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Quantum Wires
Silverlancer writes "Room temperature superconductors have often been a hallmark of far-future science fiction. But fortunately for us, they're here today, according to MIT's Technology Review. Richard Smalley, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the buckyball, is currently heading a project to produce a prototype carbon nanotube superconductor. They've already produced some wires up to 100 meters long--the only thing left to do is figure out how to produce only a certain type of nanotube, the "5,5 armchair nanotube," that conducts so well that it can be considered a superconductor."
If they could devleop this, and replace those big power lines that carry electricity from plants to cities, they could save the power loss. I dont know any figures, but I'm sure utilities would like to decrease or eliminate power loss due to transmission.
The Doormat
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No. Superconductors must be able to form so-called Cooper Pairs in order for electrons to move in the coherent manner in which no energy is lost. I gather the rules are a little different at really small scales where tunneling becomes a much bigger issue and some of the energy relationships are backwards, but the principle is still the same; if electrons bang into something they lose energy.
Metallic carbon nanotubes, to the best of my knowledge, cannot be made crystalline (perfectly regular) over large enough domains for this to happen thus there is "minimal energy loss" and they are really just very, very, very low resistance conductors (you can tell the difference by looking at the temperature dependance of the resistance).
The thing is, unless you want to build a mag-lev train, you don't really need a perfect super conductor. Right now the conductivities of the metals used in electronis are around 10^6 - 10^10 (inverse ohms per centimeter) and you can put your hand on your computer case to see just how much energy is dissipated as heat. If you increased those conductivities (with metallic carbon nanotubes for example) then your heat sink shrinks and your clock cycles come up... Assuming we can wire teeny tiny circuits with nanotubes. More importantly, you can drive portable electronics with less power, and thus smaller batteries.
BTW (regarding the very first post), some of the Slashdot Armchair Scientists (there are other sciences besides physics too you know) out here in computer land have Masters and PhDs and have published or worked in the field. Some of us have even met and/or worked with the people mentioned in the articles. I wouldn't be so quick to push aside honest criticism, afterall that is what scientists are trained to do - be skeptical :)
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
I think you overestimate the amount of funding being poured into alternative energy research.
... "and you can put your hand on your computer case to see just how much energy is dissipated as heat" ...
You seem to have forgotten that the heat loss in computers is due to the SEMICONDUCTORS inside. You know, those pesky little PN junctions made from doped silicon, germanium, or rust? Adding superconductors to the power subsystem in a computer would do nothing to reduce the radiated heat.
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When electricity can be transmitted large distances with little loss than it would lead to tremendous growth in renewable energy. For instance one could cover huge areas in the Sahara desert with solar cells or one could use geothermal energy in Iceland or one could use hydroelectric power from the Hudson Bay. There are plenty of areas where cheap electric power could be generated but are too far from where that energy is needed. It would also mean that we could improve the efficiency of all electric motors as it would mean reduced heat and reduced need to rid the motor of that heat. If this technology were certain to be accomplished in even a twenty year time span it would lead to a tremendous change in our energy policies but I for one will remain skeptical.
CHP and DH systems have already been in use in northern european countries (Denmark, Finland etc) for decades, they are nothing new. I guess the UK and USA literally have money to burn.
It's a geographical problem. How are you going to ship heat 200 to 2000 kilometers without electricity? Big pipes? At what point does the resource expenditure of constructing this enormous lossy infrastructure pay off for a country like the U.S. that only heats 4-5 months a year, sometimes less, depending on location? Would you suggest the U.S. put a bunch of coal-burning plants in downtown Manhattan for fuel efficiency?
The U.S. and Europe are significantly different in population distribution. No, Americans don't all have cars because they're lazy, they drive because it's a burden to walk 30 miles to work, and because there is no public transportation infrastructure that can route people across 1000 square miles or so in low to moderate population densities, which is the active employment area for a typical family. Americans don't ship their goods with trucks because they're too stupid to use trains, it's because most of America is not next to a train track, and the expense of switching from truck to train back to truck eliminates the benefits of using trains for most of the country.
Yeah, using CHP is great, but what works in one region does not always work in another.
Technically correct, but most sources I've seen have depicted Tesla as being far more interested in the scientific research and development than in the buisness side of things, which he left to his "partner" Westinghouse. Westinghouse's work to promote AC vs. Edison's DC (along with Tesla's assignment of his patents to Westinghouse for a paltry sum so that Westinghouse could make the whole thing economically realistic), are what let AC beat DC.
Unfortunately in the long run the Westinghouse company eventually had to file for backruptcy, but Con-Ed (The Consolidated Edison Company) is still chugging along. Tesla's technology may have won, although considering he died pennyless and the company that championed his inventions ultimately went bankrupt, I'm not sure its fair to say that he won and Edison lost.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a major Tesla fan, and am gratified to see him getting the credit he deserves after so long, (and the race to electrify the world would make a great "History Channel" special
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How many amps can these nanotubes carry? Do they produce a magnetic field like normal wires? If so, one should be able to make an MRI scanner with nanotubes rather than superconductors.
> Tesla's technology may have won, although
> considering he died pennyless and the company
> that championed his inventions ultimately went
> bankrupt, I'm not sure its fair to say that he
> won and Edison lost.
Technically and scientifically Tesla won. That's because Tesla was a scientist. Edison was merely a promoter.
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