10 ms·
> if successful LK-99 would be a watershed moment for humanity easily on-par with invention of the transistor Is this really true? I've seen comments that "it
by baal80spam 3y ago
> if successful LK-99 would be a watershed moment for humanity easily on-par with invention of the transistor
Is this really true? I've seen comments that "it would make a lot of things quite a bit more efficient, but it's not a revolution".
edit: Reading through the linked material now: https://nitter.moomoo.me/Andercot/status/1685088625187495936?s=20 https://nitter.moomoo.me/Andercot/status/1685088625187495936...
- curiousgal 3y agoIt just grinds my gears when the response to a simple question, that is meant to be addressed to a layman, is peppered with acronyms and complicated diagrams/graphs.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoSuperconductors allow creation of non-chemical energy storage whose capacity is only limited by storage's mechanical resistance from being crushed by its own magnetic field and which has nothing like "finite charge-discharge cycle life limit" Additionally it has no internal resistance, so you can charge such battery virtually immediately, but you can also discharge it immediately. This will be important for energy based weapons.
- op00to 3y agoWill batteries still explode like LiPo batteries?
- galangalalgol 3y agoWell there wouldn't be fires that produce toxic fumes and burn even under water, but if the coil fractured in an accident all that energy would be released in a tiny fraction of a second instead of a combustion event that takes time. That seems bad...
- yetihehe 3y ago> all that energy would be released in a tiny fraction of a second Probably along with a large electromagnetic pulse...
- ben_w 3y agoNecessarily with a large EMP, as the energy is stored in the magnetic field. Fortunately the energy density[0] is comparable with rubber bands[1] and supercapacitors[1], so while the EMP is large, it's not terrifyingly large. [0] at least according to wikipedia, 4-40 kJ/kg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energ... [1] 1.6-6.6 kJ/kg and 10-30 kJ/kg respectively: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
- galangalalgol 3y agoThe energy density isn't the scary bit, the power density is. The referenced paper in that Wikipedia article indicates ~10^5 higher power density than li-ion. So while it stores 10x less energy than li-ion it dumps it so much faster. The difference between a combustion and a detonation if you will. I'm guessing the vicinity of the thing would get turned to plasma.
- tetris11 3y agoAs one of the posters in that thread asked, "who is this guy?"
- WJW 3y agoWe could do solid state current switching before transistors, with diode valves and whatnot. Transistors "just" made it more efficient. Room temperature superconductors would not just just make a host of things more efficient, it would also enable devices that rely on high-strength magnetic fields to become much more widespread. For example, if you could remove the cooling requirements for MRI scanners then they could become much more usable "in the field".
- littlestymaar 3y ago> For example, if you could remove the cooling requirements for MRI scanners But MRI is almost the only tech we know today to be affected by this (and we could count maglev as well, but I don't think it'll change the landscape too much here, as the deployment of high speed trains un general is less technologically limited than it is by limited politcal will). And even for MRI, room-temperature SC is only a big deal if you can find zone that works for high current, wich isn't the case here son far.
- RyEgswuCsn 3y agoPetrol is just "better" coal. Except that you can't make flight with steam engines. When room-temperature SC becomes possible, previously unthinkable applications suddenly become viable.
- littlestymaar 3y agoMaybe, but the same was already said when cuprate SC appeared in the late eighties with their relatively high critical T°, but they haven't really fulfilled their promise…
- chasd00 3y agoIirc the LHC experiment would not be possible without those superconductors. That’s a pretty big deal.
- RyEgswuCsn 3y ago
- phh 3y agoI think that this is kinda like the lamp => transistor change. The immediate usages are not revolutionary, moving from lamps to transistors in amplifiers didn't change everything overnight. First products with transistors were barely better than the ones before. But oh boy did it create an infinite new horizon of opportunities on the long term I don't really know whether the analogy holds, but I find reasonable reasons to think it does (we could finally get our low-voltage DC home \o/ maglevs \o/ routine/cheap IRMs \o/. that's just the "simple" applications that we can already foresee right now)
- panki27 3y agoWhat do you mean by lamps? Electron tubes?
- LudwigNagasena 3y agoI think so. In some languages electron tubes are called lamps.
- majikandy 3y agoIs this the same as “valves” that were always talked about in the distinctive sound retro (now) guitar amplifiers?
- Pet_Ant 3y agoYes
- porknubbins 3y agoI have always called them vacuum tubes (in US) but I think they are valves in the UK.
