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.""

Comments

Superconducting Monster cables?

[PseudoThink]

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?

Easy step now

[bluefoxlucid]

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.

Re:Room-pressure?

[moderatorrater]

No, but I suspect that this will still be a huge breakthrough, because we're generally better at keeping things pressurized than at keeping them cold. We have many, many static, high-pressure system with high reliability, but not that many super-cooled ones because cooling requires active energy expenditures.

Damn you samzenpus

[vikstar]

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".

Re:Damn you samzenpus

[BoChen456]

Its worse, correct headline is "Scientists increase temperature of superconductor by adding great pressure, thinks its possible to get room temperature superconductor by adding even more pressure (Even though there is no way to generate that pressure yet)."

Re:Damn you samzenpus

[kravlor]

Amen.

I work in nuclear fusion. One of the things we lust after in my field of research is more efficient superconducting magnets. Hell, even getting up to liquid nitrogen temperatures would be amazing for us. In the meantime, we're stuck with using liquid He and associated cryogenics, plus extra nuclear shielding around the $$$ SC coils.

Oh well. I thought we might have had something truly wonderful going with this one tonight, but it's just false advertising... (sigh)

So what

[WindBourne]

This is absolutely awesome if they can get it into production, even in 20 years.

• 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.

Re:So what

[Rei]

Heck, we are looking at hitting coppers limits

Morbo voice: "Resources do not work that way!"

What is being talked about here is *economically recoverable reserves*. What is economically recoverable depends on two things:

1) Current prices. As prices rise, by definition of the term "economically", more reserves become economical. Typically increasing exponentially.

2) Technology. Technology improvements act as a counter to increasingly difficult to extract reserves. Improvements can outpace it, wherein prices drop, or be outpaced by it, wherein prices rise. Example: adjusted for inflation, oil today is cheaper than it was back in the late 1800s when it bubbled to the surface in Pennsylvania (as opposed to having to be driven up from miles underground in inhospitable locations)

The applicability of this to oil and lithium are discussed.

Re:So what

[WindBourne]

Guess I was wrong. Maybe not. A few others said that this REQUIRES this to under constant high pressures. If so, then this is pure research and will never go into dev/prod. But it sure would be nice to have something cheap and plentiful that does the trick. I really think that whoever figures out how to make cheap room-temp (or better above that) superconductor wire will have the hottest item of this century. That one item would impact nearly all aspects of the world. In fact, I can not think of any one invention that would have a bigger positive impact on us.

Re:Room-pressure?

[Doc Ruby]

I don't see why superconducting wires of these silanes couldn't be kept pressurized by containment inside a fullerene jacket, at macroscopic lengths.

Once superconductors don't require huge apparatus for cooling or even pressure, I expect labs will make superconducting semiconductors less exotic.

Re:worth a read

[inKubus]

The problem is most people don't finish college, therefore the politicians are doing what the masses want. The problem isn't the politicians--it's the masses.