Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for a tech Stuff Tidbits episode.
Speaker 1: But this one's about a pretty complicated topic. And y'all,
Speaker 1: we could be at the beginning of a transformational moment
Speaker 1: within technology, one that potentially could lead to truly incredible results.
Speaker 1: Or it's possible we could just be waiting to find
Speaker 1: out that a promising experiment isn't really what we thought
Speaker 1: it was. And this all centers around super conductivity. Now,
Speaker 1: to understand super conductivity, we first have to talk about
Speaker 1: just plain old conductivity the Clark Kent super Conductivity's cal
Speaker 1: l and we're specifically talking about electrical conductivity rather than
Speaker 1: thermal conductctivity for this episode. So we say a material
Speaker 1: is conductive if it is well suited to allow an
Speaker 1: electric charge to pass through it. Materials that resist electrical
Speaker 1: charges passing through them are insulators. In Between conductors and insulators,
Speaker 1: you've got your semiconductors, which can behave like a conductor
Speaker 1: under certain conditions and like a resistor under others. So
Speaker 1: a good conductor will allow electric charge through pretty easily,
Speaker 1: but some of that energy in that electrical charge will
Speaker 1: end up converting into heat and you lose that. This
Speaker 1: is because even good conductors like copper still have some
Speaker 1: electrical resistance. You can actually affect the amount of electrical
Speaker 1: resistance by changing the physical properties of the copper itself.
Speaker 1: For example, a very thin copper wire will have higher
Speaker 1: electrical resistance than a thick copper cable. It's made out
Speaker 1: of the same stuff, but the actual physical properties change things,
Speaker 1: but it still will have electrical resistance either way. And
Speaker 1: some of our appliances, like say toasters, they rely on
Speaker 1: electrical resistance. We purposefully build them so that they have
Speaker 1: these metal coils inside that heat up as we pass
Speaker 1: an electrical current through them, and that ends up toasting
Speaker 1: your bread. The electrical resistance causes some of the charge
Speaker 1: to convert into heat, so then you can toast your
Speaker 1: toast and make your belts or whatever. Resistance means that
Speaker 1: it is impossible for us to build a perfectly efficient
Speaker 1: electrical system under what I would call normal circumstances, like
Speaker 1: every day type circumstances and very very specific circumstances, we
Speaker 1: can achieve it, but it is a lot of work
Speaker 1: and we'll get there. But under normal circumstances, we're always
Speaker 1: going to lose some energy due to electrical resistance. You know,
Speaker 1: it's going to boil off heat. And this is why
Speaker 1: lead gamers out there have to invest in really effective
Speaker 1: cooling systems for their gaming rigs. Sometimes they get those
Speaker 1: like crazy water cooling systems. The over clockers out there
Speaker 1: might even play with like liquid nitrogen for usually an
Speaker 1: exhibition type thing. It's not something they would do for
Speaker 1: every day, but yeah, they have to deal with that
Speaker 1: because their gaming rigs have countless circuits in them. Like
Speaker 1: when you think of a CPU or a GPU, you know,
Speaker 1: central processing unit or graphics processing unit. Essentially those are
Speaker 1: chips with just millions or billions of little circuits in them,
Speaker 1: and if you don't take the heat away from those circuits,
Speaker 1: then it's going to overheat and stuff is going to
Speaker 1: wear out, it's going to go wrong, it's gonna shut down.
Speaker 1: So you have to have a way to manage the
Speaker 1: heat in the system. And that's why you've got these
Speaker 1: these great cooling systems and these gaming rigs and other
Speaker 1: types of computers. So under normal circumstances, an electrical can
Speaker 1: we'll serve as a pathway for electricity. But you aren't
Speaker 1: going to get the same amount of electricity out as
Speaker 1: you put into it. There's always going to be less
Speaker 1: electricity coming out the other side because of the fact
Speaker 1: you lose some of it due to heat. Unless and
Speaker 1: this is where we have to go back in time.
Speaker 1: In fact, I don't think we've used the tech stuff
Speaker 1: time machine in a few years. Looks like I still
Speaker 1: got it over there in the corner. It's holding one
Speaker 1: of my guitars. Let me just just move that up.