- buildsjets 3y agoVacuum or Electron tubes describe how they work, lamps are what they look like, and valve describes the function that they provide.
- RugnirViking 3y agoconsider that a big part of why we cant make better processors is because they get hot, and they get hot because of resistance. I'd say dramatically faster chips in smaller form factors (think enormous graphics card in your phone, most of the bulk in those is cooling) would be quite a revolution !
- ben_w 3y agoDepends on the details, as always. I don't know the superconductivity mechanism here (does anyone?), but IIRC Cooper pairs in BCS theory can be separated by much larger gaps than the transistors in a modern CPU — hundreds, rather than single-digits, of nanometers. Might make fully-3D processors much more viable though, from lack of heat dissipation; and if it does, that in turn might be able to make up for a coarser resolution.
- Kirby64 3y agoHeat is a big factor, but part of limitations on speed really come from physical dimensions. At some point, speed of light travel becomes a limitation. Also, the transistors themselves generate a lot of the heat... So you still have large amounts of heat to handle even if the interconnect traces are heatless.
- jacquesm 3y agoThe transistors create a lot of heat because the current carrying capacity of the interconnect is severely limited which increases the time to switch the transistor from off to on or vv. This puts the transistor into a resistive domain where it consumes power and that leads to heat. If you use a superconducting interconnect that transition time will drop sharply and that in turn will lead to less power used by the transistor.
- RugnirViking 3y ago> Heat is a big factor, but part of limitations on speed really come from physical dimensions. undoubtably. We can't make things infinately fast. But being able to put the most powerful desktop processors and graphics cards we have today into a phone would definately be useful, not to mention laptops. It would also dramatically change how server farms work (their existance right now revolves around cooling, they could be so much more dense)
- xwdv 3y agoOh yes… with more frequent and routine MRI we have a path to helping maintain longer human lifespan.
- mkoubaa 3y agoVacuum tubes were quaint tools for labs, but then someone figured out how to program logic on them. You can't a priori plan out a path to new technology, it's usually surprising. This new category of materials can be a platform for lots of surprising uses
- nerdchum 3y agoenergy storage is the big one in my opinion. you can just pump electricity into the superconductor capacitor and it wouldn't have any loss it would just stay there until discharge.
- jonnycomputer 3y agoSounds like a bomb.
- postalrat 3y agoIs it a bomb?
- jonnycomputer 3y agoI don't know.
- jacquesm 3y agoIt's not a capacitor. It's a coil.
- mnw21cam 3y agoCapacitors are fairly good at keeping charge - there isn't much loss over time. In fact, capacitors used in high voltage equipment should generally have a discharge resistor wired across them to deliberately discharge them slowly, to prevent them being a hazard to anyone repairing the equipment. Superconductors don't help with this (much - just maybe with the wires leading up to a capacitor). Superconductors allow much better inductors instead. You can also store energy in an inductor, but it's different because in a capacitor the charge stays put and in an inductor the current is constantly flowing.
- m463 3y agoThe point contact transistor was rudimentary too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-contact_transistor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-contact_transistor that said, it was still manufactured and sold before being replaced by more "conventional" transistors.
- themagician 3y agoWeapons. Energy weapons are still mostly science fiction right now. This changes that. Energy storage increases by an order of magnitude and with no resistance you can charge and discharge batteries instantaneously. Probably some other really interesting uses, but energy weapons is what we'll figure out first. And not just giant ship mounted rail guns—if true this will start a new arms race for personal handheld weapons. No more gunpowder. Think rifles with almost no maintenance. Outrageous magazine capacity with shot capacity limited only by energy storage capacity… which can easily and quickly be resupplied if you are behind a supply line. If this is real you'll seen an untethered Boston Dynamics Atlas with a 7-minute runtime and a placeholder handheld railgun by year's end. That will kick off a series of RFPs, and in 3-5 years… real life Terminators baby. While we take refuge under the rubble we'll hear them chanting above us, "Hello, I'm calling about your car's extended warranty."
- jychang 3y agoWtf are you talking about? Superconductors are limited to 40kJ/L energy density. For reference, gasoline is 33,000 kJ/L.
- themagician 3y agoThat's about an order of magnitude more than current batteries.
- jychang 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery 1–10 Wh/kg for superconductors, 100–265 Wh/kg for batteries.