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Scientists Create Room Temperature Superconductor
StarEmperor writes "A team of Canadian and German scientists have fabricated a room-temperature superconductor, using a highly compressed silicon-hydrogen compound. According to the article,"The researchers claim that the new material could sidestep the cooling requirement, thereby enabling superconducting wires that work at room temperature.""
Is it also a room-pressure superconductor?
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Can it keep beer cool at room temperature?
I know Michael Flynn, in his novel Firestar had some of his whizbang young people contributing to a new space age by developing superconductors that work at room temperature, but he never said what exactly superconductors do in space travel. What exactly new technologies will we see built on this?
Cool! .max
So, how exactly is this a good alternative to colder superconductors? Pressure is often more expensive to safely maintain. Not to mention the fact that SiH4 autoignites at room temperature.
Like Leonard Bernstein, for instance?
Really.. I'm not just saying that.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Researchers in Fairbanks, Alaska have just created a room temperature superconductor.
the scientists, that is...
I have plenty of common sense, I just choose to ignore it. -- Calvin
If this is a finally practical technology to deploy anywhere, say on power lines this is really frickin' big....like there goes our energy crisis big. Or here comes the computer that's so fast the result was asked for today and delivered yesterday frickin' big.
In short, WOO HOO!
...in bed
Silane explodes with considerable violence on exposure to air. Plus, how are you going to put conductors under great pressure ? The main attractiveness of super conductors lies in long distance electrical supply lines. Unless they come up with a way to hermetically seal the "wire" over distances of hundreds of miles with a seal that can withstand high pressure compressors dotting the landscape (unlikely), this very interesting advance will remain just that - very interesting.
All not counting whether it is more energy efficient to run superconductors with energy hog compressors or to just stick to what we have, hopefully realizing practical room temperature superconductivity.
If I was playing civ, then this would be a pre-req for some sort of crazy future weapon.
Silane is pyrophoric and boils at 161 K. It may be a while before this leads to practical results.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Egad, man! What's the point?
It's certainly interesting, although the article is sparse on details (how much pressure?).
Note that keeping this substance under pressure is likely to be harder than keeping a superconductor cooled. Keeping a superconductor cooled isn't that hard, given that it isn't generating resistive heat. All you need to do is keep it well insulated and refrigerate the LN2 enough to make up for heat loss.
So how long before we get to pay several hundred dollars for high-pressure, superconducting HDMI cables that take our HD viewing to the "next level"...and also spontaneously ignite if they are chewed on by the family pet?
The hard part's done: We found a supercompressed gas (boiling point -161F) that superconducts. The next step now involves finding something electrically similar (think lead oxide + aluminum versus iron oxide + aluminum. Ignite iron oxide + Al and get Aluminum Oxide and iron and heat; ignite lead oxide + aluminum and get deadly lead gas + aluminum oxide + about 50 times more heat). Find the right chemical properties (solid until 500C?) on an electrically similar compound and you got yourself a deal.
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The article leaves out the important information of what pressure is required to achieve this.
Ordinary hydrogen becomes metallic at high pressure (i.e. deep inside Jupiter). I'm not sure
if it becomes a superconductor as well but such pressures are far from practical.
So, they might have got a high temperature superconductor, but that doesn't mean it is practical.
However, great pressure, unlike low temperature, can be maintained without using energy so,
it might be useful for something.
This was some sort of holy grail, ne?
Now they just have to solve the pressure problem...
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So, lets say this eventually becomes a common technology (doubtful, but lets pretend). When do we get to stop calling them 'super'conductors? When the super becomes the common, is it still super? Like the evolution of memory classification in DOS. Before the advent of the NY kernal, I spent considerable time trying to remember the difference between conventional, extended, expanded, upper, and high memory. I think the main reason DOS gave way to Windows was Microsoft ran out of superlatives....
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
OK, so previously a room temperature superconductor was considered a "Holy Grail" of science. However, as others have pointed out, this one won't be particularly practical since it requires large pressures to operate. We need to update the stated requirement for Holy Grail status as "STP superconductor".
It's just a really cold room
Isn't that special?
So, if I cool the material below room temperature, will it turn into a material with negative resistance, i.e. gaining energy when passing electricity through the material?
