back to article A room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor? Take a closer look

Three scientists in South Korea claim they've crafted a superconductor that works at both room temperature and ambient pressure – a revolutionary breakthrough if confirmed.  Superconductors – which are able to conduct electricity with virtually no resistance, and therefore have almost zero energy loss – typically require …

  1. ChoHag Silver badge

    > "We remain certain that there has been no data fabrication, data manipulation or any other scientific misconduct

    If your method can't be followed to reproduce the data, fabricated or not, you did not conduct your science properly.

    1. AVR Bronze badge

      It doesn't look hard to replicate (if it works) and people are going to try in the very near future. There should be results in a couple of days.

      1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

        It doesn't look hard to replicate

        That's the really good thing about the paper – it gives a simple recipe with easily sourced ingredients for making LK-99. As you say, this should be replicated within days by a number of labs. If it wasn't the long vacation(*), you could even get a hordes of undergrads trying it as lab work.

        (*) No idea what other countries do, maybe it's already happening.

        1. Youngone

          Other countries look out the window at the rain and sigh. Also, we have cold feet. It's cold.

          [Source: Am in other country]

          1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

            Other countries look out the window at the rain and sigh. Also, we have cold feet. It's cold

            Even my ex-Romanian rescue dog is complaining about the cold and wet..

            As for the two Spanish rescues - they look out the door at the falling rain, look at me then get back up on the sofa again.

            The two ex-farm cats mock them for being soft.

      2. agurney

        Lead with a hint of copper? A few FMJs down range then scrape up the residue sounds like a good start.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "If your method can't be followed to reproduce the data, fabricated or not, you did not conduct your science properly."

      Or, maybe, just didn't write it up properly so there's a missing step, or something. Benefit of the doubt until confirmed, IMV. The author should be able to clarify and/or help others to replicate who can then check if the process is actually correct. If he can't then yeah, bad science.

  2. Stuart Castle Silver badge

    It's good that El Reg is taking a slightly skeptical view. Too many media outlets take what someone has said at face value and proclaim it is a breakthrough. Questioning data you provided isn't being a hater, pushing fake news or anything like that (despite what some politicians will tell you). It's required for good science.

    I'd like to see some of these breakthroughs come true. I'd like to see Fusion become a thing (I don't think it will, but I hope I am wrong). I'd like to see room temperature super conductors, and experience any benefits they bring. I'd like to see a safe replacement for Lithium in batteries that offers the same or better capacity.

    It's good to remain skeptical though, as long as you stay open minded. I try to do both.

    1. phuzz Silver badge
      Headmaster

      Fusion is definitely a thing, and we already get a significant part of our electricity from it...in the form of solar power.

      Pedantry aside, I'm pretty confident that humans will be able to create a fusion power plant that creates more energy than is put in. Whether that will be at a cost that will be commercially viable is a different question.

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        Technically, that has been achieved just a few weeks ago, and it made a lot of noise in scientific circles.

        We're not talking about commercial production yet, though.

        As for superconductivity, I certainly do hope that that will arrive. Just think, with that single innovation all power generators will instantly become up to 20% more efficient !

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          With a superconducting iron, my wife will be able to starch my sheets, shirts and undies all day, at no cost.

          There may be other useful applications that benefit mankind even more.

          1. ectel

            Except a superconducting iron would not heat up

            1. cookieMonster Silver badge
              Flame

              Ouch, now thats a burn !!

            2. werdsmith Silver badge

              Ahh, but a fusion iron.....

            3. Ian Johnston Silver badge

              It would if it was running on AC mains.

              1. milliemoo83

                Well we have enough Anonymous Cowards here for bicycle powered hairdryers. Maybe with enough we can fry an egg better than Lister.

            4. The commentard formerly known as Mister_C Silver badge

              And that's irony

            5. Eclectic Man Silver badge
              Boffin

              Water is diamagnetic

              Not entirely sure about this, but as superconductors repel magnetic fields, and water is diamagnetic - repelled by a magnetic field, would a superconducting iron actually repel the water in wet clothes?

