
New theory may revolutionize superconductors - jonbaer
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2013/12/new-theory-may-revolutionize-superconductors
======
tokenadult
The article kindly submitted here is a university press release. That digests
the facts in the PNAS article from October 29, 2013

[http://www.pnas.org/content/110/44/17623.full.pdf](http://www.pnas.org/content/110/44/17623.full.pdf)

into more readable prose, but it also adds some hype in the familiar manner of
the Science News Cycle.

[http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174)

It will be grand if this scales up to commercial power transmission someday,
but there are a lot more research and development steps to go through before
we would see such a thing, if it is possible at all. The obligatory link for
any discussion of a preliminary research finding like this article is the
essay "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" by Peter
Norvig, LISP hacker and director of research at Google, on how to interpret
scientific research.

[http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html](http://norvig.com/experiment-
design.html)

The paper here reports a new theoretical framework, so the first stage in
checking it out is to conduct many more experiments to validate the new theory
--or possibly prove it wrong.

------
Steuard
This could be a really exciting development: a single model that explains
multiple very different looking superconducting systems is exactly what
everyone would love to see.

That said, I'm cautious in getting too excited when I hear about scientific
research from a university press release: there's been a whole lot of good
work on superconductivity over the years, and lots of promising ideas that
didn't pan out. I'll be more confident if I start seeing actual scientists
getting excited about this.

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ChuckMcM
There goes my evening :-) It would be remarkable if we could engineer a
structural material that had as its sole purpose to be a durable Fermi surface
for cooper pairs.

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whitewhim
I've been thinking about putting together an "easy" to follow lesson on
computing the fermi surface of metals in either Mathematica or python as a
learning experience over the winter break. I'm by no means an expert but if
you're interested in something like that let me know.

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ck2
Whoa, high temperature superconductors really would be a leap forward.

~~~
znowi
As I understand high-temperature superconductors are in use today and new
materials are found to exhibit superconductivity at -150 C or higher. But the
mechanism by which it happens is not known, which is the focus of this
research. They seem to have some insights.

If we discover the mechanism, we could theoretically manufacture a room-
temperature superconductor (above 0 C). This would really be a leap forward :)

~~~
krsunny
"If we discover the mechanism, we could theoretically manufacture a room-
temperature superconductor (above 0 C). This would really be a leap forward
:)"

Why?

~~~
pilom
Superconductive power transmission lines are huge. You now can move
electricity anywhere with zero loss. I've seen loss numbers for the US
electrical grid as high as 20%. Imagine if we got 20% more power to use from
the same generators?

MRI machines are a second use case. Currently, most MRI's use a
superconductive metal to run gigantic currents through a coil to create
gigantic magnetic fields which they measure. In order to do this, the MRI
needs to be cooled enough to make the coil superconductive which requires at
least liquid nitrogen and sometimes liquid oxygen. This is what makes MRI's
expensive. Without the cooling requirements, they would likely be as expensive
and thus as common as X-ray machines.

~~~
msandford
Believe it or not, getting the extra 20% out of the grid is peanuts compared
to the ability to move power wherever.

In West Texas there is a huge amount of wind power installed but it's
difficult to get that power from West Texas to anywhere that people use it
like Houston or Dallas.

Right now people pay different amounts for electricity depending on where they
are in the globe because electric power is actually a locally produced,
locally consumed good. It's a commodity to be sure, but it's actually harder
to transport than oil is. So oil prices are fairly flat worldwide but
electricity prices can vary by a factor of 10 or more.

High temperature superconductors would make it really feasible to interconnect
the world's energy grids and allow anyone with the ability to generate
utility-scale power to sell into the wholesale market.

That means you could cover the Sahara, the outback in Australia and the
deserts in the Americas with solar panels and run a fairly flat and smooth
solar-only electric grid.

~~~
hyp0
I'm thinking this falls out as: we only see losses up to 20%, because for
transmissions where it would be higher, it's not feasible, so not done, so we
don't see it.

I guess your scenario of outback solar powering the world would work with
undersea (why not?) superconducting cables. But orbital power stations need a
space elevator (perhaps more feasible, if it's just a cable, not people/goods
transport).

I worry about room-temperature superconductors... what if they carry massive
power and get a tiny bit hotter? I suppose there's the same solution of
circuit breakers as for regular cables, but seems more dangerous with little
head room and no environmental cooling. _Don 't touch that! You'll warm i ka-
BOOOM_

~~~
msandford
There will be engineering challenges no doubt, but they're technically quite
easy to overcome. Expensive and a bit impractical, but very doable.

A few thoughts:

1\. Make the total capacity up of multiple superconducting strands. That
prevents a single failure from totally blowing everything up.

2\. Create variable loads at the power generation equipment as well as
distributed throughout the grid. They could be giant resistors or single-use
loads that are designed to burn up, or probably some combination of both.
If/when something goes wrong they can be brought online to absorb the energy
currently in the grid and prevent really nasty failures.

3\. Any kind of really long distance transmission is likely going to be HVDC
and that means capacitance isn't a huge problem. Which means you can bury the
cables underground (perhaps 500 or more feet) where the ground temperature is
relatively constant in the 50-90f range (depends on latitude).
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_heat_pump](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_heat_pump)

4\. There probably won't be too many of them and that means you can go to some
pretty serious lengths to ensure that they're highly reliable.

I would envision a single cable from Australia to China to Russia to Europe. A
dogleg down through Africa and head onwards to cross North America
horizontally with another dogleg down to South America. If we've got crazy
money, maybe even connect back up over the Pacific and have the South American
and African doglegs connect over the Atlantic.

The whole thing would easily cost hundreds of billions but the benefits would
be really big. New power generation could be done where it's easiest rather
than near/in population centers.

~~~
tbrownaw
_4\. There probably won 't be too many of them and that means you can go to
some pretty serious lengths to ensure that they're highly reliable.

I would envision a single cable from Australia to China to Russia to Europe. A
dogleg down through Africa and_

You need 2- or 3- way redundancy, or one drunk backhoe operator (or aircraft
cargo pilot) could knock out power to half a continent.

~~~
msandford
You'd definitely encase them in a pipeline. Something durable. That would be
much cheaper than multiple pulls. 1/2" wall 8" diameter steel pipe is real
strong and pretty cheap compared with doing a second pull for a redundant
cable. But you make a good point about redundancy.

------
gojomo
I hope this theory helps, but I prefer breakthrough-reports with the reversed
sense:

"New superconductor may revolutionize theories"

~~~
Steuard
Theory and experiment traditionally play a game of leapfrog over time. My
impression has been that in superconductivity, the experiments have been ahead
for years (possibly multiple decades). There are lots of "high temperature"
superconductors known, but nobody has yet come up with a model that can give a
compelling explanation of how they all work (or, more importantly, predict how
to make newer, better ones). So the breakthroughs that you're looking for have
already happened: we don't even have a preferred theory to upend at the
moment. (Which is why research like this could be a big deal if it pans out.)

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moocowduckquack
Never mind making motors, I wonder if this level of order is leverageable for
computaton?

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elliott34
Link to article?

~~~
Someone
[http://davisgroup.lassp.cornell.edu/publicationPDF/PNAS_110_...](http://davisgroup.lassp.cornell.edu/publicationPDF/PNAS_110_17623.pdf)

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leokun
I'm so jaded that I wont click a superlative filled headline by default, even
if it is an edu URL. I'm sure this will change all things forever, will be a
*-killer and fix the upcoming antibiotic-less armageddon. Here are 10 reasons
why this article is wrong about everything.