Speaker 1: Oh it's okay, right there, we go and get in
Speaker 1: and all right, let's set the dial to nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: Here we go. Okay, we're in nineteen eleven, and here
Speaker 1: we see a Dutch physicist. His name is Oh no, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get this totally wrong. Just saying it
Speaker 1: right up front, I cannot pronounce Dutch names, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to give it a try. Just know that this
Speaker 1: is not the right pronunciation, and I understand, and I
Speaker 1: know it's terrible. You don't have to tell me anyway.
Speaker 1: Haika common link on us and he's leading a research
Speaker 1: team and they're studying the effects of very very cold
Speaker 1: temperatures on electrical conductivity, I mean, like exceedingly cold temperatures.
Speaker 1: So his team is currently cooling a sample of mercury
Speaker 1: to minus two sixty nine degrees celsius. That's four point
Speaker 1: two kelvin, so we're not that much higher than absolute zero,
Speaker 1: like the temperature of deep space. And his team is
Speaker 1: now observing that at this temperature, mercury's resistance drops to zero.
Speaker 1: It no longer has electrical resistance. It has become a
Speaker 1: perfectly efficient conductor for electricity, a superconductor. And it turns
Speaker 1: out that below a specific critical temperature, and that temperature
Speaker 1: depends upon the material that we're using at the time,
Speaker 1: the conductor will go through a fundamental change that means
Speaker 1: they no longer offer resistance to electrical charges. Why, well,
Speaker 1: that's a darn good question to answer that. Let's get
Speaker 1: back to present day. All right, everyone back in the
Speaker 1: time machine. Here we go. Oh it's hotter than I remember. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: now here we are. So our understanding of physics at
Speaker 1: the time of this discovery of superconductivity had no explanation
Speaker 1: as to why this would happen, or how it happens,
Speaker 1: or in fact, even what was happening on a granular level.
Speaker 1: I mean, we knew that resistance was dropping to zero,
Speaker 1: but he didn't know what was happening to cause that.
Speaker 1: Even quantum theory shrugged and said, beats me, daddy, Oh,
Speaker 1: I got no idea. It would actually take a few
Speaker 1: decades before some researchers proposed a hypothesis regarding what was
Speaker 1: going on. And well, their hypothesis, while good, doesn't cover everything,
Speaker 1: but anyway, between nineteen eleven and nineteen fifty seven. Nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven is when we would get that hypothesis. There
Speaker 1: was another discovery relating to superconductivity that was really neat.
Speaker 1: Two German scientists, Walter Meisner and Robert Oxenfeld found that
Speaker 1: when a conductor was cooled to that superconductor state, when
Speaker 1: it dropped below its critical temperature, it would also expel
Speaker 1: magnetic fields. So we've talked a lot about electromagnetism in
Speaker 1: this podcast. Right, If you pass a conductive material through
Speaker 1: a magnetic field, the magnetic field induces current to flow
Speaker 1: through the conductor. What allows us to make things like
Speaker 1: electrical transformers. In alternating current transmission. We also know that
Speaker 1: an electric charge moving through a conductor generates a magnetic field.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure everyone out there has done some
Speaker 1: version of the physics experiment where you take copper wire
Speaker 1: and you wind it around an iron nail, and you
Speaker 1: connect the wire to a battery, and now you've got
Speaker 1: yourself an electromagnet. So there's this beautiful relationship between electricity
Speaker 1: and magnetism that we've been studying for more than a
Speaker 1: century now. Well, with superconductors, Meisner and Oxenfeld observed that
Speaker 1: nearly all internal magnetic fields that should be passing through
Speaker 1: the superconductor material were zeroed out. They didn't exist. The
Speaker 1: exterior magnetic field intensified. So it turns out that the
Speaker 1: magnetic fields that normally would be able to pass through
Speaker 1: the superconductor material were now being expelled. They were passing
Speaker 1: around it as if the superconductor had some kind of
Speaker 1: force field against magnetic fields being able to penetrate it.
Speaker 1: Similar to how electricity can't get out of a superconductor,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't boil off in the form of heat,
Speaker 1: magnetic fields can't get into a superconductor under normal conditions.
