Exotic new superconductors delight and confound

Wow. Go over to [1] and read the papers. This is good stuff. When someone finds new physics, interesting things result.<p>Tungsten disulfide&#x2F;boron nitride superconductors? That&#x27;s a new direction.<p>This article describes a new research result as a new research result, not as &quot;trillion dollar industry by 2027&quot;. That helps credibility.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;physics.mit.edu&#x2F;faculty&#x2F;long-ju&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;physics.mit.edu&#x2F;faculty&#x2F;long-ju&#x2F;</a>

The great thing about watching advances in superconductors is that any day we could discover the first true practical room temp superconductor and that one day changes the world immensely. I personally think we are likely to find one in the next 5-10 years, but that estimate is based on nothing but hope and optimism on my part.

One thing that goes unmentioned about room temperature superconductors is that they store energy as well. U = (B2&#x2F;(2u0))V. 2u0 is about 2.5E-6N&#x2F;A2<p>So a 1m3 7T magnetic field would be about 20MJ or 7KWh. That doesn&#x27;t sound like much, but collapse times could be microsec to generate GW of EM.

I worked in Cory Deans lab when he did a brief professorship at City College. He is the most sharply intelligent person I have ever worked with, a savage experimentalist always devising new ways to experiment in nanofabrication and his theoretical curiosity is boundless. Additionally, he’s a really nice Canadian when he goes to the pub!<p>If you ever wonder why these products using graphene aren’t commercially viable, it is insanely difficult to work with and prepare. Imagine trying to make a sandwich that’s 5x5 microns in area and about 2-3nm thick. Graphene is essentially atomic tissue paper subject to all sorts of contamination and small scale effects.

Fascinating stuff. Though it puzzles me that some of these exotic superconductors have been known to us for years yet there’s not been much progress (esp the one with graphene sheets, with a 1 degree tilt). Is that because they are just so hard to synthesize? What would it take to get to the next stage?<p>I came across another technique discovered many years ago, where they used scotch tape to alter the physical configuration of the material to make it superconduct. At room temperature, I believe.<p>This all sounds very ground breaking to me, yet we don’t hear about any big co doing any work on them.

Could this &quot;reality search&quot; stuff be parallelized?<p>Could reaction permutation and property testing occur in a more automated fashion than is currently?

I wish all the smart physicists were working on this instead of string theory.

room temperature superconductors are inevitable, all matter is conductive and photo active in some way or another,and conduction is one of the non optional components of reality, so the number of possible compounds that might superconduct is huge and now that there apear to be multiple mechanisms that superconduction can function from, means that the search will begin in earnist its a multi trillion dollar app

Question - is this a field ripe for breakthroughs using advancing AI capabilities? Or not likely because LLMs haven’t ingested much data that could help reason in this field (or whatever reason)?