9 ms·

Ask HN: Room temperature superconductor: what to expect?

51 points by setnone 3y ago

Suppose room temperature superconductor technology is validated and replicated. What to expect in the coming months, years and decades in the consumer space?

lucubratory 3y ago
If it's real and can be produced at scale, this might tilt the balance of power in the Western Pacific theatre against the US (or further against the US, depending on your opinion) within the next 10-15 years. The reason is because while yes, the PRC produces and uses a lot of hydrophones, their range is a function of how noisy what they're detecting is, and US subs are very, very quiet. Networking and advanced signal processing can help, but only so far (and generally more with accuracy than sensitivity). SQUIDS are different, and exactly how far away they can detect a large metal body underwater is classified, but RTAPS would undeniably significantly improve their sensitivity and thus their range, meaning that whichever side can deploy and maintain a network of them (signal processing works for these guys, too) should have very, very good visibility on where any large bodies of metal are near their network, underwater or not. Both the US and the PRC would be able to capitalise on RTAPS for building SQUIDS, and both could base them in westpac (off the coasts of Japan, PH, Taiwan, ROK for US, eastern seaboard and their actually controlled islands for the PRC). So they both benefit from this technology and it's a wash, right? Wrong, both sides having this technology dramatically harms the usability of submarines in general, and the US is significantly ahead in submarine technology and submarines play a pivotal role in US naval doctrine, so this technology would significantly reduce the relative advantage of the US military compared to the PLA, which does not have submarines that are as militarily effective and whose offensive force structure is based around massing fires largely from the mainland, rather than using submarines to screen carriers which provide fires through sorties. Basically, RTAPS improves everyones ASW suite, which sucks for the US because they're the kings of submarine warfare and submarine warfare is a large part of how they protect their assets near the PRC and how they project force into the PRC's expanding sphere of influence.
PaulHoule 3y ago
There is some chance (betting markets say maybe 70%) that it is bogus. You’d think a lack of replication would kill it right away but look at how there are still believers in cold fusion today. In a few weeks there will be serious attempts at replication and probably some consensus in a few months. They are reporting a material which does not have high performance in terms of maximum current, those samples aren’t going to outperform traditional conductors. Somebody might figure out how to make higher quality crystals, there may be enough details that you’d need to license several patents to make something useful. Liquid nitrogen superconductors were discovered in 1986 but were very slow to find applications. Liquid nitrogen is easy to handle (we could demonstrate magnetic levitation in our high school physics lab) and nitrogen is an abundant element (most of the atmosphere) compared to helium which is common in the universe but rare in Earth. People thought it would be a revolution but it wasn’t. There are practical applications of them but when they build new power lines they almost always use ordinary metals. Now it could be the other way around, the effect is real, people are able to make a high performing material at an affordable price, people solve all the practical problems, etc. Or it could be this round of materials is “close but no cigar” but in 10 years there is a real breakthrough. We don’t know at this point.
- ncallaway 3y ago
  If people manage to do this part: > people are able to make a high performing material at an affordable price, people solve all the practical problems, What are the implications of that? What are the effects? How does that change my life? How does it change society?
  - weard_beard 3y ago
    Cheap 100% efficient batteries.
    - PaulHoule 3y ago
      Like storing energy in a magnetic field?
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    Maybe we can build longer-range power lines that are cheaper. Buckminister Fuller thought we could use semiconductors to build a global power grid which could move energy from renewables all over the Earth. (Buzzkill: you still need to build a right-of-way for power lines and will have problems permitting. Europe has dreamed a long time of getting renewables from North Africa but Africans could well cry imperialism.) Better particle accelerators, MRI machines, fusion reactors. (If we can greatly strengthen the magnetic field the reactor gets smaller are more economical.) Better magnetic field sensors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID Possibly better logic gates post-Silicon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephson_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephson_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_single_flux_quantum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_single_flux_quantum Better magnetic levitation rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev When I think of all those things I think the RSFQ logic gates are most likely to be revolutionary.