Speaker 1: We'll actually talk a bit about the limitations of that
Speaker 1: in just a moment. Now, one super interesting thing about
Speaker 1: the so called Meisner effect. Now some folks will actually
Speaker 1: include Oxenfeld and call it the Meisner Oxenfeld effect, But
Speaker 1: more often than not, I just see the Meisner effect,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, just shows that you really want
Speaker 1: that top billing. Anyway, One really interesting thing happens when
Speaker 1: you bring a permanent magnet near a superconductor that then
Speaker 1: is brought to below its critical temperature. So normally the
Speaker 1: magnetic fields that are emitted by the permanent magnet would
Speaker 1: also then pass through the superconductor once the magnet's close enough. So,
Speaker 1: if you have a superconductor of material but you haven't
Speaker 1: cooled it below its critical temperature, it's not acting as
Speaker 1: a superconductor yet. You could put a physical magnet right
Speaker 1: on top of that. Then, if you cool the superconductor
Speaker 1: material so that it does go below its critical temperature,
Speaker 1: it starts to expel magnetic fields. Well, the permanent magnet
Speaker 1: is generating a magnetic field that otherwise would be passing
Speaker 1: through the superconductor. Since the superconnector is expelling the magnetic fields,
Speaker 1: it pushes against the permanent magnet, and the permanent magnet
Speaker 1: will levitate and appear to really lock in place above
Speaker 1: the superconductive material. You could also lay this out so
Speaker 1: that you had say, electromagnetic track on the underside of
Speaker 1: a table and take a puck of superconductor material that's
Speaker 1: cooled below its critical temperature and lock it in place
Speaker 1: below the electro magnet. That's possible too, I've seen that.
Speaker 1: But it looks really cool because it looks like it's
Speaker 1: just magically hanging there in the air, and you can
Speaker 1: change its orientation and it will maintain that orientation above
Speaker 1: the superconductor material. Now there's a lot that's going on here.
Speaker 1: It's not just like magic. In fact, it's not magic
Speaker 1: at all. But the explanation gets really tricky. There's like
Speaker 1: kind of like little currents, like a little eddy within
Speaker 1: the superconductor that's effectively creating a magnetic field that matches
Speaker 1: but repels the permanent magnets field. No matter what orientation
Speaker 1: you put it in. You change the orientation of the magnet,
Speaker 1: the little eddies, which are really little currents of electrons
Speaker 1: in the superconductor material change and then it continues to
Speaker 1: repel the magnet perfectly. This, to get more specific, would
Speaker 1: get into quantum mechanics, and I would just goof that
Speaker 1: up if I were to attempt to explain it, because
Speaker 1: it is well beyond my understanding. So I will say
Speaker 1: that if you haven't watched any videos of magnets interacting
Speaker 1: with superconductors or vice versa, you should really check that out.
Speaker 1: There are a ton of them on YouTube. They are
Speaker 1: really fascinating to watch. It looks at first like you're
Speaker 1: watching some sort of camera trickery because the materials are
Speaker 1: behaving in a way that's counterintuitive. We don't see stuff
Speaker 1: like that in our day to day lives. It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: And the fact that you can position the magnet in
Speaker 1: different orientations with regard to the superconductor and it will
Speaker 1: just stay in that position relative to the superconductor as
Speaker 1: if it's locked in space. It's really remarkable. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: going to take a quick break. When we come back,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about that hypothesis I alluded to
Speaker 1: earlier and how it attempted to explain what was going on.
Speaker 1: But first, let's thank our sponsors. All Right, we're back,
Speaker 1: and now we're getting up to the nineteen fifties and
Speaker 1: a trio of American scientists John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and
Speaker 1: John Shreefer proposed a microscopic theory of super conductivity, and
Speaker 1: it became known as the BCS theory. It took the
Speaker 1: first letter off of each scientist's last name. The theory
Speaker 1: has to do with electron pairs and crystalline lattices within
Speaker 1: the superconductor and these vibrations called phonons. And I can't
Speaker 1: really pretend to fully understand it, or even partly understand it,
Speaker 1: but it does a good job of describing what's happening
Speaker 1: for super cooled superconductive materials. However, this particular hypothesis or
Speaker 1: theory did not explain how this would work with superconductors
Speaker 1: that could operate at so called high temperatures, you know,
Speaker 1: beyond a threshold. This theory doesn't really apply. And the
Speaker 1: problem is we were observing effects that went beyond the
Speaker 1: parameters this theory would cover. Now, when I say high temperature,
Speaker 1: I'm not actually talking about anything that you or I
Speaker 1: would consider a high temperature. In fact, it's quite the contrary.
