
Physicists discover new quantum electronic material - jonbaer
http://news.mit.edu/2018/physicists-discover-new-quantum-electronic-material-0319
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xelxebar
Here's the original paper, for those interested:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.10007](https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.10007)

Looks to be from September of 2017.

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mhb
Unrelated but:

Surprise graphene discovery could unlock secrets of superconductivity
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16627914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16627914)

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garmaine
The article seems to indicate that this is a high temperature (room
temperature?) superconductor. That would be a massive discovery if true. Can
someone more enlightened comment on this?

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chrisb
Towards the end of the article, it suggests dissipationless power lines as an
application.

Whether "dissipationless" is equivalent to "superconducting" I'm not sure; but
it sounds the same to me ;)

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contingencies
I presume another application could be higher density electronics owing to
reduced heat generation owing to reduced dissipation. However, if I recall
comments here correctly we are getting to the point where electromagnetic
shielding may be required as we scale down further which provides a second
limiting factor to increased densities.

PS. Last year ETH Zurich also looked at weaving nanothreads in a kagome
pattern, [https://www.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-
news/news/2017/08...](https://www.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-
news/news/2017/08/weaving-with-nanothreads.html) ... note also that this style
of weaving is widespread across all of continental Southeast Asia, at _least_
southwest China, Vietnam, Philippines, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar and
probably further west in South Asia. It is real a shame that a lot of
terminology falls in to the "some random American saw a Japanese name for
something so it is termed Japanese in English" category (eg. various food
ingredients, philosophical concepts, art history, etc.). People could learn a
lot more if they had broader regional comprehension of Asia and its history.

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jon_richards
It isn't like those sorts of inaccuracies are unique to Asia. "Danish"
pastries are called "Vienna bread" in Denmark because they weren't introduced
to Denmark until an influx of foreign bakers caused by the Danish baker's
union going on strike.

~~~
contingencies
I bet they regretted that strike :)