- proto_lambda 3y ago
  The setup was "Suppose room temperature superconductor technology is validated and replicated", so most of your comment is irrelevant to the question asked.
baz00 3y ago
Like all technology which is conceptually indistinguishable from marketing materials, hold off on any judgement until it's reproduced and commercialised. At best so far from my understanding, this is a new starting point and milestone not a magic bullet.
- justin_oaks 3y ago
  I generally don't read the claimed scientific breakthrough articles on HN. This is exactly the reason. Unless these science breakthroughs can be put to good use then they might as well not exist. And as you mention, they need to be reproduced and commercialized (i.e. mass produced or at least affordably produced). People are allowed to dream and hope, but I'd rather not give into marketing and hype. To each their own.
  - stevenhuang 3y ago
    Science breakthroughs that can't immediately be put to good use might as well not exist? Yeesh. What an embarrassingly confused, short sighted, and self-serving perspective of science.
    - maxbond 3y ago
      I think maybe you're taking them a little too literally, I don't think they're suggesting that people shouldn't be doing research on such things, I think they're saying it isn't useful for them personally to read about it. I follow science news, but it is a little exhausting how much of it is bullshit. Outliers and measurement errors disproportionately create interesting stories, and so things that don't pan out end up being overrepresented in the scientific press (like that supposed tachyon detection a few years ago). There's a lot of stories about seemingly promising technologies that just don't really seem to go anywhere. When these things get a lot of attention, they're followed by a breathless hype train and the attendant grifters. A lot of it feels like a wasted effort. I suspect it gives some the impression that science itself is a giant grift where nothing useful is produced, and contributes to antiscience attitudes.
progrus 3y ago
It’s a magic bullet, and more than one government has already developed it.
pyb 3y ago
Physics and maths papers are published everyday, claiming to have solved this or that long-standing problem. I think Twitter/HN is getting excited about this particular paper for no particularl reason, it's just random the amplification of stuff that sometimes occurs in social media.
- rvnx 3y ago
  The same with IA, so many papers that giant companies claim achieving, but that nobody can see, reproduce, or even test, and this goes totally fine. At least there, in the LK-99, they are giving the recipe.
  - jwilk 3y ago
    What's IA?
    - syndacks 3y ago
      Intelligence Artificial
      - sammko128 3y ago
        French AI
    - rvnx 3y ago
      The way to write AI in the other side of Earth (Spain, France, Italy, Romania, etc...) in traditional latinized-English. English is spoken very differently in the world. The same way that we follow mirroring rules in the Southern Hemisphere. For instance, in Guyana (South America) it's ⱯI, and in Australia, IⱯ
      - fbarred 3y ago
        "For instance, in Guyana (South America) it's ⱯI, and in Australia, IⱯ" That's a joke, right?
worldvoyageur 3y ago
Two key properties of superconducting materials are that electrical resistance vanishes and the magnetic fields that are expelled pass around the material. If there was a viable low cost superconductor that worked at temperatures up to 50 degrees Celcuis and atmospheric pressure, the implications would include: - way less heat generated in electronics, so faster and more efficient CPUs, GPUs and memory. - power transmission without loss. Very long range power transmission becomes viable and low cost (buried cables near roads?). For instance, solar energy transmitted in real time from where the sun shines to where it is dark or cloudy. - a major obstacle to fusion power is removed as superconductors make it much easier, lighter and smaller to use magnetic fields to confine plasma - medical imaging and scanning gets much cheaper as, for instance, MRI machines get smaller, lighter and simpler. - mag lev trains could become the lowest cost way to travel by rail. Maybe even cars and trucks become maglev and roads are replaced by magnetic rail.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  >power transmission without loss. Very long range power transmission becomes viable and low cost (buried cables near roads?). For instance, solar energy transmitted in real time from where the sun shines to where it is dark or cloudy. For practical purposes this is only true if the cost of the material and support systems for the superconducting transmission is substantially less than the cost of the power lost in the existing system. Existing power transmission systems are already quite efficient, and we don't bother making them more efficient with HVDC because the infrastructure costs don't justify the power savings. It's almost certainly the case that superconductor cable would be significantly more expensive than that. What we really need is more capacity, which this material as presented doesn't seem to help with.
  - criddell 3y ago