Speaker 1: We're still talking temperatures that can get down to as
Speaker 1: low as almost minus two hundred degrees celsius. To date,
Speaker 1: I want to say that the hottest superconductor that ever
Speaker 1: operated is still like around minus twenty five celsius something
Speaker 1: like that, and even then it's under intense pressure. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about pressure too, so you know, we're really talking
Speaker 1: about very, very very cold temperatures. Even with the so
Speaker 1: called high temperature superconductors, it's just that they're much higher
Speaker 1: than say minus two hundred and sixty nine celsius. Until
Speaker 1: very recently, all claims of finding material that displays super
Speaker 1: conductivity at temperatures that we would even remotely consider comfortable
Speaker 1: have all fallen through. Right Like, scientists would submit a
Speaker 1: paper suggesting that they had made a breakthrough and found
Speaker 1: such a material, and then later retract those papers, discovering that,
Speaker 1: in fact, there was some sort of mistake along the
Speaker 1: way and they were not correct, and so they had to,
Speaker 1: you know, take it back. Now. Interestingly, two factors can
Speaker 1: potentially destroy the superconductor's state, and one we've already mentioned
Speaker 1: is temperature. Right if the temperature goes above the critical
Speaker 1: temperature for superconductors, then the material loses superconductivity. They will
Speaker 1: again have electrical resistance, it will no longer expel magnetic fields.
Speaker 1: But the other factor that can disrupt the superconductor state
Speaker 1: would be a sufficiently powerful magnetic field. I mentioned, like
Speaker 1: a regular permanent magnet on top of a superconductor. You'll
Speaker 1: see the permanent magnet levitate. Well, if that permanent magnet
Speaker 1: was super strong, like it really had very strong magnetic fields,
Speaker 1: then that could be more than what the force field
Speaker 1: the superconductor generates can handle. And the magnetic fields will
Speaker 1: pierce through the superconductor, and for one subset of superconductors,
Speaker 1: that's enough for it to completely lose superconductivity. Under those conditions.
Speaker 1: Take the magnet away and you keep it at its
Speaker 1: critical temperature, it goes back to being a superconductor. But
Speaker 1: in the presence of powerful enough magnetic fields that can
Speaker 1: overpower the superconductive material and it just becomes a regular
Speaker 1: conductor again. Now, as I mentioned, there are magnets that
Speaker 1: can do that and will disrupt superconductors, but there are
Speaker 1: other types of superconductors they can actually kind of roll
Speaker 1: with the punches a little bit. So in this regard,
Speaker 1: there are two broad classifications that we can talk about
Speaker 1: with superconductors. There's type one. This is the type that
Speaker 1: will lose superconductivity in the presence of a strong applied
Speaker 1: magnetic field. Then you have type two superconductors. These will
Speaker 1: actually continue to operate as a superconductor even in the
Speaker 1: presence of a strong applied magnetic field. It's just that
Speaker 1: at the points where the strong magnetic field intersects with
Speaker 1: the superconductor, you get non superconducting material. So like within
Speaker 1: the same mass, just imagine you've got a big old
Speaker 1: puck of the superconductor material, and you've got this strong
Speaker 1: applied magnetic field that intersects with a superconductor material at
Speaker 1: that local point where there's that intersection, that would no
Speaker 1: longer be performing like a superconductor. But other areas of
Speaker 1: the puck that are not intersecting with this magnetic field
Speaker 1: continue to act like a superconnector. This is a type
Speaker 1: to superconductor material. This is why we're able to use
Speaker 1: superconductors in labs that involve really powerful magnets. So, for example,
Speaker 1: the large hadron collider particle accelerators, they need really really
Speaker 1: strong magnets in order to drive those sub atomic particles
Speaker 1: at speeds that are close to the speed of light,
Speaker 1: but they also need superconductors. In order to do that,
Speaker 1: and if there were no type two superconductor material out there,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't work because the magnets would end up shutting
Speaker 1: down the superconductors. They would just become regular conductors. You
Speaker 1: would lose too much energy in the form of heat,
Speaker 1: and the whole operation wouldn't work. So fortunately, there are
Speaker 1: these type two superconductors out there that can kind of
Speaker 1: localize where the disruption happens and the rest of the
Speaker 1: material can still perform as a superconductor. It's pretty mind blowing. Now,
Speaker 1: there are some big drawbacks with superconductors, as I have
Speaker 1: describe them. I mean, you've got to super cool the stuff,
Speaker 1: which means making use of materials of like liquid nitrogen
Speaker 1: or liquid hydrogen, which is really expensive. It's dangerous. I mean,
Speaker 1: this material is so cold that it will cause incredible
Speaker 1: damage if you were to come into contact with it
Speaker 1: for any you know, sufficient length of time. And it's
Speaker 1: really hard to use this stuff like it's it's got
Speaker 1: a huge barrier to being able to do it, which
Speaker 1: means that our applications for superconductors are by necessity really limited.
