Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren and we have a cool,
Speaker 1: super cool episode, but it has to be super cool
Speaker 1: for most applications. We're talking about superconductors today. Now, in
Speaker 1: order to talk about superconductors, really we thought it was
Speaker 1: necessary to kind of backtrack and talk about electronics and electricity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because to understand why superconductors are so amazing, you first
Speaker 1: have to have that that basic information about electronics in general.
Speaker 1: So here's a fundamental problem with electronics, with with any
Speaker 1: sort of circuitry, with any kind of system. Really, it's
Speaker 1: not just electronics. That's that's one way we can look
Speaker 1: at it. But there's this problem where you pour energy
Speaker 1: into a system and because of things like entropy, the
Speaker 1: output you get is less than the energy you put in. Now,
Speaker 1: of course we know we cannot create or destroy energy, correct, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those laws of thermodynamics, and if you
Speaker 1: try and break them, then the thermodynamics police show up.
Speaker 1: So actually it just means that you cannot break that law.
Speaker 1: So if you can't break that law, if you pour
Speaker 1: energy into a system and you're not getting as much
Speaker 1: output as you're getting input. It's because you're losing energy
Speaker 1: through some other action. Normally in almost every system that
Speaker 1: we're really familiar with, that's heat. Right. Heat becomes a byproduct.
Speaker 1: Energy goes to produce heat, which means that whatever you
Speaker 1: were trying to do is slightly less effective than what
Speaker 1: you had intended. So we see this with things like
Speaker 1: car engines are a great example. You pour in fuel,
Speaker 1: the engine burns up the fuel and converts that into power,
Speaker 1: but you don't get as much power out as you're
Speaker 1: getting energy in from the source of that fuel. So
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing is true with electronics. And
Speaker 1: in this case, the thing we talk about when we're
Speaker 1: talking about losing energy is called resistance. That's the resistance
Speaker 1: of any particular material to the flow of electricity through
Speaker 1: that material. So with that basic information there, now we're
Speaker 1: gonna really dive into the very very basic building blocks
Speaker 1: of electronics. Yes, because the thing is that superconductors lose
Speaker 1: no energy to resistance, right, They have no resistance exactly. However,
Speaker 1: they require extraordinarily cold temperatures like on the magnitude of
Speaker 1: thirty nine kelvin's which is that's cold. Yeah, when you remember,
Speaker 1: zero kelvin is zero molecular movement. That's absolute zero. That's
Speaker 1: that's like if you were to go into the deepest
Speaker 1: reaches of space and there are no molecules moving around,
Speaker 1: everything is perfectly still. That's zero. Kelvin is equivalent to
Speaker 1: negative two and thirty four degrees celsius or negative eighty
Speaker 1: nine degrees fahrenheit. Right, So that's that's that's pretty cold.
Speaker 1: But to understand again about resistance, let's let's take this
Speaker 1: this this tour through the building blocks of electronics. So, now,
Speaker 1: the early early understanding we had about electricity, uh gave
Speaker 1: us some ideas that we kind of have to work
Speaker 1: around these days. Like specifically, the idea of current. Current
Speaker 1: is a confusing thing for someone who has doesn't understand
Speaker 1: electricity because it run the direction of current runs counter
Speaker 1: to the actual flow of electrons. Right when all of
Speaker 1: these terms were being created, we didn't know as much
Speaker 1: about sub atomic particles a k a. Much at all
Speaker 1: anything so so do today. So before we understood anything
Speaker 1: about electricity, we began to learn things about about charge
Speaker 1: and the idea of opposite charges attracting one another and
Speaker 1: like charges repelling one another. Now we could have called
Speaker 1: electrons positive charge. We could have done that. There's no
Speaker 1: reason why we would have said all tron's are negatively charged.