              Videos of diamagnetism:

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u36QpPvEh2c Water at about 4m 11s

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-FNdO4tb-M

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlJsVqc0ywM. Frog levitation in a magnetic field

              Register boffins, please advise.

              OK it is nearly 5pm on a Friday, so have a nice weekend.

      2. Catkin Silver badge

        We could also get fusion power from non-solar sources tomorrow: just drop a hydrogen bomb down a deep hole, set it off and use it as you would geothermal power. The early trials showed that cooling took place more rapidly than expected but these trials were limited to salt domes and we're hardly lacking, on a global scale, in hydrogen bombs to conduct further studies.

      3. katrinab Silver badge
        Meh

        Given that the sun’s energy output in W/m³ is actually really small, something like 0.2W/m³, I’m just not convinced fusion reactors can make any sort of meaningful contribution to our energy requirements.

        The sun produces lots of heat and light because it is really big.

        1. HelpfulJohn

          "The sun produces lots of heat and light because it is really big."

          Citation needed?

          1. katrinab Silver badge

            Is NASA a suitably reliable source?

            https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/sunfact.html

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              From that very source:- Surface emission (10^6 J/m2s) 62.94

              i.e. 62,940,000 Watts per metre squared

        2. phuzz Silver badge
          Boffin

          At the Earth's surface there's roughly 1kW of solar energy per square metre, but that's at all wavelengths. A typical solar panel will produce around 150-200W of electricity per square meter (under ideal conditions etc.), so you're out by at least three orders of magnitude I'm afraid.

    2. GruntyMcPugh

      Do you read 'The Independent' Science section by any chance? It's often re-purposed press release BS, without a shred of journalistic investigation or scepticism. Mind you 'Ars Technica' can be guilty of that, they promoted a story about a device that could pull moisture from the air and make water, supposedly without any energy input, and this was going to save the water starved world.

      1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

        There are places in the tropics that pull water from the air without additional energy very easily. String fine netting, the daytime humidity condenses on it overnight and it drains into storage tanks.

        1. HelpfulJohn

          Oh. Sorry.

          I really should read everything bfore replying. :)

        2. Potty Professor
          Boffin

          Condensation

          When I was living in Kentucky back in the 60s, the house we rented did not have air conditioning. My father removed the front panel of the gas furnace in the basement, reversed the connections on the room thermostat to run the fan when the temperature was high, and turned off the gas supply. He then opened one of the ground level windows on the North side of the building and strung a net curtain over the opening. The air coming in from under the adjacent bushes was relatively cool, the net curtain condensed the moisture, and the resulting cool air was circulated through the AC ducts throughout the house. The condensate was collected in a plastic planter trough and disposed of daily down the laundry room drain. When the weather turned colder in the autumn, he reverted it to a central heating role, which was how he left it when we returned to the UK.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Redwoods Grow Weird Leaves to Suck Water from Air

          Coastal California's redwood forests—with their lush ferns, towering trees and damp petrichor scent—might not seem to want for water, but they do face dry summers. To survive them, the trees, Sequoia sempervirens, grow specialized shoots with leaves that scrape moisture from the air.

      2. Arthur the cat Silver badge

        a device that could pull moisture from the air and make water, supposedly without any energy input

        Look up "Namibian desert beetle" and "fog basking".

        1. HelpfulJohn

          "Look up "Namibian desert beetle" and "fog basking"."

          Also rainforests. Not much water per square leaf but lots of leaves do add up.

          1. Eclectic Man Silver badge

            There are also cloud forests, where it rarely rains, https://www.monteverdeinfo.com/cloud-forests

      3. Ian Johnston Silver badge

        Do you read 'The Independent' Science section by any chance?

        It's not as bad as the science coverage in the Guardian which seems to take pride in being innumerate and, scientifically, illiterate.

        1. DrBobK
          Headmaster

          Grauniad Science... a superb howler

          There was a beautiful correction to a science article in the Grauniad the other day. From memory it went something like "An earlier version of this article reported that there were about 1057 molecules in the sun, rather than 10^57."