    > What we really need is more capacity, which this material as presented doesn't seem to help with. I thought one of the benefits of superconducting wires was that they could carry a lot more. Is that generally not true of superconductors?
ElectronBadger 3y ago
MEG (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography) SQUIDs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID) that do not require cooling with liquid helium -- A LOT cheaper and more available.
sgift 3y ago
So, for the sake of the thread let's assume this is real as you've asked. In the next months and years the focus will be on "is this useful" and "how can we make this useful". To make use of a sc you need to bring it into shapes we can use. Wires of all sizes and shapes are the big one. Can this material be made into wires like current sc (bonding to a base material to fix the brittleness) or even better can it be drawn into wires? If not, that's a new research area. Also, we still have no real idea how high temperature sc work (there are two competing theories, but afaik neither can fully describe what we see). That's probably even more important for this new ones. A flurry of research will be into related materials, to see if we can find ones which combine the sc with better properties, but having a theoretical understanding would make this far easier than just randomly poking at materials. So, assuming we get to the state of usable room-temp sc everything else depends on the price. The lower the price the more they can replace until in the last instance all cables, coils and everything could use them (this will probably not happen for a very long time if ever). In the nearer future they could replace all of their predecessors in places where they are used today: In MRTs, in the LHC and comparable machines, fusion reactors, various cables, some small energy storage systems using them already. Such things. They also could solve the biggest remaining obstacle for renewable grids based on wind and solar (storage) by allowing far better SMES: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energ... Who knows where we'll go from there, but I think that's enough food for thought for the moment.
mk_stjames 3y ago
For some of the reasons already mentioned, a lot of the 'big' uses that people talk about with room temp superconductors (transmission lines, more efficient CPUs, etc) just likely won't be practical or even possible at all for a long time with this material, if ever. However there is one application that would likely be able to overcome any basic engineering or cost/performance challenges and get built relatively quickly (~3-5 years timeframe), in my opinion: The development of very small, room temp SQUIDs [0] for use in small, portable fMRI-type machines. Think a helmet you put on and have the ability to monitor spatial brain activity at very high resolution and without the need for massive liquid helium cooled machines. The machine in link [1] would be able to potentially be shrunken down into something the size of a football helmet and potentially be much, much cheaper, allowing for a cascade of new research into uses of such a machine in ways possibly outside the typically niche medical research. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography
- lucubratory 3y ago
  Nice, then we can combine that with the recent research on decoding thoughts (https://seantrott.substack.com/p/using-neuro-imaging-and-language https://seantrott.substack.com/p/using-neuro-imaging-and-lan...) and maybe a couple of decades from now we can have parolees released only on condition that they're fulfilling their law compliance monitoring hours quota (LCMH quota) per day, or police interrogations where they can make you wear a helmet and know what you're thinking internally in response to their questions, or like drug tests it can be a requirement of employment that you submit to yearly company spirit evaluations while in The Helm, or you could hook it up to people for treatment by classical conditioning, where inappropriate thoughts are immediately punished with shocks, to solve the issue of inappropriate thoughts. Can't wait!
usrbinbash 3y ago
> What to expect in the coming months, years and decades in the consumer space? I don't expect anything until the results are replicated, multiple times, and confirmed in the peer-review process.
rasz 3y ago
Obviously first applications will cover AI and crypto.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
baking 3y ago
I can tell you what you won't see, stronger magnets, at least not stronger than those currently being built out of high-temperature superconductors (HTS.) LTS magnets are limited by the magnetic fields the conductors can withstand before they lose the ability to superconduct. HTS can withstand a much higher magnetic field, but this is unrelated to the temperature at which they superconduct. A room temperature superconductor will have different properties, maybe it can handle a higher magnetic field or not, we cant yet say. But what we do know is that the current limit to building HTS magnets is no longer the superconductor, but the strength of the supporting material which is steel. Find a stronger material and you can build a stronger magnet. A superconductor, better than current HTS, won't change that.
CapitalistCartr 3y ago
Many practical applications require ductility and durability. So it depends; if the material is ceramic, it's not so useful.

