Finding a room temperature superconductor "would have enormous technological importance and, for example, help to solve the world’s energy problems, provide for faster computers, allow for novel memory-storage devices, and enable ultra-sensitive sensors, among many other possibilities." from http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view_group.php?i...
edit - These folk sell a 2MJ one - http://www.bruker-est.com/bas_special_applications.html
That kind of storage without the cooling requirements would be pretty useful...
Edit: The significance of this is that superconductors that operate at room temperature did not exist. If they come into existence, and mature, you can expect to see the development of technology which appears to be powered by magic.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_conditions_for_temper...
Yeah, but it's a perpetual motion machine in the same sense that everything is; all particles evolve in time, i.e. the values of all six quantum fields change ceaselessly. The controversial (imaginary) perpetual motion machine is one that you can extract unlimited amounts of energy from.
Which is really funny to me, since energy is essentially defined as the constant that does not change in time (well, excluding general relativity).
before you suggest that it's because there's energy input to draw off the heat consider that if you took a low-t superconductor to pluto, it would still superconduct.
That said, I don't think it will be fmri either. Personally, I'd be betting on something involving an implanted optical lace driving genetically modified cell sites, with possibly a shielded skull to actually block rf shenanigans, as a futuristic nod to all the tinfoil hat wearers.
Passive measurements like MEG could work a lot better, though they have some problems with being sensitive to disturbances....
"Among these, the enhancement in the dx2-y2 character of the in-plane electronic structure is likely to favour superconductivity."
They cite two of their past publications, "Optically enhanced coherent transport in YBa2Cu3O6.5 by ultrafast redistribution of interlayer coupling," and "Optically induced coherent transport far above Tc in underdoped YBCuO." If they had actually unequivocally shown pulsed YBCO to be superconducting at room temperature the title would be more like, "ROOM TEMPERATURE SUPERCONDUCTIVITY YES!!!!!"
The real demonstration of superconductivity is measuring a Meissner effect (exclusion of magnetic field) in the material (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meissner_effect). I haven't read the articles in detail, but it sounds to me like they have seen some properties that are similar to those found in the superconducting state, but they have not measured a definitive signature of superconductivity.
Also, a very cool finding. Interesting that only a few picometers of atomic shift yields superconductivity at room temperature.
Pressure and strain are known to have large effects on superconductivity. In fact the highest known Tc of any material is HgBCuO under externally applied pressure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconductiv...).
> The precise mechanism remained unclear, however – until the physicists were able to solve the mystery with an experiment at the LCLS in the US, the world’s most powerful X-ray laser.
Neither Stanford nor SLAC gets a mention here. I wonder if the article author deliberated over whether to include their names and then decided not to, or if it was just an oversight. Either option is not great for SLAC.
The national labs don't get nearly the love they ought to. One almost never hears about them unless it's Los Alamos or Livermore.