I'm holding TFA (Science, 14 March 2008, pp. 1506-1509). The highest critical temperatures they observed, regardless of pressure, were around 17 Kelvin (between 96-120 GPa). These are interesting results because they are among the few measurements available to shed light on the behavior of dense hydrides at these pressures, and these materials might, if better understood, one day allow a room temperature superconductor to be made. This, however, is not it.
God damn you for the headline "Scientists Create Room Temperature Superconductor". I almost fell of my chair in excitment. Then my climax was rapidly stolen when I read that it required high pressures. Next time, try to replace typical news sensationalistic headlines with pertinant headlines. In this case "Scientists Create Room Temperature but High Pressure Superconductor".
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
this could be interesting wouldn't mind seeing more info on this and a peer reviewed article Oh yeah if you're bored check out the funniest video ever made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0ZaEU9GlLY
The group in Germany that did the experimental work specializes in doing measurements of pressures of ~100 GPa. It looks like they use diamond anvils, http://www.mpg.de/bilderBerichteDokumente/dokumentation/pressemitteilungen/2004/pressemitteilung200408022/index.html . So, okay, this would be a really earthshattering development if it led to superconductors that work at room temperature and at ordinary pressures, but it sounds like that may not happen. We already have superconductors that work at liquid nitrogen temperatures, and liquid nitrogen is as cheap as milk.
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given the rising global temperature... it seems logical that we will still need some sort of cooling to keep rooms at 'room temperature'
at least anywhere south of the artic circle
back in the day we didnt have no old school
You might find this worth a read in considering the future of science in the US.
is that an early April Fools or what?
I wonder if these molecules would fit within carbon buckytubes, and if those tubes could withstand the pressure required for room-temp superconductivity without exploding into organic compounds?
give it my job. There's more than enough pressure.
Slashdaughter geeks tend to get overexcited at the potential of major breakthroughs, like a room-temperature superconductor. In order to make a difference in the quality of life, these breakthroughs have to be supported by hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in upgrading the existing infrastructure.
For example, the best use of superconductors at the present would be to prevent the loss of enormous amounts of electricity between the power-generating stations and the home users. The percentage of energy lost is huge is this area. But the money simply isn't there to rebuild the electrical infrastructure to take advantage of this new superconductor (even if it did operate at standard temperature-pressure).
This is the same situation with all major new technologies, like high-percentage efficiency solar cells, etc... There is this hope among technologists that the incremental efficiency gains seen from implementing new technology on small scales ('Green' buildings, individual hybrid cars, cold light bulbs, etc...) will create a 'snowballing' effect where the money saved by the new technology will more than offset the cost of its manufacture and installation.
That was true in the 20th century in the era of cheap oil, but it isn't true anymore. And with the crisis of climate change and the permanent endless wars caused by overpopulation on the horizon, it is even less likely to happen.
All the incredible technological change and advances of the 21st century will do little more than keep a small percentage of the world's elite living at quality of life that was accepted as normal in 2000. It's a hard truth to come to grips with, but the sooner that you can integrate it into your geek consciousness, the easier that the adjustments will be for you as the 21st century's harsh new realities unfold themselves.
The 20th century is over. The money is gone. The cheap, easy oil is gone. The brains and spirit of unbounded hopefullness of the 20th century is fading rapidly. Enjoy life while you can, and don't give any more of your money to Steve Jobs or the RIAA.
You mean like Scott Weiland?
Not to mention the fact that SiH4 autoignites at room temperature.
Also: I hear silanes (beyond n=1) are VERY toxic.
Back in my undergraduate days my chemistry teaching fellow was doing research on them. He claimed that the ones he was working on were so toxic that if you could smell them you had already exceeded the fatal dose.
(Now he might have been feeding me and the rest of the class a line of bull. But I wasn't about to argue with him. It WAS his thesis project, which implies that he should know what he was talking about. And he DID grade the class, after all... B-) )
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
- Efficient motors (think electric cars and perhaps even airplanes and boats);
- Zero loss of power while sending it all over North America (or Europe, Asia, etc).
- Heck, we are looking at hitting coppers limits. If this comes to be, then the use of copper will decrease and we will see a drop in price of that. The amount of copper that goes into large motors is pretty big.
- Just thinking about it, it might even be used for electric storage.
- Maglevs might become practical.