51 points by setnone 3y ago

Suppose room temperature superconductor technology is validated and replicated. What to expect in the coming months, years and decades in the consumer space?

lucubratory 3y ago

If it's real and can be produced at scale, this might tilt the balance of power in the Western Pacific theatre against the US (or further against the US, depending on your opinion) within the next 10-15 years. The reason is because while yes, the PRC produces and uses a lot of hydrophones, their range is a function of how noisy what they're detecting is, and US subs are very, very quiet. Networking and advanced signal processing can help, but only so far (and generally more with accuracy than sensitivity). SQUIDS are different, and exactly how far away they can detect a large metal body underwater is classified, but RTAPS would undeniably significantly improve their sensitivity and thus their range, meaning that whichever side can deploy and maintain a network of them (signal processing works for these guys, too) should have very, very good visibility on where any large bodies of metal are near their network, underwater or not. Both the US and the PRC would be able to capitalise on RTAPS for building SQUIDS, and both could base them in westpac (off the coasts of Japan, PH, Taiwan, ROK for US, eastern seaboard and their actually controlled islands for the PRC). So they both benefit from this technology and it's a wash, right? Wrong, both sides having this technology dramatically harms the usability of submarines in general, and the US is significantly ahead in submarine technology and submarines play a pivotal role in US naval doctrine, so this technology would significantly reduce the relative advantage of the US military compared to the PLA, which does not have submarines that are as militarily effective and whose offensive force structure is based around massing fires largely from the mainland, rather than using submarines to screen carriers which provide fires through sorties. Basically, RTAPS improves everyones ASW suite, which sucks for the US because they're the kings of submarine warfare and submarine warfare is a large part of how they protect their assets near the PRC and how they project force into the PRC's expanding sphere of influence.

PaulHoule 3y ago

There is some chance (betting markets say maybe 70%) that it is bogus. You’d think a lack of replication would kill it right away but look at how there are still believers in cold fusion today. In a few weeks there will be serious attempts at replication and probably some consensus in a few months. They are reporting a material which does not have high performance in terms of maximum current, those samples aren’t going to outperform traditional conductors. Somebody might figure out how to make higher quality crystals, there may be enough details that you’d need to license several patents to make something useful. Liquid nitrogen superconductors were discovered in 1986 but were very slow to find applications. Liquid nitrogen is easy to handle (we could demonstrate magnetic levitation in our high school physics lab) and nitrogen is an abundant element (most of the atmosphere) compared to helium which is common in the universe but rare in Earth. People thought it would be a revolution but it wasn’t. There are practical applications of them but when they build new power lines they almost always use ordinary metals. Now it could be the other way around, the effect is real, people are able to make a high performing material at an affordable price, people solve all the practical problems, etc. Or it could be this round of materials is “close but no cigar” but in 10 years there is a real breakthrough. We don’t know at this point.

ncallaway 3y ago
If people manage to do this part: > people are able to make a high performing material at an affordable price, people solve all the practical problems, What are the implications of that? What are the effects? How does that change my life? How does it change society?
- weard_beard 3y ago
  Cheap 100% efficient batteries.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    Like storing energy in a magnetic field?
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  Maybe we can build longer-range power lines that are cheaper. Buckminister Fuller thought we could use semiconductors to build a global power grid which could move energy from renewables all over the Earth. (Buzzkill: you still need to build a right-of-way for power lines and will have problems permitting. Europe has dreamed a long time of getting renewables from North Africa but Africans could well cry imperialism.) Better particle accelerators, MRI machines, fusion reactors. (If we can greatly strengthen the magnetic field the reactor gets smaller are more economical.) Better magnetic field sensors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID Possibly better logic gates post-Silicon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephson_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephson_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_single_flux_quantum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_single_flux_quantum Better magnetic levitation rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev When I think of all those things I think the RSFQ logic gates are most likely to be revolutionary.
proto_lambda 3y ago
The setup was "Suppose room temperature superconductor technology is validated and replicated", so most of your comment is irrelevant to the question asked.

