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The Record For High-Temperature Superconductivity Has Been Smashed Again (technologyreview.com)
Chemists have found a material that can display superconducting behavior at a temperature warmer than it currently is at the North Pole. The work brings room-temperature superconductivity tantalizingly close.
From a report: The work comes from the lab of Mikhail Eremets and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. Eremets and his colleagues say they have observed lanthanum hydride (LaH10) superconducting at the sweltering temperature of 250 K, or -23C. That's warmer than the current temperature at the North Pole.
"Our study makes a leap forward on the road to the room-temperature superconductivity," say the team. (The caveat is that the sample has to be under huge pressure: 170 gigapascals, or about half the pressure at the center of the Earth.)
From a report: The work comes from the lab of Mikhail Eremets and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. Eremets and his colleagues say they have observed lanthanum hydride (LaH10) superconducting at the sweltering temperature of 250 K, or -23C. That's warmer than the current temperature at the North Pole.
"Our study makes a leap forward on the road to the room-temperature superconductivity," say the team. (The caveat is that the sample has to be under huge pressure: 170 gigapascals, or about half the pressure at the center of the Earth.)
This is 170 gigapascals. That is 1.7 million atmospheres! The most powerful high explosives known only produce pressures up to about 300,000 atmospheres. This can only done in a diamond anvil which have working sizes one the order of 100 microns (barely visible speck, without magnification).
No, this is not thinkable. There is no conceivable way anything practical can done with this line of research, unless it ultimately reveals knowledge that allows to design some other material that can do the same trick without 6 times the detonation pressure of HMX.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
There is no conceivable way anything practical can done with this line of research, unless it ultimately reveals knowledge
This, in general, is how scientific progress works. This is a proof of concept. Now that one person has done this others will be inspired in ways not previously anticipated to look at other avenues.