          1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

            Re: Grauniad Science... a superb howler

            That sort of "lost the superscripting" error occurs pretty much everywhere, including El Reg on occasions. Whenever I see a number 10xxx in print/pixels I automatically convert it mentally to 10xxx.

            The Grauniad's appalling science(*) coverage is something else. I reckon they've become the left wing mirror image of the Mail, wanting only attention grabbing headlines to get an audience for their ads & "support us" begging rather than trying for sound reporting. These days I tend to read The Conversation more than the dailies.

            (*) And technology, and economics, and …

            1. jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid Silver badge

              Re: Grauniad Science... a superb howler

              "That sort of 'lost the superscripting' error occurs pretty much everywhere, including El Reg on occasions"

              It's not the superscripting error that's amusing, it's the mention of "molecules"

      4. HelpfulJohn

        "... they promoted a story about a device that could pull moisture from the air and make water, supposedly without any energy input ...."

        That is easy. A simple sheet of plastic will do it. Not well, and not in any great volume per second, certainly not sufficient to tap into for drinking

        water for millions of perople but it works at dawn in some deserts.

        "... and this was going to save the water starved world."

        Nah. It's just condensation from humid air on a relatively cool surface.

        It's the process that makes dew. On a huge scale, it's very valuable. But like a lot of hese edge cases of physics, it isn't concentrated enough to

        be technologically viable.

        People do use it in deserts, though.

    3. John Sager

      'Safe' batteries

      There ain't no such thing as a safe battery when its energy density is the same as or more than current lithium batteries. It's no accident that the main working ingredient is an alkali metal which reacts readily and exothermically with stuff, and ever more energetically as you go down the periodic table. Even a tank of petrol/gasoline is not safe if you don't treat it right, but we've had decades of experience of making safe containers for that stuff (bar the Pinto).

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Questioning data you provided isn't being a hater, pushing fake news or anything like that (despite what some politicians will tell you). It's required for good science."

      Heck yea. Good science is all about "here's what we saw and what we think it means, now it's time for the smartest people in the field to try and poke holes in my idea".

  3. Eclectic Man Silver badge
    Happy

    Apatite

    Checking up on apatite, it seems that this is a group of minerals, so creating the Lead - Apatite - Copper amalgam with the correct type of apatite may need more information than presented, at least in the Register article. Still, if they have achieved room temperature one atmosphere superconductivity that is an exceptional achievement. People have won Noble prizes for less ( https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1987/summary/ , and in 1972 https://ieeecsc.org/awards/nobel-prize-physics#:~:text=In%201957%2C%20Bardeen%2C%20Cooper%20and,when%20a%20metal%20becomes%20superconducting. )

    "Apatite is mineral group with the following chemical formula applied to the most common members of the primary group (excluding the extended Apatite supergroup):

    Ca5(PO4)3(F,Cl,OH)

    Individual Apatite minerals are:

    Fluorapatite - Ca5(PO4)3F

    Chlorapatite - Ca5(PO4)3Cl

    Hydroxylapatite - Ca5(PO4)3OH"

    https://www.minerals.net/mineral/apatite.aspx

    1. Joe W Silver badge

      Re: Apatite

      It's also the group your tooth enamel falls into....

      1. Eclectic Man Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: Apatite

        Superconducting teeth!

        The horror.

        1. james 68

          Re: Apatite

          So instead of licking a 9v battery to wake myself up after my boss has given the daily "motivational pep talk" I should actually be applying the contact points to my teeth?

          1. Eclectic Man Silver badge

            Re: Apatite

            Definitely NOT! One way a dentist determines whether, after some dental surgery, the nerve in the tooth is still alive is to give it a mild electric shock. This can be quite painful if you have 'sensitive' teeth. You really should not try that at home.

            1. james 68
              Trollface

              Re: Apatite

              Spoilsport :-P

              I wanted to see how many people would come here ranting after trying it.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Apatite

              As us older folk with conductive fillings can attest, any time a bit of foil wrap is left on the kitkat!

