As I understand it, superconductors work best at temperatures approaching absolute zero (-273.15C). For example, Google tells me that the superconductor in an MRI operates at -269C.

There has been a lot a buzz lately about room temperature (25C) superconductors being discovered, but why is room temperature the focus? Why not focus on superconductors that work in reasonably cold environments? For example, we can easily get temperatures to -15C in a freezer. Why not create superconductors that work in that temperature range rather than 25C?

  • ShakeThatYam@lemmy.worldOP
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    I guess that is sort of what bugs me. Why are we jumping from one extreme to the other instead of figuring out stuff in between first.

    • RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s not an intentional jump. Most superconductors are extremely impractical for consumer use (and even just cold ones are too realistically) and materials scientists are always just chasing improvements, this one just happens to be a very dramatic one. Popular science is only a small chunk of what’s happening globally.

      Again, I say all this under the hopes that the SK guys aren’t full of shit because this would actually be so cool.

    • wahming@monyet.cc
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s not a video game tech tree. Scientific progress isn’t linear. We hypothesise, we experiment, and sometimes we get lucky. If it was an engineering problem we could make incremental improvements to the manufacturing process to get small improvements in the results, but it’s not.