Speaker 1: They have to be limited to just the stuff that
Speaker 1: really needs the superconductors to work and are like huge
Speaker 1: like moonshot level experiments and scientific research stuff like particle accelerators,
Speaker 1: Like that's such a huge undertaking that using superconnectors as
Speaker 1: part of the whole process. But you can't use superconductors
Speaker 1: to do more mundane stuff because it's way too expensive
Speaker 1: and complicated to make it practical. It just it doesn't work. Now,
Speaker 1: you can actually adjust that critical temperature I was talking about,
Speaker 1: You can actually make that higher so that you can
Speaker 1: operate at higher temperatures and still have super conductivity, But
Speaker 1: only if you're increasing the pressure that's on the system.
Speaker 1: So it has to be in a pressurized chamber. Right.
Speaker 1: This is why like the hottest superconductor can operate at
Speaker 1: you know, minus twenty five degrees or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: It's because it's inside a system that has incredible pressure
Speaker 1: applied to it. So again you're even as you remove
Speaker 1: the need to super cool it to like really really
Speaker 1: cold temperatures, you increase the need to have to create
Speaker 1: these incredible pressure chambers. So it's a trade off, right,
Speaker 1: Like you're having to trade one difficult set of circumstances
Speaker 1: for another, and it still makes it very expensive and
Speaker 1: dangerous and complicated. Now, if we could make a superconductive
Speaker 1: material that performs as a superconductor, but does so at
Speaker 1: room temperature and at you know, ambient air pressure, that
Speaker 1: would change the world. When we come back, I'll explain
Speaker 1: how it would change the world and why some people
Speaker 1: think we might already be there. Okay, we're back. I
Speaker 1: had mentioned that if we could make superconductive material that
Speaker 1: performs at room temperature ambient air pressure, it would really
Speaker 1: change everything. Well, it's pretty easy to imagine, right. Let's
Speaker 1: just take the really mundane example of that gaming pc
Speaker 1: I talked about earlier. Imagine you've got this crazy tricked
Speaker 1: out gaming pc. It's got the latest processors in it.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly powerful, but all the circuits are made out
Speaker 1: of a material that's a superconductor, which means there's no
Speaker 1: heat being generated. It's not losing any electricity due to heat.
Speaker 1: This means a couple of really big things. One, we
Speaker 1: don't need any of those cooling systems anymore. There's no
Speaker 1: heat being generated, so there's no heat to take away.
Speaker 1: You don't need water cooling or even fans because you're
Speaker 1: not losing any energy due to heat. So a big
Speaker 1: old chonker of a gaming PC would run silently. There'd
Speaker 1: be no moving parts. You would just have these incredible
Speaker 1: circuits made out of the superconductor material that can operate
Speaker 1: at room temperature. But also, we wouldn't need as much
Speaker 1: power to run our PC because none of our power
Speaker 1: is being lost in the form of heart. It's perfectly efficient.
Speaker 1: You would be able to achieve that level of performance
Speaker 1: with less power because you don't have to factor in
Speaker 1: power loss at all. Perfect transmission of electricity would be
Speaker 1: a possibility, And that's interesting for a PC like you
Speaker 1: just suddenly think like, oh, I wouldn't need as big
Speaker 1: of a power supply, and I would mean a lower
Speaker 1: electricity bill. But let's expand that. Think about that for
Speaker 1: the purposes of actual electricity transmission from power plant to destination.