        2. T. F. M. Reader

          Re: Apatite

          Superconducting teeth!

          The horror.

          Or a new Bond movie?

        3. Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch Silver badge

          Re: Apatite

          As seen in the conclusion of Return of the Jedi.

    2. steelpillow Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Apatite

      According to their ArXiV preprint, "A material called LK-99, a modified-lead apatite crystal structure with the composition Pb$_{10-x}$Cu$_x$(PO$_4$)$_{6O}$ ($0.9<x<1.1$), has been synthesized..."

      So now we know.

      Cue race to repeat, and screw out a patent on anything the original researchers' agent missed. Rounded corners, perhaps?

      1. Korev Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: Apatite

        > According to their ArXiV preprint, "A material called LK-99, a modified-lead apatite crystal structure with the composition Pb$_{10-x}$Cu$_x$(PO$_4$)$_{6O}$ ($0.9<x<1.1$), has been synthesized..."

        Are you sure that's not a regular expression?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Apatite

          Definitely an expression, of what kind not sure

          1. Ken Shabby
            Mushroom

            Re: Apatite

            If I expressed that regularly, I’d seek medical advice.

          2. JacobZ

            Re: Apatite

            Irregular expression?

          3. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

            Re: Apatite

            It's a LaTeX expression, as any fule kno.

        2. Spoobistle
          Boffin

          Re: Apatite

          If you regard $_ as "subscript" and replace {} with (), it turns into a completely regular chemical formula.

          The basic ingredients are two metals found in scrapyards, and phosphate, available from piss.

          I expect a slew of unsavoury youtube videos and another epidemic of cable thefts and church roof stripping...

          1. Paul Kinsler

            Re: Apatite

            Nearly. It looks like latex to me. So the {} are used to group things together, so the several characters can be put into a single subscript. The $ signs are to delimit the math mode; since apparently they want ordinary-font elements, but need math-mode for subscripts.

            If you used e.g. A$_ax$, without the braces, you would get "A"-subscript-"a", followed by an "x"; but with A$_{ax}$ you get "A"-subscript-"ax"

            1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

              Re: Apatite

              AaX and Aax?

              You may need to post more to be allowed to use HTML :-)

        3. Dizzy Dwarf

          Re: Apatite

          It doesn't make any sense to me.

          So, it must be Perl.

          1. Ken Shabby

            Re: Apatite

            If it looks like line noise, it must be TECO

            1. that one in the corner Silver badge
              Megaphone

              Re: Apatite

              September '62

              Support by Murphy, running fine

              It was business as usual

              In macro line 619

              TECO, TECO, because TECO

        4. james 68

          Re: Apatite

          Rounded corners are a regular expression. Didn't stop the Jesus fruit company from patenting it though.

        5. steelpillow Silver badge
          Joke

          Re: Apatite

          Dunno, but it'd probably run if you told your box it was a perl script.

        6. Scene it all

          Re: Apatite

          Might be a TECO macro

      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: Apatite

        "Rounded corners, perhaps?"

        ...on a mobile device?

  4. tiggity Silver badge

    Even if its not a superconductor

    Some of the comments were sceptical in the article (rightly so as would be a huge breakthrough if true).

    If it is not a superconductor BUT is a very efficient electrical conductor at room temperature then would still be an important (& potentially v. useful achievement if useable materials could be spun out of it).

    Although it would not have the exciting magnetic properties of a superconductor (lots of interesting uses of superconductors relate to magnetic properties), something that was "nearly" perfect in electrical conduction at "everyday" temperatures & pressures could still be very useful for reduced energy use - less "waste" heat generated in conduction = less initial energy input required.

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      Re: Even if its not a superconductor

      Forgive me if I am completely wrong here, but I thought many of the "high temperature" (relative to liquid He) superconductors were very poor (i.e. lost superconductivity) at handling high currents or high magnetic flux levels. I.e. they are super conductors for modest currents, but no use for power distribution levels where such a saving would be of great commercial and environmental benefit.