Speaker 1: It's just a word, right, But that was what was
Speaker 1: considered a negative charge, and then you would have the
Speaker 1: opposite would obviously be a positive charge. You know, we
Speaker 1: could have called these left and right, or are up
Speaker 1: and down or anything really, but banana and oboes. Everyone
Speaker 1: knows the obo is nature's opposite to the banana. So
Speaker 1: the the these opposite charges, the negative and the positive,
Speaker 1: attract one another. Now, if you were to have a
Speaker 1: negatively charged material and a positively charged material, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: within the same general area of each other, the potential
Speaker 1: that separated those opposite electric charges would be called voltage,
Speaker 1: all right. So that's when someone's talking about voltage, they're
Speaker 1: talking about this potential that's separating the opposite electric charges,
Speaker 1: and it's it's the capacity that they would have for
Speaker 1: doing work if those opposite charges were connected together somehow.
Speaker 1: So you would have to have something that would allow
Speaker 1: these charge jes to mix together. So back in the
Speaker 1: early days of electricity, before we really understood the mechanics
Speaker 1: of it, you would think that all right, well, all
Speaker 1: the positively charged particles would leap over to the negative
Speaker 1: side and the negative charge particles would lead to the
Speaker 1: positive side until the charges had equalized. Right, And even
Speaker 1: if you had one material that was more negatively charged
Speaker 1: than the other material was positively charged, the actual negative
Speaker 1: charge would also even out eventually, like omosis, it would
Speaker 1: kind of work itself out, so you would you would
Speaker 1: end up with a larger amount of material that had
Speaker 1: a negative charge. It would just be a lower negative
Speaker 1: charge than the original material you started with. Right. So
Speaker 1: here we were still thinking about this as these little
Speaker 1: charged bodies, these charged particles, both of positive and negative
Speaker 1: zipping across um and you can you can measure voltage
Speaker 1: by measuring the the two different points. So for example,
Speaker 1: if you have one on the positive ode and one
Speaker 1: of the electric node are a negative node rather, you
Speaker 1: then look at those two contact points. That's where you
Speaker 1: get your voltage. If you're using the same point of
Speaker 1: contact and you're checking different other electrodes, uh that same
Speaker 1: contact though contact you're using for all of them, we
Speaker 1: usually call the ground right, that's the ground contact. Now,
Speaker 1: a material that does conduct electricity is called a conductor
Speaker 1: for that very reason, right convenient and there, and there
Speaker 1: are some materials that are very good conductors. A lot
Speaker 1: of the metals, for example, are great conductors. How how
Speaker 1: conductive material is depends on how easily it's component atoms
Speaker 1: donate electrons, right right. You need to have these free electrons.
Speaker 1: Free electrons are this when you have an atom. Obviously
Speaker 1: you have an electron shell or several shells, depending on
Speaker 1: how how large the atomist and uh, and if you
Speaker 1: have free electrons that aren't tied down to anything on
Speaker 1: the outer shells, then that allows electricity to pass more
Speaker 1: freely because what happens is a new electron comes in.
Speaker 1: This is oversimplifying, but a new electron comes in and
Speaker 1: essentially bunks out one of the other electrons in that
Speaker 1: outer shell, which then will bonk out one further down
Speaker 1: the line. So if you've got a lot of free electrons,
Speaker 1: then that allows this this passage to happen fairly easily.
Speaker 1: And UH, that's what allows you to connect these these
Speaker 1: differently charged UH materials to equal that out. We call
Speaker 1: this current. But again, the current is the idea of
Speaker 1: positively charged particles passing from one material to the other.
