

Claim of Superconductivity Above 0C - yurisagalov
http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/12/claim-of-superconductivity-above-0.html

======
kansando
As a lapsed superconductivity physicist, I hate to burst the bubble. In the
community there has been a long-standing joke about USOs, Unidentified
Superconducting Objects, and it is well known that just because you see "Signs
of Superconductivity" does not prove that something is superconducting.

There are really three questions at hand: 1> Does the sample show the Meissner
effect, 2> Does it show zero resistance, and 3> Is it stable under addition of
impurities. It turns out that for most ceramic compounds, even if 1 is true, 2
and 3 are often not true. For example, the Cuprates (the first to cross the
77K mark) actually have a higher resistance close to the critical temperature
than copper. Point 3 is especially damning as sensitivity to impurities also
means you can't draw these things into wires (certainly not wires you can
bend) as the very act of bending may introduce defects that change local
concentration of ingredients and hurt the superconductivity.

So the burden of proof remains very high, and the small blurb is very
underwhelming.

~~~
igravious
I have no idea why you are getting upvoted. You're not bursting any bubble,
you're just parading your cynicism and knowledge of a specialized field before
a technical audience. The post <http://www.superconductors.org/276K.htm>
contains a whole bunch of data which may answer your 3 points. How about you
go through it, or email the author who has "released [the details] into the
public domain without patent protection in order to encourage additional
research" and get back to us? You ask, "Does the sample show the Meissner
effect" and I ask you does the information provided supply you with the
answer? In which case you should write, "the published research information
does not provide any information regarding the Meissner effect" because
otherwise it sounds like you didn't even look closely at the article. And 10
out of 10 for not explaining what the Meissner effect is by the way. The top
graph on the linked to page has a portion of the plotted function circled and
labelled Meissner transition, is this what you mean? From Wiki P: "The
Meissner effect is the expulsion of a magnetic field from a superconductor
during its transition to the superconducting state. Walther Meissner and
Robert Ochsenfeld discovered the phenomenon in 1933 by measuring the magnetic
field distribution outside superconducting tin and lead samples."

Is (Tl4Pb)Ba2MgCu8O13+ a ceramic compound? If not, why mention them? They are
claiming superconductivity, so this implies zero resistance doesn't it? We can
worry about impurities when we make enough of the stuff to extrude and bend
it.

~~~
gnosis
I for one am grateful he commented on this at all.

He has professional experience in this field, and his hunches are worth a
thousand completely uninformed responses such as yours.

If you want him to dig through data, email the author, and look up stuff on
Wikipedia for you, then how about you _pay him_ before indignantly demanding
that he do it?

After receiving backbiting chastisements from the popcorn gallery, I wouldn't
be surprised if he refrained from commenting at all next time some similar
announcement in his field of expertise came up.

That would be a pity, as his expertise, insight, and any time he cares to
spend explaining his field to us are certainly valued.

------
Vivtek
I want to believe this so bad. I'm just ... leery of one-man research being
published on a blog.

~~~
Vivtek
Then, too, I also badly want to believe in the concept of one-man research
published on a blog.

~~~
tel
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I have to ask: why?

I believe a great deal in the capability of individuals to accomplish great
things, but I don't care how ingenious the methods, how confident the claims,
how insightful the theory... I want to see science as a group activity.

