed high on the nerdy headlines for quite

When I were a lad ... I remember the first superconductors (long predicted) being announced in the mid '80s. They stayed high on the nerdy headlines for quite a few years. Excitable write ups in New Scientist for us civilians. Nuclear fusion was still 50 years off but room temp superconductors were only a few years off (nope). I went to a posh school in Oxfordshire in the mid to late '80s and my physics class (form) had a field trip to Culham and also a double lesson/lecture done by a handful of Culham physicists back in school. I am very aware of what a privilege that was. Now I'm 53 and been around the block a bit, I really appreciate how time is required for some things. A lot of time.

jacquesm 3y ago
Very true. I remember cheering since the mid 80's every time the temperature for superconductivity went up, sometimes with 20 degrees K in one go. And then it was quiet for a long long time with a plateau. More recently, two major jumps, the last one of > 50 degrees (2017, H2S), and now this... https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/chem.201705321 https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002...
- gerdesj 3y ago
  I've forgotten how many times one of the most important thresholds in our times has been bumped up a bit. Now we seem to be offered heaven on a plate. If superconductance can be reliably demonstrated at RTP (you wear a light cotton shirt, instead of 1cm thick fancy weaves involving an awful lot of rubber) then we are laughing all the way to ameliorating climate change. Even if this result is confirmed then I think it will take at least 20 years to dig in to reversing climate change. We live in unpleasant times.
  - dTal 3y ago
    If the argument is that superconductivity = better efficiency = less energy use, then I am afraid that Jevon's Paradox has some bad news: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      No, the argument is that if this is true and it can be commercialized cost effectively that there may be an energy storage solution just over the horizon that would allow for all kinds of things that are currently impossible, such as summer/winter energy storage and other very nice to haves. It is obviously much too early to say anything about this so think of it as hope rather than anything more solid but it isn't necessarily about cheaper energy, just an almost perfect companion to cheap renewables whose main issue is that it is hard to store their output for the time when you need it most.
      - HideousKojima 3y ago
        It may also make the energy (and economic) costs of fusion make a lot more sense, since superconductors are used to contain the plasma in fusion reactors.
        jacquesm 3y ago
        There probably isn't a field that won't be affected by this if it holds up.
  - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
    How would superconductivity help to reverse climate change? Honest question.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      I'm not sure what the GP envisions but one thing you could use superconducting materials for that don't require a bunch of extra gear to operate is to store energy in loops of it. This may well allow for a relatively high storage density (but probably not nearly as high as chemical ways of storing that energy but with better efficiency, and for stationary applications density is less of a factor than for anything mobile) with near instant charge/discharge times. Kind of like a solid state version of a flywheel. That in turn could power an energy revolution which has the potential to reduce carbon based fuel consumption dramatically. That's SF right now, but there are pathways to very interesting futures unlocked by a material such as the one described in the paper, all of them subject to the usual caveats that it's a 'mere matter of engineering' and that it may prove to be far too costly in practice. And it wouldn't reverse climate change but it could help slow down the acceleration of climate change.
      - Filligree 3y ago