baz00 3y ago

Like all technology which is conceptually indistinguishable from marketing materials, hold off on any judgement until it's reproduced and commercialised. At best so far from my understanding, this is a new starting point and milestone not a magic bullet.

justin_oaks 3y ago
I generally don't read the claimed scientific breakthrough articles on HN. This is exactly the reason. Unless these science breakthroughs can be put to good use then they might as well not exist. And as you mention, they need to be reproduced and commercialized (i.e. mass produced or at least affordably produced). People are allowed to dream and hope, but I'd rather not give into marketing and hype. To each their own.
- stevenhuang 3y ago
  Science breakthroughs that can't immediately be put to good use might as well not exist? Yeesh. What an embarrassingly confused, short sighted, and self-serving perspective of science.
  - maxbond 3y ago
    I think maybe you're taking them a little too literally, I don't think they're suggesting that people shouldn't be doing research on such things, I think they're saying it isn't useful for them personally to read about it. I follow science news, but it is a little exhausting how much of it is bullshit. Outliers and measurement errors disproportionately create interesting stories, and so things that don't pan out end up being overrepresented in the scientific press (like that supposed tachyon detection a few years ago). There's a lot of stories about seemingly promising technologies that just don't really seem to go anywhere. When these things get a lot of attention, they're followed by a breathless hype train and the attendant grifters. A lot of it feels like a wasted effort. I suspect it gives some the impression that science itself is a giant grift where nothing useful is produced, and contributes to antiscience attitudes.

progrus 3y ago

It’s a magic bullet, and more than one government has already developed it.

pyb 3y ago

Physics and maths papers are published everyday, claiming to have solved this or that long-standing problem. I think Twitter/HN is getting excited about this particular paper for no particularl reason, it's just random the amplification of stuff that sometimes occurs in social media.

rvnx 3y ago
The same with IA, so many papers that giant companies claim achieving, but that nobody can see, reproduce, or even test, and this goes totally fine. At least there, in the LK-99, they are giving the recipe.
- jwilk 3y ago
  What's IA?
  - syndacks 3y ago
    Intelligence Artificial
    - sammko128 3y ago
      French AI
  - rvnx 3y ago
    The way to write AI in the other side of Earth (Spain, France, Italy, Romania, etc...) in traditional latinized-English. English is spoken very differently in the world. The same way that we follow mirroring rules in the Southern Hemisphere. For instance, in Guyana (South America) it's ⱯI, and in Australia, IⱯ
    - fbarred 3y ago
      "For instance, in Guyana (South America) it's ⱯI, and in Australia, IⱯ" That's a joke, right?

worldvoyageur 3y ago

Two key properties of superconducting materials are that electrical resistance vanishes and the magnetic fields that are expelled pass around the material. If there was a viable low cost superconductor that worked at temperatures up to 50 degrees Celcuis and atmospheric pressure, the implications would include: - way less heat generated in electronics, so faster and more efficient CPUs, GPUs and memory. - power transmission without loss. Very long range power transmission becomes viable and low cost (buried cables near roads?). For instance, solar energy transmitted in real time from where the sun shines to where it is dark or cloudy. - a major obstacle to fusion power is removed as superconductors make it much easier, lighter and smaller to use magnetic fields to confine plasma - medical imaging and scanning gets much cheaper as, for instance, MRI machines get smaller, lighter and simpler. - mag lev trains could become the lowest cost way to travel by rail. Maybe even cars and trucks become maglev and roads are replaced by magnetic rail.

idiotsecant 3y ago
>power transmission without loss. Very long range power transmission becomes viable and low cost (buried cables near roads?). For instance, solar energy transmitted in real time from where the sun shines to where it is dark or cloudy. For practical purposes this is only true if the cost of the material and support systems for the superconducting transmission is substantially less than the cost of the power lost in the existing system. Existing power transmission systems are already quite efficient, and we don't bother making them more efficient with HVDC because the infrastructure costs don't justify the power savings. It's almost certainly the case that superconductor cable would be significantly more expensive than that. What we really need is more capacity, which this material as presented doesn't seem to help with.
- criddell 3y ago
  > What we really need is more capacity, which this material as presented doesn't seem to help with. I thought one of the benefits of superconducting wires was that they could carry a lot more. Is that generally not true of superconductors?

