The Holy Grail of Superconducting?

Emerging tech in a bubble, with speculation. The LK-99 hype.

Welcome back!

I’m debating covering more science news on Quantum Foundry and the main reason has to be the lack of exciting new Quantum computing startups I usually cover. So you might expect a sampling of:

• Biotechnology

• Space and Cosmology News

• Science News

• Physics

• Longevity

• Exponential technologies of the future

• Emerging Tech, and so forth.

Recently there was a story that got my attention. A scientific breakthrough being hailed as "one of the holy grails of modern physics" is also raising some eyebrows. 2023 has been a year of major hype for Generative A.I., but also the usual PR for quantum computing being “close” and “AGI” being just around the corner. So what is up with the holy grail of superconducting?

A team of researchers claims to have created the first materials that conduct electricity perfectly at room temperature and ambient pressure, but many physicists are highly sceptical.

In recent days, many commentators have become excited by two papers that claim to document the production of a new superconductor that works at room temperature and ambient pressure.

South Korea?

Scientists in Korea said they had synthesised a new material called LK-99 that would represent one of the biggest physics breakthroughs of recent decades. The fact that some previous reports of breakthroughs in superconductivity were later retracted and that other teams failed to replicate the results also raises the stakes.

There’s not a week that goes by that I don’t read several posts about “Quantum breakthroughs”, so I think we need to start from a grounding of healthy skepticism. I don’t personally believe in miracles. Unless we are talking genuinely reverse-engineering alien tech. UAP stands for "unidentified anomalous phenomena," a catch-all term to describe objects detected in the air, sea and space that defy easy explanation. 2023 has been a major year for that in the public eye, but that’s another story.

Creating a material that perfectly conducts electricity at room temperature and pressure would be a big deal, but a research team's claims of creating one has attracted more scrutiny than optimism

• LK-99 could be a watershed discovery that enables widespread maglev trains and quantum computers, or it could be another major disappointment.

The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor

Submitted July 22nd, 2023.

Since working on my PhD in experimental high temperature #superconductivity over 20 years ago, I've kept a keen interest in progress towards the "holy grail" of a material that superconducts at ambient conditions. There has been slow progress over many years, involving the discovery of some esoteric materials that need to be taken to cryogenic temperatures and / or crushingly high pressures. So it's exciting to see this paper claiming to have discovered a novel superconducting material that works at room-temperature and ambient pressure. History tells us to treat this with some caution until the results have been independently reproduced, but if this turns out to be true then it would be a big step forwards towards revolutionising a number of real-life applications including - Phil Thomas, IBM.

• Lossless electricity transmission through power grids
  * Magnetically levitating vehicles
  * A new generation of high field magnets for MRI scanners
  
  and closer to my current interests,
  * Superconducting filters in telecom cell sites for better signal quality
  * Room temperature processors for Quantum computers
  ... all without the need for cryogenic cooling.

Still it’s fun to hope that emerging tech is on a fast-track with new breakthroughs around nearly every corner. Could this actuallys signal a new era of superconductivity?

Superconducting at Room Temperature and ambient Pressure