Posted on 03/30/2019 12:01:24 PM PDT by BenLurkin
For more than a century, physicists have hunted for superconductivity in warmer materials....
In 1986, researchers uncovered ceramics that were superconductive at temperatures as high as 30 degrees above absolute zero, or minus 406 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 243 degrees Celsius). Later, in the 1990s, researchers first looked in earnest at very high pressures, to see if they might reveal new kinds of superconductors.
The next big breakthrough came in 2001, when researchers showed that magnesium diboride (MgB2) was superconductive at 39 degrees above absolute zero, or minus 389 F (minus 234 C).
Since then, the hunt for warm superconductors has shifted in two key ways: Materials scientists realized that lighter elements offered tantalizing possibilities for superconduction. Meanwhile, computer models advanced to the point where theorists could predict in advance precisely how materials might behave in extreme circumstances.
In chemistry, a metal is pretty much any collection of atoms bonded together because they sit in a free-flowing soup of electrons. Most materials that we call metals, like copper or iron, are metallic at room temperature and at comfortable atmospheric pressures. But other materials can become metals in more-extreme environments.
That leaves researchers hunting for materials containing lots of hydrogen that will form metals — and, hopefully, become superconductive, at achievable pressures.
Right now, Boeri said, theorists working with computer models offer experimentalists materials that may be superconductors. And the experimentalists pick the best options to test out.
Hemley and his team's "room temperature superconductor," LaH10, appears to be the most exciting result yet from this new era of research. Crushed to about 1 million times the pressure of Earth's atmosphere (200 gigapascals) between the points of two counterposed diamonds, a sample of LaH10 appears to become superconductive at 260 degrees above absolute zero, or 8 F (minus 13 C).
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
I would buy my superconductors ar Radio Shack but they have closed the stores.... I was this close to solving warp drive.
I want AOC’s version of this so I can put a pancake on a bunnies head.
The future is BRAWNDO! THE THIRST MUTILATOR!
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