Speaker 1: What if all the power lines were made of the
Speaker 1: superconductive material. Now we would be able to transmit electricity
Speaker 1: with no loss. You would have incredible efficiency. It would
Speaker 1: mean that we wouldn't need to produce as much electricity
Speaker 1: at least to meet our current demand. So if we
Speaker 1: were to assume that everyone was using exactly the same
Speaker 1: amount of electricity on the end of it as they
Speaker 1: are right now, then the amount of electricity we would
Speaker 1: need to produce would be much lower because we wouldn't
Speaker 1: lose anything in the process. We would end up having
Speaker 1: a smaller demand on our power generation. That being said,
Speaker 1: between me and you, that's never how it works out.
Speaker 1: If our ability to produce electricity exceeds whatever the current
Speaker 1: demand is, we just typically see a demand rise in response. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not that, oh, now we're producing more electricity than
Speaker 1: we need. It's oh, now we can use more electricity,
Speaker 1: so now we need more. That's how it typically goes.
Speaker 1: But it's still a nice thought, right, this idea of
Speaker 1: perfectly efficient transmitters, that would be amazing, And these efficient
Speaker 1: electrical systems would mean other stuff too, like batteries would
Speaker 1: last longer, right because again you don't lose any energy
Speaker 1: in the form of heat. More efficient systems means longer
Speaker 1: battery life even without an effective change to the batteries
Speaker 1: themselve levels. The improvement in the circuitry would be in
Speaker 1: the batteries would last longer. They wouldn't be having to
Speaker 1: deplete so quickly, which means things like electric vehicles would
Speaker 1: see a boost and how far they could travel on
Speaker 1: a single charge. Again, not because the battery technology has improved,
Speaker 1: but because we're using the superconductive material for the circuitry
Speaker 1: within the electric vehicle. On the flip side, let's say
Speaker 1: it's in you know, consumer phones. Your phone would not
Speaker 1: have to recharge nearly as frequently. You would be able
Speaker 1: to hold a charge much longer because again increased efficiency.
Speaker 1: It's actually really hard to express how big a deal
Speaker 1: this would be. I mean, it affects everything from environmental issues,
Speaker 1: to financial issues, to you know, all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1: And I haven't even touched on what it would mean
Speaker 1: for science, like being able to have a room temperature
Speaker 1: operating superconductor and suddenly make things like particle accelerators orders
Speaker 1: of magnitude easier to build. They would still be really complicated,
Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong. It's not like it would suddenly
Speaker 1: become something we could all make in our backyards. But
Speaker 1: it would be way easier than the systems that were
Speaker 1: needed to create the large Hadron collider, which means increasing
Speaker 1: accessibility to that kind of science, which means being able
Speaker 1: to learn a lot more about our universe. Like these
Speaker 1: are the sort of big, big picture things that would
Speaker 1: be possible with an actual working room temperature superconductive material.
Speaker 1: But all of those possibilities depend upon a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff that we just aren't sure about yet. And
Speaker 1: the reason I'm talking about this at all, and you
Speaker 1: know I mentioned this in a news episode, but maybe
Speaker 1: you've heard about it otherwise, is that some researchers in
Speaker 1: South Korea reveal that a material they made in a lab,
Speaker 1: which they call LK ninety nine, appears to be super
Speaker 1: conductive at temperatures as warm as one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: seven degrees celsius. That's two hundred and sixty nine degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: So that means that at any temperature below those, this
Speaker 1: material would be beneath its critical temperature and would operate
Speaker 1: as a superconductor. So two hundred and sixty nine degrees fahrenheit, y'all,
Speaker 1: it is hot outside, but it's not that hot. It
Speaker 1: would mean that we could make power lines out of
Speaker 1: this stuff, and if in fact it works as a superconductor,
Speaker 1: we could have a future with perfect transmission of electricity.
Speaker 1: If so LK ninety nine consists of appetite lead and
Speaker 1: small amounts of copper, and the researchers from South Korea
Speaker 1: who developed this material actually laid out the process for
Speaker 1: baking it like they explained the process they did for
Speaker 1: creating this material. In turn, that has led to a
Speaker 1: ton of people, including some DIY scientists, to try and
Speaker 1: make this stuff for themselves and to test it out.