      1. AVR Bronze badge

        Re: Even if its not a superconductor

        Make it in sufficient bulk and current density at least won't be an issue; I think that'd help with magnetic fields too. Lead, copper, phosphorus and oxygen are fairly cheap. You'd probably want to bury black stony cylinders of lead/copper apatite rather than hang them as wires but that doesn't seem impossible.

        1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

          Re: Even if its not a superconductor

          Make it in sufficient bulk and current density at least won't be an issue

          Easier said than done. For a start, the forces on superconductors are huge, and nobody has yet - as far as I am aware - managed to make High-Tc materials in sufficiently homogeneous bulk quantities to be useful for anything involving power.

          1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

            Re: Even if its not a superconductor

            You can make current high-Tc in bulk, the problem is you can't make wires. Currently you either cast the HTs material in situ or you scatter powder onto tape, either isn't great. It's why they weren't used for ITER

            Currently this material seems to have very low (100mA) critical current and very low max field - but if those are just due to it being a lab bench mix rather than a refined product

            1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

              Re: Even if its not a superconductor

              You can make current high-Tc in bulk, the problem is you can't make wires. Currently you either cast the HTs material in situ or you scatter powder onto tape, either isn't great. It's why they weren't used for ITER

              And when you make it in bulk it's incredibly weak, which makes it no use at all when all those I x B forces are applied. Superconductors have to be strong.

              Currently this material seems to have very low (100mA) critical current and very low max field - but if those are just due to it being a lab bench mix rather than a refined product

              Low critical current necessarily means low critical field and vice versa, because the critical current is what produces the critical self-field. Even if the results aren't fraud or delusion, I wouldn't place any bets on being able to improve significantly on the mix at the moment. And, of course, you'll never get much critical current (or field) near the critical temperature.

              I was working in superconductors when Bednorz and Müller came out. Everyone got terribly excited; everybody tried to replicate and improve ... and thirty five years later High-Tc still isn't much more than a party trick. A levitating disk of YBCO or BSSCO loses its shock value quite soon.

              1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

                Re: Even if its not a superconductor

                Yep, bulk manufacture to bring costs down requires an economic industrial use case to drive the development. After all, the very first lasers were little more than expensive scientific curiosities with some applications in the research environment. Now, you can buy throwaway laser pointers and cat toys for pennies :-)

        2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

          Re: Even if its not a superconductor

          "You'd probably want to bury black stony cylinders of lead/copper apatite rather than hang them as wires but that doesn't seem impossible."

          Actually, you'd probably want to figure out exactly why this works and then engineer a similar material that doesn't contain lead. A lead-based superconductor will certainly have applications, but since we are probably going to want superconducting this, that and the other all over the place it would be very nice to have one that is a little less toxic.

          1. PRR Silver badge

            Re: Even if its not a superconductor

            > A lead-based superconductor ...... all over the place it would be very nice to have one that is a little less toxic.

            Why?? Bell/AT&T and kin hung and buried megamiles of Lead on poles, in ground, and underwater for a century before anybody noticed.

            1. Martin-73 Silver badge

              Re: Even if its not a superconductor

              Apparently according to a contact at openretch (ok the engineer that installed my colleague's fibre line) there is still lead sheathed cable in the network, but nobodys ever gonna replace it now as the PSTN will be shut down in a couple of years :(

        3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: Even if its not a superconductor

          "You'd probably want to bury black stony cylinders of lead/copper apatite rather than hang them as wires but that doesn't seem impossible."

          That turns into a materials science problem. Few would probably have believed flexible glass fibre was an economic possibility not that many years ago, let alone a world spanning network of them :-)

        4. TDog

          Re: Even if its not a superconductor

          "hang them as wires", How do lightning strikes work on superconductors? Is there any heat without resistance and do we get a wave propagating through the whole of the superconducting network, rebounding at inappropriately terminated end points and causing fantastic EMR effects. This could make EMP weapons childs play. I ask purely as a Gedankenexperiment,

  5. Ian Johnston Silver badge

    Such a superconductor would be incredibly useful.

