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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.""
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.
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.
- 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.