Superconductivity

Photo: Pete Dadds/NetflixI... hm. Huh. Hmm. I.. what? What. Huh. I’m sorry. What?Netflix’s Squid Game reality show The Challenge—a competitive adaptation of Hwang Dong-hyuk’s dystopic, anti-capitalist thriller—has seemed like a terrible idea, even for Netflix, since it was announced. Whoever came away from the show’s gripping tale of desperate people forced to confront their humanity at the childish behest of wealthy elites and thought “well, that was good, but what if it was just the game bits?”Squid Change Color to Hide…

By Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter November 20, 2023Researchers have successfully demonstrated superconductivity on a chip, revealing non-linear electrical responses in K3C60 thin films and observing critical current behavior. This groundbreaking research, which uses on-chip non-linear THz spectroscopy, opens up new avenues in optoelectronic applications and advances our understanding of superconductivity in quantum materials.Researchers have integrated laser-induced superconductivity on a…

If rumor has wings, extraordinary scientific claims have a jet engine. Within hours of appearing on the preprint server arXiv.org, two papers by a team of scientists in South Korea generated enormous viral buzz. The researchers’ extraordinary claim is that they have discovered a room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor, a material that can conduct electricity perfectly under everyday conditions. A genuine ambient-condition superconductor is often touted for its potential to transform many technologies. It could…

MIT physicists have unveiled a new understanding of how certain superconductors transition into a superconducting state, offering fresh insights that could help improve existing superconductors and discover new ones.<span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>MIT</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>MIT is an acronym for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a prestigious private research university in Cambridge,…

Researchers from TU Wien and universities in Japan have used computer simulations to identify the “golden zone” for optimal superconductivity. This zone, where the interaction between electrons is strong but not too strong, is reached with a new class of material called palladates, which could lead to a new era of superconductivity research.TU Wien has performed calculations that suggest the use of the precious metal palladium as a “Goldilocks” material for creating superconductors that remain superconductive even at…

In March, University of Rochester (U of R) physicist Ranga Dias made a blockbuster announcement: His team had detected superconductivity at room temperature, in a material that did not need to be squeezed to incredibly high pressures. Many physicists regarded the claim warily because 6 months earlier, Nature had retracted a separate room-temperature superconductivity claim from Dias’s group, amid allegations of data manipulation. Now come accusations that Dias…

Scientists at the University of Rochester claim to have created a material that acts as a superconductor at room temperature and lower pressures than ever before. If confirmed, this “reddmatter,” as they call it, could mark a major breakthrough.Even if a material is a good conductor of electricity, it will still encounter some resistance that affects efficiency. But in superconductors, electrons can flow freely with zero resistance, which could theoretically provide major advantages in energy grids, electric vehicles,…

The new study provides significant insights into how superconductivity can arise in materials with nearly “frozen” electrons.A new mechanism that gives rise to superconductivity in a material where the speed of electrons is almost zero has been discovered by scientists at The University of Texas at Dallas and their partners at The Ohio State University. This breakthrough could pave the way for the development of novel superconductors.The results of their study, which was recently published in the journal Nature, describe…

For over a century, scientists have sought a holy grail of materials: a room-temperature superconductor, a material that can carry electrical charges without resistance, which would revolutionize the energy landscape as we know it.A team from the University of Rochester claims this week that they’ve found such a material, though some members of the scientific community are skeptical. The new research is published in Nature. Here’s what to know about the science.What is a room-temperature superconductor?Developing…

This week researchers claimed to have discovered a superconducting material that can shuttle electricity with no loss of energy under near-real-world conditions. But drama and controversy behind the scenes have many worried that the breakthrough may not hold up to scientific scrutiny. “If you were to find a room-temperature, room-pressure superconductor, you’d have a completely new host of technologies that would occur—that we haven’t even begun to dream about,” says Eva Zurek, a computational chemist at the University…