    Not necessarily. For a superconductor to be useful it has to have a high critical current, In most cases critical current reduces linearly with temperature to the critical temperature, so even if this material is superconducting at 127C it will have no current carrying capacity at that point.

    Even so-called "High-Tc" materials (the ceramic superconductors) are generally useless in LN2 and have to be cooled much lower (usually in LHe) to have any application.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      SQUIDS could be made to work without a cooling system.

      A SQUID is a very sensitive magnetic field detector, made using superconductors. I expect there are other uses of superconductors that could benefit from not needing a cooling system too.

      1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

        Re: SQUIDS could be made to work without a cooling system.

        I'm not sure it is just the superconducting aspect, I suspect the very low temperature also reduces thermal noise which makes quantum-level signal detection a possibility.

      2. Ian Johnston Silver badge

        Re: SQUIDS could be made to work without a cooling system.

        SQUIDs have negligible current/power in them and are a rare example of an actual use for High-Tc materials.

        1. that one in the corner Silver badge

          Re: SQUIDS could be made to work without a cooling system.

          So if this one pans out, we'll finally be able to fit our Dolphins with SQUIDs!

          Paging Johnny, will Mr Mnemonic please come to the white courtesy phone.

  6. JacobZ

    The currently best known high-temperature superconductor...

    ...is LaH10 at 170 GPa wit a critical temperature of 250K (roughly -23C).

    Ambient pressure is approximately 100kPa.

    So to have achieved such a reduction of the required pressure by several orders of magnitude would be beyond astonishing.

    It will be wonderful if this replicates, but this falls into the "extraordinary claims/extraordinary proof" category of skepticism.

    1. YetAnotherLocksmith Silver badge

      Re: The currently best known high-temperature superconductor...

      Fingers crossed! Even if it's a bit rubbish compared to super cooled superconductors, it doesn't need super cold, so perfect for some use cases.

  7. Management Order
    FAIL

    Cold Fusion

    I remember when Cold Fusion was a thing. I give this one about as long.

    1. vtcodger Silver badge

      Re: Cold Fusion

      FWIW -- There were actually two groups working on cold fusion in Utah in the 1980s. One was Fleishmann and Pons notorious effort at Utah State. But 100 miles away at BYU, a guy named Steven Jones was working on something called Muon-catalyzed fusion. Also cold and theoretically perfectly sound if some practical problems can be overcome. Jones was only able to get about a third of the way to where he needed to be to have a possibly practical device. Others are still working on the concept. It's possible that some day they'll have real success. I wouldn't hold my breath while waiting.

      There's a Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion

  8. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    You been reading reasons_to_stick_a_crystal_up_your_nose_instead_of_going_to_hospital.com again?

    "It could be used in MRI machines without the extreme cooling required, which has caused a shortage of helium."

    So thousands of tons of helium that are used in party balloons, scientific/commercial cryogenics and space flight each year have no impact of the store of Helium then? What about the impact of the sell off of the USA's helium reservoir? What about reduced supply from oil wells (which is the primary source of helium)?

    1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Re: We will run out of ${whatever} real soon now

      The US used to store a large amount of helium in a cave system. They have been selling it off since 2005 because there was no point keeping it around. When they started reserves of helium were "only" good for another 50 years. Now that the US national helium reserve is almost gone, reserves are only good for another 150 years.

      Most oil and gas wells do not collect helium because it is not commercially viable. Find a new large use for helium and the price will go up until adding more helium collection does become profitable. Supply can expand to meet a huge increase in demand. If we cut back on helium use, less will be collected so it will get released into the atmosphere and escape into space. If we magically end oil and gas production there are still other possible sources.

      We have had "we will run out of helium" panic headlines for decades. Perhaps in a few more decades our education system will prepare children to spot click-bait headlines.

      1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

        Re: We will run out of ${whatever} real soon now

        Oops - senile dementia warning. Not 150 years. 1500.

        1. Richard 12 Silver badge

          Re: We will run out of ${whatever} real soon now

          What's an order of magnitude between friends?

  9. steamnut

    Fake News!

    The laws of atomic physics do not support any form of superconductor at room temperature. There is no appetite for this story.