        The figures I’ve seen for superconducting energy storage are in the regime of “10GWh per km of cable”. Quite a bit more than chemical, in other words, the chief problem being what happens if it quenches. Or the cables break. And cost.
        jacquesm 3y ago
        Room temperature super conductors don't quench. Or at least, not until they reach the temperature at which they no longer work as superconductors, which for this one is 127 degrees Celsius. That does make for an interesting failure mode if anything should every cause a small spot on a longer conductor to reach that temperature...
        Filligree 3y ago
  - Flatcircle 3y ago
    Climate change can be real, and the world can not fall apart, those two things can co exist. Everyone’s generation thought the world was falling apart. But it continues to get better.
willis936 3y ago
Those mid 80s high temperature superconductors are now mass produced for NMRs and fusion startups. I don't think it's given that all superconductor breakthroughs will require 40 years to get to that point and there's good reason to believe they won't (startup penalty, industry bootstrapping, market finding, etc. have all been completed).
- bradleyjg 3y ago
  Those mid 80s high temperature superconductors are now mass produced for NMRs and fusion startups. As alluded to those same pop science magazines promised a fusion future too. Here we are, magazines extinct, with fusion startups using LN2 superconductors. Also: no quantum computers, no space colonies, no flying cars (or even supersonic planes), and twitter/reddit/facebook are worse than Usenet.
  - willis936 3y ago
    Well, yes. The practical concepts won out. Also, no fusion startup I know of is using LN2 for superconductors. Liquid helium offers too much performance and quench margin with YCBO.
  - mdip 3y ago
    > As alluded to those same pop science magazines promised a fusion future too. I get it ... But how many of them predicted their use in ~36,000 advanced medical imagery devices world-wide? I'd love fusion power (and flying cars), too, but there's a whole lot of interesting technology between "check out my shiny new super-conductor" and "let's use it to contain plasma that's hotter-than-the-core-of-the-sun-kind-of-hot[0]" that we do benefit from[1], today, to not be too disappointed that we haven't quite reached the greatest potentials. I don't know enough to speak intelligently on any of this -- who knows -- maybe fusion won't be a possibility until even higher-temperature super-conductors are created ... or maybe there's some other "not possible" in the way (until another discovery is made). [0] And (if I understand things correctly) it's probably really unfortunate that they traditionally require extreme cooling, likely made more complex given the heat involved and almost certainly requiring far more power than would be required if said super-conductors worked at much higher temperatures. [1] Myself, personally -- and I have a pretty cool 3D file of my brain backed up to my server as a result. /// apologies: reading this over it sounded a little hostile; that wasn't intended -- I was merely offering a competing perspective, albeit poorly :)
bewaretheirs 3y ago
Superconductivity was first observed in solid mercury at a temperature of 4.19 Kelvin in 1911, not long after liquid helium was first produced in 1908. The 1980's discoveries were of the first "high temperature" superconductors (where "high temperature" means "above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen"). Liquid nitrogen is much easier to deal with than liquid helium.
robotguy 3y ago
Reminds me of a story: I was in college physics in fall '89 and our professor was telling us how he and his son spent the summer in Alaska prospecting for whatever material was all the rage in superconductors at the time. He was explaining that once superconductors broke the liquid helium temperature, it was going to be a game changer. He said "If you buy it by the gallon, liquid helium is cheaper than beer." To which a student replied "You buy beer by the gallon?"

