Superconductors that operate at room temperature and no electricity loss? Harvard team of physicists map samples at millionths of a meter to correlate behavior with temp, pressure, stoichiometry, etc.

Comments

• DoubleDongle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  My favorite application for room-temp superconductors is low-speed generators. They have exactly one application, but it’s big: Wind towers without a giant gearbox. Wind power is cheap, but without the truck-sized gearbox with a bazillion moving parts that you can’t lift without the biggest cranes known to man, it’s even cheaper.

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  • WanderingThoughts@europe.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I like that you can build a global energy grid with superconductor. Power Europe at night with the solar panels in Australia, that kind of thing.

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    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Would possibly take care of my country’s little problem of having 30 minutes of sunlight a day in the winter.

      We don’t have nuclear either so you can imagine how nasty our energy mix gets in the winter.

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  • thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Can you expand on how that works please ? The gearbox converts the slow rotational speed of the turbine into a high rpm output because that is needed for the generator to make useful power as I understand it.

    How does the superconductor convert that slow rpm ?

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    • DoubleDongle@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      With a superconductor, you can create a much more powerful electromagnet through which the coil will still produce a lot of voltage even when turning very slowly. Thus, you can use a much simpler gearbox or even just skip it entirely.

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• FauxLiving@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I look forward to the next LK-99

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  • DataCrime@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Right? You got to love the fancy gauge package on what looks like a busty old lab power supply. And what looks like half of Thor Labs inexplicably just sitting on top… Did I actually read the article or (presumably) the related paper, which is no doubt cramp was so many buzz words that I wouldn’t understand it with a dictionary? No I did not 😅 But that gizmo ain’t really making sense… I suppose as some kind of measurement apparatus? I guess just holding up the actual superconducting material would not be enough to really keep a press conference entertained… OK, I’ll just show myself out of the physics lab 🥸

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