Besides, think of where we were 20 years ago; roughly 20 years ago, physicists had found a way to increase the temp. Those wires are now being used for short distance tranmissions. This could change everything.I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm having a hard time finding the peer-reviewed paper they must have published. Anybody got a link?
... in alaska?
old joke I know, but I just cant resist.
:(
Call me when they actually have something that superconducts at room temperature. The article was very vague about what they actually did, and had a lot of phrases like "perhaps without a refrigerant", and "potential superconducting materials for industrial applications". I'd like to know more about the "experimental confirmation" briefly mentioned in the article. Sounds to me like it's mostly theory that was over-hyped by an author who doesn't know what he's writing about.
Zienth
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I don't know where this program is from or what it's used for.
I trust this program. I know it will blow my head off after it overheats both cores and evaporates the vacuum-laminations of the nearby buses.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
In the movie Primer, while trying to create a room-temperature superconductor, they make a time travel device. It's got an interesting rational behind it.
story title not misleading enough to create enough false excitement
should have gone with
"Room Temperature Superconducting Revolutionizes All Technology"
or
"All Energy Problems Solved with Room Temperature Superconducting, Peace Reigns in the Middle East Forever"
or
"Dogs and Cats Living Together, Your High School Crush Promises You Undying Love, All with the Power of Room Temperature Superconductivity"
there, those are better misleading story titles for creating false excitement
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No room-temperature superconductor, not even a wire. Just some super-compressed gas that they fired synchrotron radiation at to determine whether the pressurized gas is superconductive. That, too, at a whopping 17 degrees Kelvin. Not anywhere near room temperature.
This is sensational distortion almost on par with the duroquinone crapola the other day that claimed they were making nano-brains, yes, NANO-BRAAINS!
This sounds like it would be really effective under Jovian conditions, but a round-trip to Pluto's probably a bit cheaper.
As usual, Ars Technica has a much better article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080319-room-temperature-superconductors-a-step-closer-with-silane.html.
The highest temperature that the researchers observed superconductivity at was 20K, which is a fair bit from "room temperature".
Oh, and the *pressures* that were used here are, uh, high. 50 to 200 gigapascals. 100 gigapascals is around 14.5 million PSI, or close to a million atmospheres of pressure.
The provocative point was that for most of the pressures, the critical temperature stayed around 5-10K. But in between 100-125 GPa it spiked. There weren't a lot of data points sampled in there, but the data seemed to indicate that some high temperatures *might* be able to be achieved.
Here is the link to the full-text journal article in "Science" http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5869/1506
None of that messing about in newspaper sites.
For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert. Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008)
thats a big jump from room temp...
About 20 years ago I watched them building a silane bunker where I worked. What a blast, figuratively speaking. Several layers deep of woven re-bars, zig-zag re-bar stitching between the layers. Concrete walls poured around them 1.5+ feet thick. Weak roof - any blast was supposed to be directed upward. A fun construction project to watch, whenever one had to walk past.
Incidentally, just how much magnetic field can this superconductor take. Temperature is only one Achilles heel of superconductors, the other is magnetic field.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I'm interested in how this could work for us all. What are the advantages for electrical motors? What are the advantages in other fields?
One person already pointed out that as superconducting materials replace copper (for some uses), copper price will go down, but other than that I have a lot of blanks.
Also, what kind of pressures are we talking here? How difficult will the engineering be, and since this is a relevant breakthrough, will it lead to other lower pressure, or even "room" pressure AND room temperature super conductors?
Thanks in advance.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
You knew having an actual copy of the actual article in your hand would get you karma. Cheater.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
... what is "room temperature" in Shivering Moose, Alberta?
Have gnu, will travel.
True but it is high pressure hydrogen which is bad because hydrogen is extremely good at diffusing out of wherever you have it and then forms a highly explosive mixture with oxygen. It will be interesting to see what the critical (magnetic) field is i.e. the field at which it stops superconducting. Clearly in its current form it will be useless for power transmission lines or computers but strong electromagnetics (e.g. MRI machines) might be a possible use if the critical field is high enough.
If you pressurize hydrogen to the point that it becomes a super conductor according to theory it would also boost its efficiency as a rocket fuel 5x. How would this substance perform as a rocket fuel?
Well, maybe this works at room temperature at The University of Saskatchewan, but down here in tropical Michigan, we still have significant work to do!