    I wonder how long it will be before we get a third party verified experiment? Simple answer - never.

    1. David Nash

      Re: Fake News!

      The news is "fake"?

      Which part?

      Was a paper published?

      Did they do what they said in the paper?

      Did they achieve something which looks like superconductivity?

      Was the temperature not what they said?

      Was the pressure not what they said?

      If mistakes have been made with the science, this is not "fake" news. It's real news of something, whether or not that turns out to be what it was initially thought to be.

      By the way, if indeed "the laws of atomic physics do not support any form of superconductor at room temperature" then why are various teams attempting to do this?

      I am not a physicist, don't downvote me for asking questions please.

    2. james 68

      Re: Fake News!

      Room temperature superconductors already exist (google superhydride superconductor) they just don't exhibit superconductivity at atmospheric pressure, so I'm gonna call hokum on the "laws of atomic physics" claim which probably should have been "the laws of thermodynamics" anyway even though they don't rule out room temp atmospheric pressure superconductivity.

    3. bonkers

      Re: Fake News!

      Let me correct that for you:

      The laws of Physics do not prohibit superconductivity under any particular circumstances.

      Oh, and "there is no apatite for this story" - you missed an easy one there.

      Unsupported humourless opinions fail on so many levels.

      I've looked a the paper, it has all the hallmarks of genuine honest research, and all the expected behaviours of genuine superconductivity.

      I, for one, have plenty of apatite for further progress...

    4. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Fake News!

      Username checks out. Professor Steamhead, is that you?

  10. Scene it all

    It would be useful in computers if it is able to be deposited on a substrate and etched the way is done now in integrated circuits.

  11. DS999 Silver badge

    One comment I saw about it gives me pause

    I haven't read the paper, but someone who did said that it appeared to work (or have only been tested) at very low current densities. If it is a superconductor, but only handles fairly modest current, it won't be the Holy Grail for eliminating resistance on long distance electrical grids.

    But even if it had limitations, but was superconducting at higher than the boiling point of water, it might point the way toward different types of superconductors one of which might handle high currents.

    A low current superconducter would still be interesting in the realm of computer chips, if fabrication processes to deposit this material could be found.

    1. bonkers

      Re: One comment I saw about it gives me pause

      Interesting points, there's plenty of opportunities even for low current superconductivity. It's early days on this one and current density will improve as sample quality becomes more homogenous.

      Computer chips are worse than power grid - the limits in place today are due to electromigration, at current densities so high that the metal ions start to flow.

      For signal electronics, zero-R inductors have infinite "Q" and are already in use in basestation filters - despite the cost and complexity of cooling. It would be great if they could be sold as ordinary components - allowing RF band filters with incredible performance in ordinary handheld devices.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: One comment I saw about it gives me pause

        If it can be made economic to use in mobile phones and laptops, manufacturers will be falling over themselves to invest if they can offer users and an extra hour or two between charges. After all, that's one of the primary driving forces in developing better batteries :-)

        On a slightly more serious note, I'd not be surprised at all if that was the driving force to mass production of room temp, ambient pressure superconductors, assuming the science actually is good and reproducible. Doing the science is the "easy"[1] part. Commercial and economic production and "killer app" use case is the "hard" part, ie convincing industry to invest in something new.

        [1] Comparatively :-)

  12. SonofRojBlake

    Question

    If all the conductors in a desktop/laptop were able to be replaced with SUPERconductors, what would that mean?

    Is the current in use low enough that the current density isn't an issue? Would it run stone cold and not need cooling? Would it run faster? Would it run longer on a battery charge? Not an electrical engineer, but want to know...

    1. sitta_europea Silver badge

      Re: Question

      "If all the conductors in a desktop/laptop were able to be replaced with SUPERconductors, what would that mean?

      Is the current in use low enough that the current density isn't an issue? Would it run stone cold and not need cooling? Would it run faster? Would it run longer on a battery charge? Not an electrical engineer, but want to know..."

      Speaking as an electrical engineer, there's a very important law we engineers are taught which says "you can't always get what you want".

