This is the best summary I could come up with:
SEOUL, Aug 3 (Reuters) - South Korean experts said on Thursday they would set up a committee to verify claims that a room temperature superconductor has been discovered, which has driven investor frenzy as well as peer skepticism since.
“There has been a lot of controversy over the authenticity of the reported results at home and abroad, and other claims are being added without being peer-reviewed,” the group said.
“Based on data from the two archived papers and the video made public, the materials … cannot be called room temperature superconductors at this point,” it added.
But the handful of materials discovered so far only exhibit superconductivity at extremely high temperatures and pressures, making them impractical for widespread use.
An index tracking Chinese superconductor-related stocks has surged since late July, when the South Korean researchers published their papers, rising as much as 22%, though it gave up a large chunk of those gains on Thursday.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
What does a room temperature super conductor allow us to do?
It would allow us to transfer electricity with virtually no loss of energy.
Iirc (and as an extreme novice) superconductors allow for transfer of incredible amounts of energy with little to no loss, but require extreme supercooling to do so. A superconductor that doesn’t need that cooling would allow super-efficient energy transfer with very little to no cooling needed, meaning the overhead costs are reduced dramatically.
This would be a wonder technology if proven to be true, but my understanding is most of the rest of the world is highly skeptical at the moment. It’s like having your cake and eating it too.
Way more efficiency, almost no heat generated. Quantum computers in your pocket. No need for fans in computers anymore, even for supercomputers. Way more efficiency at sending electricity long distances. Things like maglev trains and fusion reactors and MRI machines can use superconductors without needing to keep the temp at negative 450 F. Cheap MRIs mean accessible, inexpensive MRIs for all. The list goes on and on.
Yep. You know how hot your phone gets when charging? Or how hot a playstation gets when gaming for hours at a time?
That’s due to heat-loss generated by the circuits. Superconductors would allow them to run much cooler generating essentially zero heat. Which means they can run more efficiently or faster without the need for larger heatsinks or complicated expensive cooling systems.
No iy wouldn’t. You still have limits to how much current can it can transfer. I don’t know what happens when you reach the limits, but I know they exist. I also know the papers are claiming the limit is low, but I.have no idea what low means (I saw a.number but I can’t read it)
Potentially? Fusion. Superconducting magnets to keep plasma away from the walls.
This is further down the line, but it’s one of the key potential applications.
If the claims are true and we can make it cheap enough… Change all electronics. You know all the fans in your computer? That’s because heat is radiating off the silicon causing wasted power and limiting the amount of transistors possible based on cooling available.
All of our power lines(especially the long distance ones) are high voltage because of power loss in the copper, that’s why there are local transformers in your neighborhood (these failing are a common cause of neighborhood black outs).
Want a electric car with high efficiency? Alot of heat is wasted by the copper windings in the motor. That goes away and range would increase dramatically.
Again this is all assuming the claims are legit and we can manufacture it at a decent price.
There are a lot of subtle things that are enabled too. Superconductors can store energy, because current going trough a superconductive loop doesn’t dissipate due to heat. You can use that to store energy in a battery or memory cell. Superconductors are at the heart of some of the most sensitive sensors. They can detect single photons for quantum optics, very sensitive changes to magnetic fields that enable more portable MRIs, ultra sensitive RF detectors. I think those will make a lot more immediate impacts.
Currently superconductors require extremely cold temperatures (not just freezing, but extreme subzero freezing temps) - this makes their use cases extremely limited as it is expensive to keep them cold enough.
The discovery of a room-temperature superconductor, would revolutionize energy transmission, transportation, electronics, medical imaging, and scientific research. It could lead to highly efficient power grids, faster trains, improved medical diagnostics, advanced electronics, and more energy-efficient technologies across industries, with potential benefits for renewable energy, space exploration, and fundamental physics understanding.
But Korean people still have to use Ahnlab and IE6…
Nothing wrong with IE6 it introduces a whole new range of exciting bugs that IE5 didn’t have.
