New Superconductor Found "Immune To Magnetism"

Lisandro sends in news that testing of the new class of superconductors we discussed a while back (compounds of iron, lanthanum, and rare earths) has turned up a major surprise: magnetism doesn't shut off the superconducting state. Magnetic fields represent one of three factors that limit expanded applications for superconductors (the others are current density and temperature dependence.) The research will appear in Nature; here's a preprint (PDF).

Comments

Interesting...

[misterpmosh]

That's truly fascinating if they can tolerate such a large magnetic field. While we may rarely need to tolerate 45 tesla magnetic fields in practice, the physics behind this must be new to our experience. Unexplained experimental results always spark interesting theoretical work, possibly leading to more practical materials.

Scanning the paper, it seemed to have little bearing on this magnetic field tolerance, but rather talked about the effects of grain boundaries. Did anyone understand how the paper related to the press release?

Re:Internal Resistance

[who knows my name]

When will people use standard units? I'm sorry it's a particular gripe of mine; kelvin is the universal scale. The sooner we wipe out imperial units the better (unless anyone else wants to convert to a base 12 system?).

Re:Summary is flat-out wrong.

[hardburn]

If you have a 60T magnet laying around, please get in touch. I have an evil plan that needs hatching.

Bussard Ramjets!

[StCredZero]

Superconductors that are immune to interference from magnets would get us further towards Bussard Ramjets. There are other hurdles, like the mechanical strength of the magnetic coils themselves. (So the magnetic forces don't wreck them.) Even if we couldn't make practical ramjets, magnetic sails would also benefit, which would make deceleration of interstellar craft almost "free."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

Re:Internal Resistance

[who knows my name]

This isn't a matter of opinion, it's an international standard. There is a reason decimalisation took place; we have a base 10 number system. If everyone uses their own defined set of units then people waste time when we try and cooperate.