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Red Wine and the Secret of Superconductivity
cold fjord writes "Red wine is a popular marinade for meat, but it also may become a popular treatment for creating iron-based superconductors as well (Link to academic paper): 'Last year, a group of Japanese physicists grabbed headlines around the world by announcing that they could induce superconductivity in a sample of iron telluride by soaking it in red wine. They found that other alcoholic drinks also worked — white wine, beer, sake and so on — but red wine was by far the best. The question, of course, is why. What is it about red wine that does the trick? Today, these guys provide an answer — at least in part. Keita Deguchi at the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, and a few buddies, say the mystery ingredient is tartaric acid and have the experimental data to show that it plays an important role in the process. ... It turns out the best performer is a wine made from the gamay grape — for the connoisseurs, that's a 2009 Beajoulais from the Paul Beaudet winery in central France.'"
Alcohol -> less resistance.
And we needed scientists to figure this out... why?
do we get electrocuted easier?
That's why Bender drinks. To keep the superconductors flowing.
I thought the alcohol was fuel.
This is just a cover for their excessive spending of their research grant on booze.
I see. So the next time I walk into the liquor store and buy a ton of shit; I'll just say, "I'm a physicist doing super-conducting experiments. No, really!"
Some people are just walking talking superconductors then.
You can't handle the truth.
I mean, does it have chemical properties that have confounded the best minds? Er.. the best minds with a grant to buy wine, that is? No, kidding, but wikipedia says Tartaric acid in grapes,etc also played a role in the discovery of chirality, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartaric_acid). And, in the grocery store the SO, i wondered about what cream of tartar really was... To wit: I know what my next grant proposal should be!
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
In light of this discovery, imagine if the Prohibition had stuck and became global. And imagine what we could accomplish if the researchers were free to soak the wires in LSD and tires in cannabis solutions? We could have free energy and flying cars, because the laws of physics are like, whatever man.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Better and easier ways to make superconductors? I'll drink to that. Skål! Maljanne! Cheers! Zum Wohl! Prosit! Santé! Salud!
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Please fix the post.
I think that explains why my brain seems to go faster after 1-2 bottles.
I'm glad to hear a 2009 Beaujolais is good for something.
Altho I'd far rather hear how they justified it to the powers-that-be when they discovered that red wine had been "accidentally" introduced to the experiment after the lab xmas party!
By far, the more interesting question about this discovery is what kind of reasoning brought these researchers to dip their samples in wine and test if superconductivity would emerge? Did they try some other random stuff from tap water to fluorhydric acid via a collection of leftover drinks they had in the closet, or does this experiment proceed from some well formed theoretical background ?
Frat researcher party and some drunk spills wine on the super conducter
"Heeeyy, looook, tere's les resistence in te coils !!!!"
Is it April 1st yet?
So THAT's what "pièce de résistance" means!
It's not often you find a red wine that goes well with fish and can reduce electrical resistance.
(I wish I could find it on the web, but it reminds me of an old Shoe comic reviewing a wine where the writer says, "It's not often you find a wine that goes well with your dinner and you can burn in your furnace.")
or not. Kids these days...
Regardless of your love for superconductivity, that wine is worth sampling.
This wasnt supposed to be public before next saturday...
I don't suppose American slashdotters remember the old UK comedy movie about the little Central European Grand Dutchy of Fenwick, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057328/ , where they discover that their wine makes perfect rocket fuel, and enter the Space Race....
I assume the temperature still needs to be only a few degrees above absolute zero, even with the wine-soaked compound...?
I remember there was a big worldwide competition among cryogenic physicists in the '80s to discover materials that would superconduct at relatively high temperatures, but they were still talking about very low temperatures. At one point, the race just stopped (I think it was after the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to the pair of scientists who published the paper that kicked it off).
Yup - just imagine he's fighting alien monsters in the 1900s, so he pour red wine on an iron bar, then uses it to redirect energy blasts and save the queen...
So if I drink this wine and then scuff my feet on carpeting could I kill someone and claim it was an accident?
How did they discover this?
Its truly hard to think of a reason why they would soak a piece of iron telluride in red wine and then decide to test its superconductivity.
WTF were they doing?
To complete the sample you'd need at least some NON-FUCKING PEOPLE. Any volunteers around? Come-on, slashdotters ;-)
(Gah. The captcha generator. It's pre-scient. Captcha was "cruelty")
IANAP but seems to parallel the recent discovery of an ability to dial up electronic properties through an exotic organic film over metal.
I, for one, salute our new grape-growing superconducting overlords!
Most probably, they spilled wine on the superconductor while having a booze fest in the labs :P
It works with women too, although Rose seems to perform better.
Can anyone tell me?
That's why I drink it [red win] every day. It gives me superconductive thoughts when I stick my head in the freezer.