
Near-room-temperature superconductivity in hydrogen sulfide - jonbaer
http://www.nature.com/am/journal/v8/n1/full/am2015147a.html
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ars
Previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8729762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8729762)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10077187](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10077187)

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mabbo
The lowest natural temperature ever directly recorded at ground level on Earth
is −89.2 °C. (Google, copy-paste). So we're now talking about superconductors
that could exist in certain conditions on the earth without human
intervention. That's pretty amazing.

Now we just need to figure out how to make it work somewhere a bit warmer.

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dozzie
Except they couldn't, because they require tremendous pressure. But it's still
amazing.

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PeterWhittaker
As soon as one reads "1.5 million atmospheres" one realizes this is clickbaity
science.

Is this cool, in the geekiest way possible? Yeah.

Is it "near room temperature"? Hell, it's not only not even temperate, it's
not even arctic.

And only when the pressure is well beyond Venusian.

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jzila
From the article: "...hydrogen sulfide under a pressure of 1.5 million
atmospheres exhibits phonon-mediated superconductivity at 203 K".

So, yes, dry-ice level temperature, but incredibly high pressure.

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bbarn
Just curious, as I'm not a physicist, what's the definition of "near room
temperature"? Because 203 k = -97F/-70C.

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dozzie
Superconductors exhibit superconductivity in temperature of 30K and less.

High-temperature superconductors exhibit that effect in temperature 90-130K.

Having all that, 200K is really close to room temperature.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
temperature_superconducti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
temperature_superconductivity)

