Here Are All of the Amazing Ways in Which Room-Temperature Superconductors Can Change the World

wccftech.com:

Superconductors that can operate under normal ambient temperature and pressure have long been considered the holy grail of physics, replete with promises of revolutionizing everything from electricity transmission and transportation to electronics and nuclear fusion, all due to the miracle material’s property of offering virtually no resistance to the passage of electric current.

A recent paper gave us some of the most tantalizing signs yet regarding the realization of this long-held dream. Given the fact that one of the core findings of the paper was recently verified, the study remains quite promising.

Back in March 2023, a University of Rochester (UoR) team led by Ranga P. Dias reported evidence of superconductivity at 20.85 degree Celsius in a nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride compound. The only caveat: superconductivity in the study required a pressure of 10 kilobars or 9,900 atmospheres. Bear in mind that the team’s latest paper is a continuation of an earlier effort back in 2020, which was retracted due to issues with how the data for that study was processed and analyzed.

In May 2023, a team of physicists at Nanjing University tried but failed to replicate the results of the UoR study. While the Nanjing team was able to create a compound that resembled the one postulated in the UoR study, the material did not display any superconductivity, even at super-cold temperatures. Crucially, the Nanjing team did not outrightly reject the UoR study but pointed to the possibility of an insufficient quantity of the nitrogen dopant in their compound for the lack of superconductivity.

Then, in June 2023, a group of researchers at the University of Illinois created the next big ripple in this interesting saga. The team was able to