Superconductors are basically perfectly conductive wire. Wires that transfer 100% of power over arbitrary distances and that don't heat up. Obviously there are limits, you can't put arbitrary power over a hair thin filament but as long as you're under that limit you get perfect efficiency.
MRI machines can be made a lot simpler as you no longer need to use liquid nitrogen to cool the superconductors. MRI machines could end up being small and cheap.
Perfectly efficient electromagnets make a lot of problems in fusion reactors simpler, I'm not sure that room temperature superconductors make fusion reactors instantly viable but it's a big step and would reduce the energy requirements for a fusion bottle by a lot.
Basically anything involving electromagnets becomes a lot more efficient. Motors can be made smaller, generators can be made much more efficient for the weight, maglev trains can require very little power to hover. It has effects on almost every industrial process as it fundamentally changes the weight and energy efficiency of anything involving electromagnets.
One neat things would be surgical robots that can work as an MRI while also levitating a small blade in a 3D space. Challenging for sure but when you can replace complicated liquid-nitrogen cooled coils with an array of simple passive coils a lot of options open up.
Superconductors can also be used for power storage, and at room temperature that becomes a lot more viable.
A note about MRI machines: they use liquid helium, not liquid nitrogen. LN2 isn't cold enough. Being able to eliminate liquid helium would be huge, as helium is scarse and quite expensive. Its roughly 10x the cost of LN2 and only going to get more expensive.
Don't forget about computer chips that do not emit heat. So much wasted power at the datacenter scale simply to keep things cool. At a personal computer level things get way more efficient, too, resulting in cheaper, smaller, quieter computing devices.
Superconductors change every assumption about how we harness electricity and magnetism. Beyond reducing the cost of electricity transmission, they enable all sorts of fascinating applications:
- They enable low cost, continuous, passively-stable magnetic levitation. Superconductors could replace ball bearings in many applications.
- They enable permanent magnets that are far stronger than any we make from conventional magnetic materials. For example, motors tend to run at high speed and low torque, so as to minimize heat generated from current in the copper windings. Superconducting direct-drive motors could allow for ultra-high-torque actuators without any need for gearing, and with minimal heat generation or losses. So superconducting electromagnets could replace everything from electric motors to hydraulic pistons to simple springs.
- Superconductors allow for very sensitive antennas and magnetic field sensors, allowing for near-field detection of very small signals (such as from neurons firing in the brain). There is a lot of impressive technology that only exists inside research labs where a generous supply of cryogenic liquids are always on hand. Those could make their way into mass-market products.
Something that immediately comes to mind for me in Sweden, is that the country is fairly long in latitude, and most of our electricity production is from hydroelectric power in the northern half of the country, while most of the population is in the southern half of the country. Better energy transmission could help a lot.
Other commenters have science fiction dust in their eyes, and speak of room temp superconductors in general. But this particular discovery is a brittle crystalline structure that cannot be extruded into wires, and does not have the high current capacity required for power transmission or rail-guns.
It's an important, exciting step but it's very far from world-changing at this stage. Or if it is in a limited way. The first transistors were clunky affairs, of limited usefulness, world changing for ship-to-shore communication in the military. But then people discovered how to make them with deposition instead of factories, and they got smaller and faster, and they really did change the world. We're in the "clunky transistor" period.
Exactly. But that clunky transistor was in fact world-changing. It just took a while for the changes to take place but the stage was set when that first device showed that it could be done at all.
Oops, the first practical radios were powered by semiconductor rectifiers, not transistors. The Pickard silicon point detector circa 1906 was used in WWI (btw owning/making a radio was illegal during the war!)
I believe MRIs use superconductivity, so I assume any application of superconductors that doesn't require heavy, large, energy-consuming cooling will benefit greatly.
Perhaps MRIs will become ubiquitous and cheap, something we all get every time we go to the doctor?
Superconduction also has some weird magnetic properties I believe, so there could be benefits regarding maglev transport.
And finally and most basically, the movement of electrical energy across potentially large distances with zero loss would be a great thing.