Article says "(hydrogen is the most difficult element to compress)". Is that true? It's surely quite hard to liquify. But compressing it?
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...with respect to the AC versus DC issue with power lines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents
It seems to me this might make DC more viable as a power source. Anyone know if it would? It also strikes me as a green energy saving technology that would dramatically drive down the cost of electricity over power lines. I believe a lot of energy is lost due to resistance.
Camping on quad since 1996.
You guys are teasing me too early this year...
It doesn't say how much "super pressure" is.
If a power cable at the bottom of the ocean is under enough pressure, it could be very useful.
The more is that the researchers have shown that silane turns into a metal at very high pressures; while researchers have not managed to create metallic hydrogen, they have managed this. The less is that it's only a 17-degree Kelvin superconductor--not an extraordinary temperature--and the pressures involved are on the order of half a million atmospheres.
The original article was published in Science on 14 March 2008; Vol. 319. no. 5869, pp. 1506 - 1509; DOI: 10.1126/science.1153282. Your local library can probably get you a copy; if you are at a university you may be able to access the online version.
I can just see a server room being propelled into orbit because the backup airco didn't kick in :-)
Insert
Good choice, we need it to conduct both AC and DC!
Three scientists frozen in deep freeze during an experiment
Bah. They used to say the same about darkness, before the Universal Theory of Dark ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
From the article : "These new superconductors can be operated at higher temperatures, perhaps without a refrigerant. "
Perhaps I can produce superconductors in my kitchen. Perhaps not. Let me post that somewhere...
Looks like media buzz but no real point here.
Bye.
Well, that's not so strange as you'd think...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconductor#History_and_progress
"Recently, other unconventional superconductors, not based on cuprate structure, have been discovered. Some have unusually high values of the critical temperature, Tc, and hence they are sometimes also called high-temperature superconductors. The record-high Tc at standard pressure,[3] 138 K, is held by a cuprate-perovskite material"
That works out to about -135 degrees Celsius, or -211 degrees Fahrenheit
than the pressures being talked about to make silane superconduct.
SF6 insulated cables and switchgear generally operate only a few PSI above atmospheric pressure. Just enough to prevent water vapor from the atmosphere from getting into the equipment. Designing equipment to contain a small positive gas pressure is trivial compared to containing the MILLIONS of PSI being talked about in TFA.
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Really spooky .. when I opened my browser to /. this story had 273 comments.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Why not pump a few gigawatts into one of Tajmar's rings? Still needing independent confirmation on his results, however.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
(*) Nearly, meaning it actually did 'kill' him several times on the way to the hospital by inducing multiple heart attacks.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
only if u have massive gummint subsidies like milk does;-)
Too bad that super conductors will come of age just as wireless power starts taking off commercially in a big way. ;-)
America, Home of the Brave.
Heat is not a thing either, and doesn't exist any more than cold does.
Particles do exist, however. It's just that some bounce around more energetically than others.
And as the energetic ones encounter lethargic ones, they transfer their kinetic energy to them, speeding them up while slowing down themselves, until an equilibrium is reached.
Leading of course to the inevitable heat death of the universe.
News at 11.
Hey man, don't be so condescending! I can compress a lot of things that stay compressed at air pressure. My read of the summary led me to think they created a silicon-hydrogen compound by compressing it. That makes it a "compressed silicon-hydrogen compound".
Good question. For the sake of this invention, I hope that it is more than the sum total of earth's magnetic field and the magnetic field generated by neighboring conductors.
Who insist on sticking with copper cabling, claiming "It sounds. . . I dunno. . . warmer somehow. These new superconducting cables just don't sound as good to me. I mean, I can *really* tell a difference."
2008.04.01 isn't for another week and a half. This would be very nice, but I'm not holding my breath...
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Thanks for the jog: The grad student was actually working on carboranes, not silanes. Oops!
Guess my memory hardware needs an upgrade. B-(
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Don't feel too bad about it, the thread was still informative. I learned that Ungrounded Lightning Rod wears sunglasses (even when he's feeling sad).
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
...the plasma conduits on StarTrek always had these dangerous and high energy steam-like explosions?
This still might be useful for superconducting applications for industrial use or even transmission. Unless there's some current limit, would it not make sense to have something like an inch thick steel pipe with a needle-like passage through it to contain the superpressurized superconducting fluid?