202
Superconductor breakthrough replicated twice on preliminary testing
(www.tomshardware.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
202 points (100.0% liked)
Science
13006 readers
182 users here now
Studies, research findings, and interesting tidbits from the ever-expanding scientific world.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
Be sure to also check out these other Fediverse science communities:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
So would this mean that cpus would not generate heat?
Would smartphone battery life skyrocket?
Can someone breakdown how this would affect computing?
A superconductor would completely change how we handle electricity. It’s like a cheat code almost. I’d say most of our current electric infrastructure only exists because of the limitations of our non-superconducting materials.
Keep in mind that superconductors have a critical current below which you have to be if you want to stay in the superconductive states. So for a superconductor to be useful for energy transport, this current has to not be tiny. I haven’t had the time to read their paper so I don’t know the value of the critical current. Also if for some reason the current suddenly goes beyond the critical current, the wire will heat suddenly, with possible damage…
I didn’t know that. Thanks.
And sometimes superconducting materials are wholly impractical -- making it superconductive could make it incredibly brittle, etc. Supposedly this new material is an "apatite", which is a geological term for a kind of crystal. Who knows what properties it has, yet? Supposedly these samples were made and tested by depositing them on to a glass surface.