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.
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.
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.