Topflight boffins believe they may be on the track of the fabled room-temperature superconductor, a technology which - if achieved - promises to revolutionise various fields including hover trains, electric power, mighty dimension-portal atom smashers and even supercomputing.
The new science relates to the study of copper-oxide superconductors. A superconductor is a material which carries an electric current without any resistance: naturally, as a result, it is excellent for generating tremendously powerful magnetic fields. These are useful for such purposes as building MRI scanners, mag-lev hover trains and colossal very-fabric-of-spacetime-rending particle punchers such as the famous Large Hadron Collider.
In general, though, superconductors won't superconduct at normal temperatures: they have to be chilled far below zero in order to work. This makes them difficult and expensive to build and operate, and restricts what can be done with them.
Now, however, boffins at the USA's Brookhaven National Laboratory - working with others around the world - say they have gained important insights into the "pseudogap" phase which copper-oxide superconductors enter as they become too warm for ordinary superconducting.
Apparently this is major stuff: not only are Davis and his collaborators excited, but their research is published this week in premier boffinry mag Nature. In essence, the copper oxides have been shown to behave in some respects like superconductors in the pseudogap phase, which means that at least theoretically superconduction could happen at ordinary temperatures.
theregister
