Record for High-Temperature Superconductivity
December 12th, 2018Room temperature superconductors belong in the same basket as fusion power plants artificial general intelligence: They were only a couple of decades away when we read about them in Omni magazine in the 1980s.
Via: MIT Technology Review:
Chemists 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.
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The history of superconductivity is littered with dubious claims of high-temperature activity that later turn out to be impossible to reproduce. Indeed, physicists have a name for this: USOs, or unidentified superconducting objects.
So new claims of high-temperature superconductivity have to be treated with caution. Having said that, the news today that the record for high-temperature superconductivity has been smashed is worth looking at in more detail.