      If we replaced the semiconductors and/or the resistors in the 'chips' with superconductors, unfortunately the chips wouldn't work any more.

      In any computer there will be heat generated by current passing through the ordinary conductors in the machine, but a lot will be generated by the current which passes through the SEMIconductors in what we electronics engineers call the 'chips'. It's the chips in the computer which get hot, not the traces on the printed wiring boards. In fact the traces, usually copper (and so very good conductors *), are often used to conduct heat away from the components attached to them. The semiconductors are mostly made of very pure crystals of silicon which will never(**) be superconductors, and in any case there are lots and lots of resistors in the circuits in the chips, which are there in order to develop a potential difference across their ends when semiconductor devices pass current through them. The potential difference across a resistor is your logical value, '1' or '0', while it's being manipulated in the chip(***). Unfortunately passing a current through a resistor, in addition to generating a voltage, also generates heat proportional to the square of the voltage. A lot of work goes into reducing the voltage that's needed to unambiguously distinguish a '1' from a '0' in the presence of a lot of electrical noise, but there's a limit to what you can do in a very electrically noisy environment like the inside of a computer. I've glossed over a few other things but you get the picture.

      Two things, more or less, limit the speed of the computer.

      Firstly the thermal characteristics. Faster clock speeds means more power dissipated because you need to use higher currents to charge and discharge capacitances which you really wish weren't there but there's nothing much you can do about them; and the power has to be removed from the devices which generate it or they will destroy themselves.

      Secondly the length of the wires. Because the speed of light is finite at about one foot per nanosecond, and we measure the switching speeds of many modern semiconductor devices in fractions of a nanosecond. The traces on the printed wiring boards between the chips are mostly transmission lines. At the moment at least, current density isn't a huge issue, but trace length is. Superconductors don't conduct signals especially faster than ordinary conductors - they're all limited by the speed of light. Current density *might* become an issue for superconducting circuits because of the magnetic field generated, which if it is strong enough may flip the superconductor out of its superconducting state, but right now we're a long way from worrying about that in your laptop.

      (*) Metals are metals because they have free electrons in their crystal structure. In a metal, heat is primarily conducted by the free electrons. That's why metals conduct both electricity and heat well.

      (**) Never say 'never' in engineering.

      (***) There are chips (CMOS) which don't use resistors, they use transistors in place of the resistors, and that consumes a lot less power, but it also uses a lot more die area to make the same gates, so you can't make such a powerful processor with CMOS technology. That's just a real estate/manufacturing yield issue.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Question

        It sounds like you are saying, in effect, that we can't just replace bits of current electronics with superconductors to improve things in a meaningful way but might have to effectively develop a whole new range of components to take advantage of the effect, reinventing electronic circuits, which sounds entirely reasonable.

  13. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

    Levitation testing

    Superconductivity seems suspect but maybe they discovered a strong new form of diamagnetism?

  14. DuncanIrvine

    Proof

    You do not need to replicate. Just give the sample to a recognised superconductor lab. They can easily decide if it really is a room temperature superconductor.

    This could be a lot quicker because there may be some necessary trace elements or isotopes or procedure missing from the description.

    That it levitates is quite encouraging. Though it does not prove it is a superconductor.

  15. Technical Adept

    On page three of the recipe, it says that a mixture needs to be baked at 550C for 48 hours in a vacuum of 10^-3 torr and then another mixture baked at 925C for 5-20 hours in a vacuum of the same pressure.

    However, the pressure indicated on the accompanying diagram shows 10^-3 mTorr

    I may be confused but isn't that a thousand times smaller?

    1. bonkers

      Technically you are right to be confused, but it's not uncommon to see a graph axis with values of say 1,2,3 x 10^-6, and also labelled "micro"-units. It's duplication of exponent. In this case, they mean the mantissa numbers are in millitorr, that's my most likely interpretation.

      The paper looks a bit rushed, not surprising given the Nobel prizes possibly at stake, and to me this adds authenticity to the claims. They might be wrong, but they're honest.

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