Because no matter how good you are, you need replication and criticism, and
constant skeptical feedback. I'm not saying it's impossible to get that by
yourself, but I certainly don't believe in it so much.

~~~
Vivtek
Science as a whole can only be a group activity, of course - without
replication of findings, it isn't really science (just _mad_ science).

But the peer review process as it stands necessarily entails a certain barrier
to entry. While we all would like to believe that every deserving idea gets
peer review, in practice, most people don't have the time to bother with a
submitted paper unless it's coming from an institution they've more or less
heard of. How could it be otherwise? There are huge numbers of crackpots out
there, and institutional affiliation is an efficient way of filtering them
out.

My wife wants to do theoretical physics research (she's qualified: she has a
doctorate in theoretical physics) but unless she's affiliated with an
institution, it's unlikely she'll get anything published, or so she says. The
problem is that unless you're a rock star, affiliation with an institution
entails teaching, which in turn translates into all-out effort for roughly 22
hours a day by my own observations of the past semester. The resulting
Catch-22 is that my wife can't reasonably do research at all, and that's
illogical; she needs no resources but time and access to books and preprints,
which she has at home.

So I'd like to see some research done using these new-fangled informational
access tools we have now - research that is both sound and eventually makes
its way into traditional peer review simply on the basis of its soundness, and
not because the institutional affiliation of the researcher makes it
plausible. This is one more thing that I think the Internet can do for us, and
I'd like to see it happen.

Of course, the romantic in me just likes the idea of the lone mad scientist in
his lair discovering room-temperature superconductivity, because _that is the
twenty-first century I signed up for_. Today room-temperature
superconductivity, tomorrow super-intelligent lab rats and cheap immortality.
It's all good.

------
ph0rque
This is momentous news, if it's reproducible... at 277K, we're 6-12 degrees
away from the ground temperature ~10ft below almost anywhere in the world (
[http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/geothermal_basics.htm...](http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/geothermal_basics.html))

------
Anon84
This sounds pretty exciting, but I havent seen any confirmation other than
blog posts. Without a paper or technical-report, I remain skeptical.

------
ck2
Out of curiosity is "superconductivity" an "all or nothing" phenomenon?

ie. Is there such a thing as semi-superconductive?

~~~
ars
Yes, all or nothing.

Resistance does go lower as temperature drops, but when you hit the transition
temperature it suddenly drops to zero.

There are other unusual things that happen too, and only with superconductors.

One of the main ones is that Meissner effect they talked about - that's the
exclusion of magnetic fields from inside the superconductor, and regular
conductors don't do that.

------
ghshephard
"This discovery is being released into the public domain without patent
protection in order to encourage additional research. "

Think of the thousands (millions?) of useless patents that are created for no
other purpose than to extract monetary gain, at the cost of slowing down
economic and technological growth, and read through the details of this
detailed process that has been released for all to improve on.

------
creativeembassy
I'm somewhat ignorant of superconductors. I know that it's a material that has
zero electrical resistance, so a current flowing along a loop of
superconductive material will flow forever, or something like that. But what
are the implications of finding a superconductive material over 0C, other than
it's really cool to play with?

~~~
jerf
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductor#Applications>

No offense intended but it definitely is a more complete list than what I
could come up with off the top of my head. There's a wide variety of very
practical applications, if a practical one can be found.

It should also be noted that while "room temperature" is the holy grail,
there's a gradient of practicality that ranges along the necessary
refrigeration technology. Even a superconductor that only require conventional
refrigeration (ie, no liquid nitrogen or helium involved) could be put to good
use, if it can be made practical in all necessary ways.

------
bcl
I'll believe it when it's peer reviewed and reproduced.

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
It has been reproduced and journallized by Sharif University in Iran.

It looks legit, but his spec sheet does indicate that there are problems with
commercialisation. <http://www.superconductors.org/276K.htm> indicates how to
reproduce and what results to expect. A regular freezer can sustain -5C to 5C.
An ammonia freezer can go as low as -27C, so 3C is easy to hold.

And the fact that he has been known for good results in the past shows, at
least to me that this is the real thing. But of course, always the skeptic in
these kinds of claims. At least it's not cold fusion, yet ;)

~~~
mkramlich
> It has been reproduced and journallized by Sharif University in Iran.

I see. Well I'll just wait for additional confirmation from the Great Leader's
University of North Korea.

~~~
chegra
The chair of Electrical Engineering Department of Stanford University has
announced that: "Without a doubt the finest university in the world preparing
undergraduate Electrical engineers is Sharif University of Technology in
Tehran"
-[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharif_University_of_Technology...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharif_University_of_Technology#International_recognition)

~~~
gnosis
That's interesting, but what does it have to do with world-class physics
research?

------
tocomment
I never understood why a vacuum isn't considered a superconductor. Surely
there's nothing to resist the motion of an electron in a vacuum. Would anyone
be able to explain that to me?

~~~
prewett
A vacuum isn't even a conductor, so it can't be a superconductor. Sure, the
electors are unimpeded, but you have to boil them off something to get them
into the vacuum. Conductors have a sea of electrons that moves very easily
along the material. Which brings up a second point: once in the vacuum, the
electrons travel in a straight line (except in the presence of electric
fields). In a conductor, they follow the surface, which often bends.

Furthermore, a super-conductor excludes magnetic fields; vacuums do not
exclude magnetic fields (otherwise Earth wouldn't have the Van Allen Belts).