jacquesm 3y ago

Very true. I remember cheering since the mid 80's every time the temperature for superconductivity went up, sometimes with 20 degrees K in one go. And then it was quiet for a long long time with a plateau. More recently, two major jumps, the last one of > 50 degrees (2017, H2S), and now this... https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/chem.201705321 https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002...

gerdesj 3y ago
I've forgotten how many times one of the most important thresholds in our times has been bumped up a bit. Now we seem to be offered heaven on a plate. If superconductance can be reliably demonstrated at RTP (you wear a light cotton shirt, instead of 1cm thick fancy weaves involving an awful lot of rubber) then we are laughing all the way to ameliorating climate change. Even if this result is confirmed then I think it will take at least 20 years to dig in to reversing climate change. We live in unpleasant times.
- dTal 3y ago
  If the argument is that superconductivity = better efficiency = less energy use, then I am afraid that Jevon's Paradox has some bad news: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    No, the argument is that if this is true and it can be commercialized cost effectively that there may be an energy storage solution just over the horizon that would allow for all kinds of things that are currently impossible, such as summer/winter energy storage and other very nice to haves. It is obviously much too early to say anything about this so think of it as hope rather than anything more solid but it isn't necessarily about cheaper energy, just an almost perfect companion to cheap renewables whose main issue is that it is hard to store their output for the time when you need it most.
    - HideousKojima 3y ago
      It may also make the energy (and economic) costs of fusion make a lot more sense, since superconductors are used to contain the plasma in fusion reactors.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        There probably isn't a field that won't be affected by this if it holds up.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  How would superconductivity help to reverse climate change? Honest question.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    I'm not sure what the GP envisions but one thing you could use superconducting materials for that don't require a bunch of extra gear to operate is to store energy in loops of it. This may well allow for a relatively high storage density (but probably not nearly as high as chemical ways of storing that energy but with better efficiency, and for stationary applications density is less of a factor than for anything mobile) with near instant charge/discharge times. Kind of like a solid state version of a flywheel. That in turn could power an energy revolution which has the potential to reduce carbon based fuel consumption dramatically. That's SF right now, but there are pathways to very interesting futures unlocked by a material such as the one described in the paper, all of them subject to the usual caveats that it's a 'mere matter of engineering' and that it may prove to be far too costly in practice. And it wouldn't reverse climate change but it could help slow down the acceleration of climate change.
    - Filligree 3y ago
      The figures I’ve seen for superconducting energy storage are in the regime of “10GWh per km of cable”. Quite a bit more than chemical, in other words, the chief problem being what happens if it quenches. Or the cables break. And cost.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        Room temperature super conductors don't quench. Or at least, not until they reach the temperature at which they no longer work as superconductors, which for this one is 127 degrees Celsius. That does make for an interesting failure mode if anything should every cause a small spot on a longer conductor to reach that temperature...
        Filligree 3y ago
- Flatcircle 3y ago
  Climate change can be real, and the world can not fall apart, those two things can co exist. Everyone’s generation thought the world was falling apart. But it continues to get better.

willis936 3y ago

Those mid 80s high temperature superconductors are now mass produced for NMRs and fusion startups. I don't think it's given that all superconductor breakthroughs will require 40 years to get to that point and there's good reason to believe they won't (startup penalty, industry bootstrapping, market finding, etc. have all been completed).

bradleyjg 3y ago
Those mid 80s high temperature superconductors are now mass produced for NMRs and fusion startups. As alluded to those same pop science magazines promised a fusion future too. Here we are, magazines extinct, with fusion startups using LN2 superconductors. Also: no quantum computers, no space colonies, no flying cars (or even supersonic planes), and twitter/reddit/facebook are worse than Usenet.
- willis936 3y ago
  Well, yes. The practical concepts won out. Also, no fusion startup I know of is using LN2 for superconductors. Liquid helium offers too much performance and quench margin with YCBO.
- mdip 3y ago
  > As alluded to those same pop science magazines promised a fusion future too. I get it ... But how many of them predicted their use in ~36,000 advanced medical imagery devices world-wide? I'd love fusion power (and flying cars), too, but there's a whole lot of interesting technology between "check out my shiny new super-conductor" and "let's use it to contain plasma that's hotter-than-the-core-of-the-sun-kind-of-hot[0]" that we do benefit from[1], today, to not be too disappointed that we haven't quite reached the greatest potentials. I don't know enough to speak intelligently on any of this -- who knows -- maybe fusion won't be a possibility until even higher-temperature super-conductors are created ... or maybe there's some other "not possible" in the way (until another discovery is made). [0] And (if I understand things correctly) it's probably really unfortunate that they traditionally require extreme cooling, likely made more complex given the heat involved and almost certainly requiring far more power than would be required if said super-conductors worked at much higher temperatures. [1] Myself, personally -- and I have a pretty cool 3D file of my brain backed up to my server as a result. /// apologies: reading this over it sounded a little hostile; that wasn't intended -- I was merely offering a competing perspective, albeit poorly :)

bewaretheirs 3y ago

Superconductivity was first observed in solid mercury at a temperature of 4.19 Kelvin in 1911, not long after liquid helium was first produced in 1908. The 1980's discoveries were of the first "high temperature" superconductors (where "high temperature" means "above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen"). Liquid nitrogen is much easier to deal with than liquid helium.

robotguy 3y ago

Reminds me of a story: I was in college physics in fall '89 and our professor was telling us how he and his son spent the summer in Alaska prospecting for whatever material was all the rage in superconductors at the time. He was explaining that once superconductors broke the liquid helium temperature, it was going to be a game changer. He said "If you buy it by the gallon, liquid helium is cheaper than beer." To which a student replied "You buy beer by the gallon?"