Speaker 1: Now beyond the question of is this actually performing as
Speaker 1: a superconductor, which is an open question right it's as
Speaker 1: I record this, it has not been verified by experimentation,
Speaker 1: there are other questions that remain. So let's assume, just
Speaker 1: for the argument's sake, that yes, it does act as
Speaker 1: a superconductor for whatever reason, which is again just an
Speaker 1: example for this thought experiment. We would have other questions
Speaker 1: we would have to ask, like is it hard to synthesize?
Speaker 1: Is it easy? Is it easy to create in the
Speaker 1: specific way so that it does perform as a superconductor?
Speaker 1: Or was that something of a happy accident that will
Speaker 1: be very hard to replicate if it is replicable, is
Speaker 1: it something that could be mass produced? If it could
Speaker 1: be mass produced, would it actually be suitable for things
Speaker 1: like power lines or is its composition such that it
Speaker 1: wouldn't really work in that it wouldn't be a good replacement.
Speaker 1: What conditions will it act as a superconductor if it
Speaker 1: encounters a powerful magnetic field, is it like a type
Speaker 1: one superconductor material? And does it just stop performing as
Speaker 1: a superconductor until that magnetic field is removed. We need
Speaker 1: to know these answers now. There have been a couple
Speaker 1: of labs that have reported that, based on computer simulations
Speaker 1: they have run, the material does appear to have superconductive properties. This,
Speaker 1: by the way, is not something that labs across the
Speaker 1: board have all agreed on, but some, including a couple
Speaker 1: of prominent ones, have said that they've run the simulations
Speaker 1: and at least on a simulation level, it seems to
Speaker 1: work out all right. But these are just simulations. They
Speaker 1: are not actual practical experiments with real material. It's all
Speaker 1: computers running numbers essentially. So skeptics are not satisfied just yet.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a wise thing to be. I
Speaker 1: think it is wise to be skeptical. I think it
Speaker 1: could be optimistic, but keep some skepticism, or if you prefer,
Speaker 1: employ some critical thinking. I really want to believe these
Speaker 1: researchers have created a material that can work as a
Speaker 1: superconnector under room temperature conditions because of all the reasons
Speaker 1: we've talked about and more. But we also have to
Speaker 1: remind ourselves that very earnest scientists thought they had done
Speaker 1: similar things in the past, only to later find out
Speaker 1: that's not actually what was going on. So we need
Speaker 1: to prepare ourselves for this potentially being another example of
Speaker 1: an interesting, exciting experiment that ultimately fails to measure up
Speaker 1: to what was initially hoped. Maybe other labs will replicate
Speaker 1: LK ninety nine, maybe they will test it and see
Speaker 1: that it truly does perform as a superconductor under room
Speaker 1: temperatures and room air pressure. And if that's the case,
Speaker 1: we will have a truly technological revolution ahead of us.
Speaker 1: Even if we can't use it for everything, the things
Speaker 1: we can use it for it will be transformative. However,
Speaker 1: that has not yet happened as I record and published
Speaker 1: this episode, And maybe we find out that, in fact,
Speaker 1: it's not a superconductor after all. Maybe there's some interesting things,
Speaker 1: Maybe there's some you know, regular magnetic material that's in
Speaker 1: there that's creating some interesting effects. We'll have to wait
Speaker 1: and see. So my advice to you, as always is
Speaker 1: try to use critical thinking don't you know, you don't
Speaker 1: need to outright deny that it's a possibility unless there's
Speaker 1: like people who can show definitively that no, there's no
Speaker 1: way based upon our understanding of physics that this works,
Speaker 1: show that we have something fundamentally wrong with our understanding
Speaker 1: of physics, but that in turn would be truly huge.
Speaker 1: But yeah, use critical thinking, but reserve some of that
Speaker 1: excitement just in case, as is possibly likely, it doesn't
Speaker 1: pan out. I hope it pans out. It would be
Speaker 1: truly incredible, and there are a lot of interesting debates
Speaker 1: going on in the scientific world about whether or not
Speaker 1: it's feasible, and I honestly don't know enough to be
Speaker 1: able to weigh in myself. I just want to be
Speaker 1: skeptical a little bit, but hopeful. That's kind of my approach.
Speaker 1: Speaking of hopeful, I hope you are all well, and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
Speaker 1: an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
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Speaker 1: favorite shows.