ElectronBadger 3y ago

MEG (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography) SQUIDs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID) that do not require cooling with liquid helium -- A LOT cheaper and more available.

sgift 3y ago

So, for the sake of the thread let's assume this is real as you've asked. In the next months and years the focus will be on "is this useful" and "how can we make this useful". To make use of a sc you need to bring it into shapes we can use. Wires of all sizes and shapes are the big one. Can this material be made into wires like current sc (bonding to a base material to fix the brittleness) or even better can it be drawn into wires? If not, that's a new research area. Also, we still have no real idea how high temperature sc work (there are two competing theories, but afaik neither can fully describe what we see). That's probably even more important for this new ones. A flurry of research will be into related materials, to see if we can find ones which combine the sc with better properties, but having a theoretical understanding would make this far easier than just randomly poking at materials. So, assuming we get to the state of usable room-temp sc everything else depends on the price. The lower the price the more they can replace until in the last instance all cables, coils and everything could use them (this will probably not happen for a very long time if ever). In the nearer future they could replace all of their predecessors in places where they are used today: In MRTs, in the LHC and comparable machines, fusion reactors, various cables, some small energy storage systems using them already. Such things. They also could solve the biggest remaining obstacle for renewable grids based on wind and solar (storage) by allowing far better SMES: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energ... Who knows where we'll go from there, but I think that's enough food for thought for the moment.

mk_stjames 3y ago

For some of the reasons already mentioned, a lot of the 'big' uses that people talk about with room temp superconductors (transmission lines, more efficient CPUs, etc) just likely won't be practical or even possible at all for a long time with this material, if ever. However there is one application that would likely be able to overcome any basic engineering or cost/performance challenges and get built relatively quickly (~3-5 years timeframe), in my opinion: The development of very small, room temp SQUIDs [0] for use in small, portable fMRI-type machines. Think a helmet you put on and have the ability to monitor spatial brain activity at very high resolution and without the need for massive liquid helium cooled machines. The machine in link [1] would be able to potentially be shrunken down into something the size of a football helmet and potentially be much, much cheaper, allowing for a cascade of new research into uses of such a machine in ways possibly outside the typically niche medical research. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography

lucubratory 3y ago
Nice, then we can combine that with the recent research on decoding thoughts (https://seantrott.substack.com/p/using-neuro-imaging-and-language https://seantrott.substack.com/p/using-neuro-imaging-and-lan...) and maybe a couple of decades from now we can have parolees released only on condition that they're fulfilling their law compliance monitoring hours quota (LCMH quota) per day, or police interrogations where they can make you wear a helmet and know what you're thinking internally in response to their questions, or like drug tests it can be a requirement of employment that you submit to yearly company spirit evaluations while in The Helm, or you could hook it up to people for treatment by classical conditioning, where inappropriate thoughts are immediately punished with shocks, to solve the issue of inappropriate thoughts. Can't wait!

usrbinbash 3y ago

> What to expect in the coming months, years and decades in the consumer space? I don't expect anything until the results are replicated, multiple times, and confirmed in the peer-review process.

rasz 3y ago

Obviously first applications will cover AI and crypto.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

baking 3y ago

I can tell you what you won't see, stronger magnets, at least not stronger than those currently being built out of high-temperature superconductors (HTS.) LTS magnets are limited by the magnetic fields the conductors can withstand before they lose the ability to superconduct. HTS can withstand a much higher magnetic field, but this is unrelated to the temperature at which they superconduct. A room temperature superconductor will have different properties, maybe it can handle a higher magnetic field or not, we cant yet say. But what we do know is that the current limit to building HTS magnets is no longer the superconductor, but the strength of the supporting material which is steel. Find a stronger material and you can build a stronger magnet. A superconductor, better than current HTS, won't change that.

CapitalistCartr 3y ago

Many practical applications require ductility and durability. So it depends; if the material is ceramic, it's not so useful.