JohnB Posted December 4, 2010 Share Posted December 4, 2010 From superconductor.org I came across this today and it's something I've been hoping for news on for some time. Superconductivity at -8C or 17F, within the range of a household freezer. Beats the hell out of needing liquid N to keep it cool. While it would be nice to have it written up and published properly at least this is a start. The money quote from superconductors; "This is the one investors will watch. Household freezer technology is now adequate to support practical superconductivity. Once a refinement method is developed to purify this material, superconductors will move rapidly from an industrial novelty into our everyday lives." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mississippichem Posted December 4, 2010 Share Posted December 4, 2010 From superconductor.org I came across this today and it's something I've been hoping for news on for some time. Superconductivity at -8C or 17F, within the range of a household freezer. Beats the hell out of needing liquid N to keep it cool. While it would be nice to have it written up and published properly at least this is a start. The money quote from superconductors; It's nice to hear of a promising superconductor besides the yttrium-barium-cuprates. Still in the layered cuprate family, but without Yttrium which is nice since yttrium is hell on earth to extract from its native blended-lanthanoid ore. Chemical engineers are already thankful before mass production even begins. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imatfaal Posted December 6, 2010 Share Posted December 6, 2010 One question - that I am sure there is a simple answer to - why when there are superconductors at higher and higher temperatures does the LHC use the sort that need to be cooled by liquid helium? Surely everything would have been much much easier if they used liquid nitrogen temperature superconductors Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insane_alien Posted December 6, 2010 Share Posted December 6, 2010 the ones that can be used at higher temps are more expensive and can be more suceptible to quenching. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Skeptic Posted December 6, 2010 Share Posted December 6, 2010 But is this actually a superconductor, or evidence that maybe there is one? Or, maybe a superconducting structure in equilibrium with non-superconducting ones so that they can't really be separated? Would be awesome to have superconductors that we can cool salt and ice though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Cuthber Posted December 6, 2010 Share Posted December 6, 2010 One question - that I am sure there is a simple answer to - why when there are superconductors at higher and higher temperatures does the LHC use the sort that need to be cooled by liquid helium? Surely everything would have been much much easier if they used liquid nitrogen temperature superconductors Apart from anything else, they don't have a time machine. If the highest temperature superconductors are only being spotted today then they could hardly have planned for the collider to use them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imatfaal Posted December 7, 2010 Share Posted December 7, 2010 I was really wondering whether it was a timing issue, a price issue, or a mechanical issue; and it seems it is a little of all three. As we discover more and more high temperature superconductors is it possible that the price of particle accelerators will decline massively (according to popular press the major complicating factor of LHC was the difficulty of handing large quantities of liquid helium) or will other constraining factors mean that LHC remains the most powerful for years to come? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D H Posted December 7, 2010 Share Posted December 7, 2010 Superconductivity at -8C or 17F, within the range of a household freezer. Beats the hell out of needing liquid N to keep it cool. While it would be nice to have it written up and published properly at least this is a start. That won't happen. While various ceramics are rather important in the field high temperature superconductivity, only a select few such as this Joe Eck character have specialized in the study of cracked ceramics. There's just something about cracked ceramics that prevents reports such as this from making it into peer-reviewed journals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zheng sheng ming Posted December 9, 2010 Share Posted December 9, 2010 Just because we don't YET understand something ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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