4 ms·
There is a reason why room temperature (ambient pressure) superconductors have been one of the holy grails of physics for such a long time: the implications are
by fnands 3y ago
There is a reason why room temperature (ambient pressure) superconductors have been one of the holy grails of physics for such a long time: the implications are profound.
I used to be a particle physicist, and some of the more complex systems were just those used to cool the superconducting magnets down to cold enough that they become superconducting. If you can do that at ambient temp, you don't have to bother with that entire system.
Also: fusion reactors rely on superconducting magnets (or if you are JET live with the fact that you can only run your magnets for a few seconds before the overheat), so can have a large impact on future fusion reactors.
- jacquesm 3y agoThere would be some massive deprecation at the CERN and ITER sites.
- regularfry 3y agoYou've got me wondering how much cheaper ITER actually gets if you don't need the magnets to be cryogenic.
- jacquesm 3y agoWhat I wonder if the cooling requirement drops how much easier it is to get to break-even.
- jamiek88 3y agoWhat about colliders too? Imagine large hadron collider without cooling! We could have the unimaginably huge hadron collider!
- fennecfoxy 3y agoI'm already rooting for CFS' Sparc over ITER anyway. ITER is too big & expensive, if Sparc works it's an indication that we can build fusion "on a budget", too. Idt CFS will care because they've already sourced much of the HTS tape that they need and their schedule doesn't permit waiting for LK-99 to be proven/disproven and all the years it will take to produce LK-99 in bulk anyway. It's so insanely cheaper, because not only do you not need the cryogenic cooling (and all the support and maintenance systems and consumables like helium or nitrogen or whatever), but LK-99 is made from relatively common elements versus rare earth elements. I really, really hope this stuff works.
- dclowd9901 3y agoCompletely unrelated, but how does one un-become a particle physicist?
- metaltyphoon 3y agogit reset —-hard
- lesona 3y agogit archive --format=tar HEAD I like the idea that some of us will live long enough to not be defined by our jobs.
- codethief 3y agoYou switch fields or leave physics entirely.
- fnands 3y agoWell, I don't do particle physics as my day-job anymore, so basically that.