I have no real idea what I'm talking about but figure 1 has critical magnetic flux curve ranging up to 3000 Oe so... in MRI-speak maybe it tops out before 0.3T? IIRC permanent magnet MRI have already been built in the 0.3T range, but they're very heavy and outclassed by the higher-field scanners. Clinical MRI nowadays typically runs at 1.5-3T (with some clinical scanners at 5-7T).
Having said that there is a resurgence of interest in low-field MRI lately, primarily marketed for use in developing nations and for combination machines that integrate radiation therapy. From what I've heard from diagnostic radiologists, the low-field MRI scanners seem to be of limited diagnostic value on their own.
Anyway that's just my thought that the best/first applications here may not be about generating magnetic fields.
I assume we could make CPUs stupid fast if we didn't have to worry about heat as much, though I'm not sure how much is lost to resistance vs operating transistors.
traverseda|2 years ago
MRI machines can be made a lot simpler as you no longer need to use liquid nitrogen to cool the superconductors. MRI machines could end up being small and cheap.
Perfectly efficient electromagnets make a lot of problems in fusion reactors simpler, I'm not sure that room temperature superconductors make fusion reactors instantly viable but it's a big step and would reduce the energy requirements for a fusion bottle by a lot.
Basically anything involving electromagnets becomes a lot more efficient. Motors can be made smaller, generators can be made much more efficient for the weight, maglev trains can require very little power to hover. It has effects on almost every industrial process as it fundamentally changes the weight and energy efficiency of anything involving electromagnets.
One neat things would be surgical robots that can work as an MRI while also levitating a small blade in a 3D space. Challenging for sure but when you can replace complicated liquid-nitrogen cooled coils with an array of simple passive coils a lot of options open up.
Superconductors can also be used for power storage, and at room temperature that becomes a lot more viable.
Here's this big wikipedia page on applications of superconductivity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_applications_of_...
Also on the less useful side, rail guns.
Kirby64|2 years ago
bilsbie|2 years ago
Maybe it’s competitive with batteries if you don’t need any cooling?
tills13|2 years ago
webdood90|2 years ago
chasd00|2 years ago
mitthrowaway2|2 years ago
- They enable low cost, continuous, passively-stable magnetic levitation. Superconductors could replace ball bearings in many applications.
- They enable permanent magnets that are far stronger than any we make from conventional magnetic materials. For example, motors tend to run at high speed and low torque, so as to minimize heat generated from current in the copper windings. Superconducting direct-drive motors could allow for ultra-high-torque actuators without any need for gearing, and with minimal heat generation or losses. So superconducting electromagnets could replace everything from electric motors to hydraulic pistons to simple springs.
- Superconductors allow for very sensitive antennas and magnetic field sensors, allowing for near-field detection of very small signals (such as from neurons firing in the brain). There is a lot of impressive technology that only exists inside research labs where a generous supply of cryogenic liquids are always on hand. Those could make their way into mass-market products.
That's just a very short list.
LinAGKar|2 years ago
postmortembees|2 years ago
javajosh|2 years ago
It's an important, exciting step but it's very far from world-changing at this stage. Or if it is in a limited way. The first transistors were clunky affairs, of limited usefulness, world changing for ship-to-shore communication in the military. But then people discovered how to make them with deposition instead of factories, and they got smaller and faster, and they really did change the world. We're in the "clunky transistor" period.
jacquesm|2 years ago
Exactly. But that clunky transistor was in fact world-changing. It just took a while for the changes to take place but the stage was set when that first device showed that it could be done at all.
javajosh|2 years ago
unethical_ban|2 years ago
Perhaps MRIs will become ubiquitous and cheap, something we all get every time we go to the doctor?
Superconduction also has some weird magnetic properties I believe, so there could be benefits regarding maglev transport.
And finally and most basically, the movement of electrical energy across potentially large distances with zero loss would be a great thing.
fluidcruft|2 years ago
Having said that there is a resurgence of interest in low-field MRI lately, primarily marketed for use in developing nations and for combination machines that integrate radiation therapy. From what I've heard from diagnostic radiologists, the low-field MRI scanners seem to be of limited diagnostic value on their own.
Anyway that's just my thought that the best/first applications here may not be about generating magnetic fields.
dehrmann|2 years ago
ZiiS|2 years ago
cassepipe|2 years ago