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

Room-pressure?

[atomicthumbs]

Is it also a room-pressure superconductor?

Re:Room-pressure?

[inKubus]

What if they can build a long one with a carbon nanotube lattice around the outside, which self-compresses when streched (sort of like one of those Chinese finger-traps). Then you could have a material which becomes superconducting when you stretch it, say between two telephone poles or something.

Its a bomb

[slashdotlurker]

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.

Please hold your breath and run...

[Detritus]

Silane is pyrophoric and boils at 161 K. It may be a while before this leads to practical results.

worth a read

[Anonymous Coward]

You might find this worth a read in considering the future of science in the US.

Re:worth a read

[CrazedWalrus]

Thanks for the link. It's a great read.

This just reinforces my idea that the internet came along at an absolutely perfect time to save America from itself. As these wonderful-sounding yet completely impractical ideas continue to pervert and destroy our academic institutions, the internet will necessarily play a larger and larger role as an alternative to "traditional" learning venues.

Many of us technologists are mostly self-taught when it comes to our professions -- particularly sysadmin and programmer types -- because the technology was available and the communications infrastructure just adequate that we were able to get the learning tools we required to equip ourselves for our career. Many of us then went to school already knowing the better part of what was necessary for our careers.

I propose that people like this were the pioneers of internet learning, and that, as academic institutions continue down their strictly regulated politically correct paths to irrelevance, people who really want to learn will do so online in the world classroom.

I'm not saying that's ideal. I'm just saying that, if special interest groups and politicians looking for a soundbite get their way (and they will), it might be the only way, short of leaving the country altogether.

Re:Applications?

[mbessey]

Super-strong electromagnets are one application of current superconductors. There are a number of uses for such magnets in space, from reaction engine control, to ion thrusters, to magnetic "sails", to gathering fuel for a Bussard ramjet.

Magnets can also be used to direct dangerous radiation away from ships and the crew, in a phenomenon similar to the cause of the auroras that light up the night skies here on earth.

Re:Applications?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Also: Mass-driver reaction engines. (Electric catapults using asteroidial debris for the "exhaust".) They work much more efficiently if you don't have resistive losses in the wiring and coils. (But rapidly changing the current through a superconductor is also problematic...)

How much pressure?

[Gorimek]

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.