Speaker 1: As we learned later, it's actually electrons that are passing through,
Speaker 1: not positive charges. But we we consider stuck with that
Speaker 1: the terminology which means which means that when you say current,
Speaker 1: you're actually talking about the opposite direction as what the
Speaker 1: electrons are really going through. So if you're talking about
Speaker 1: a circuit's current, you are looking at it going positive
Speaker 1: to negative, when in reality the electrons are going negative positive,
Speaker 1: basically proving that Benjamin Franklin was not a time traveler,
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, there are a lot of jokes on
Speaker 1: the Internet saying that we have Benjamin Franklin to blame
Speaker 1: for this misunderstanding. That again is oversimplifying it. Franklin was
Speaker 1: one of but not the only. Yeah kind of point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was like the mascot for electricity before we knew
Speaker 1: what we could do with it. Now, current we measure
Speaker 1: in ampiers or amps and an emperor is the rate
Speaker 1: of flow of one coolmb of charge in one second
Speaker 1: past some given point. And so that raises the question,
Speaker 1: what is a coolmb. It's a whole bunch of charge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of charge. It's actually quite a bit
Speaker 1: of charge. But you know, we won't boil. It's not
Speaker 1: technically important, no, not for not for this discussion, but
Speaker 1: just know that it's a lot of charge. So if
Speaker 1: you hear someone talking about a cool lomb, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of charge. Current of course does have the direction
Speaker 1: as the flow of positive charges. You can think of
Speaker 1: positive charge in a way as vacancies holes, positive holes
Speaker 1: that could accept an electron. Right, because if if you
Speaker 1: have even if you have a build up of negative particles,
Speaker 1: if there's no positively charged part if there's no if aren't,
Speaker 1: if there are no vacancies at another point, then those
Speaker 1: that charge is just gonna keep building up. It doesn't
Speaker 1: the electrons and nowhere to right, So that brings us
Speaker 1: to the concept of an insulator. Now, an insulator is
Speaker 1: sort of the opposite of a conductor. This is a
Speaker 1: material that charge cannot flow through those those component atoms
Speaker 1: at their their electrons just want to stay put. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they usually the usually you don't have any free electrons
Speaker 1: on the outside. They're all uh, they're all bonded together.
Speaker 1: So that means that an incoming electron has nowhere to go.
Speaker 1: So with nowhere to go, then this stuff just halts
Speaker 1: the flow of electricity, and this includes things like air
Speaker 1: is an insulator. Now, granted, if you were to pour
Speaker 1: enough energy into air, you could ionize it and then
Speaker 1: it becomes a conductor. But you have to pour energy
Speaker 1: into air for that to happen. That's what happens with
Speaker 1: lightning strikes, that kind of thing. Otherwise it's more commonly
Speaker 1: it's it's it's all those things you know, like like
Speaker 1: rubber or glass, exactly exactly. Now we've covered conductors, we've
Speaker 1: covered insulators. That brings us to semi conductors. Now, this
Speaker 1: is a term that a lot of people are familiar
Speaker 1: with because semiconductors we talk about that all the time.
Speaker 1: We talk about electronics like microprocessors, semiconductor plants, or a
Speaker 1: silicon wafer. That's what a silicon chip that has a
Speaker 1: microprocessor on it. So what exactly is a semiconductor, Well,
Speaker 1: if you're looking at the name, it kind of gives
Speaker 1: it away. It's a material that can act like a
Speaker 1: conductor or connect like an insulator. Now, naturally, if you
Speaker 1: were to just make a if you were to make
Speaker 1: like a wafer of silicon, it was pure silicon, it
Speaker 1: would be an insulator. But because those those electrons are
Speaker 1: all tied up, right, so you can't push more electrons
Speaker 1: through it. However, if you were to start introducing impurities
Speaker 1: into the silicon on purpose, this isn't right right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I like phosphorus or boron are two typical ones exactly.
Speaker 1: Then you are doing a process that's called doping, and
Speaker 1: the semiconductor business that's not a bad thing. You won't
Speaker 1: get thrown out the Hall of Fame of Semiconductors for doping.
Speaker 1: In fact, doping is necessary to make a semiconductor work. Now,
Speaker 1: if you were to dope a semiconductor with uh atoms
Speaker 1: that have extra electrons, extra being free electrons and that
Speaker 1: that outer shell, I don't mean that they're actually carrying
Speaker 1: around more electronic electrons, right, yeah, like phosphorus exactly electrons.
Speaker 1: Phosphorus has a free electrons, then you would get what
Speaker 1: it's called in type semiconductor material because it has more
Speaker 1: negatively charged particles. Now, boron has what we would call
Speaker 1: vacancies or holes that what electrons could flow into. So
Speaker 1: if you put boron, if you introduce boron into silicon,
Speaker 1: it would have availability to accept electrons. A positively charged
Speaker 1: or P type exactly. And if you were to take
Speaker 1: both of these types of doping and apply them to
Speaker 1: one silicon wafer, so that let's just say on the
Speaker 1: left side you have N type silicon and on the
Speaker 1: right side of P type silicon, that would allow electrons
Speaker 1: to flow across in the direction from negative to positive. Correct, correct,
Speaker 1: And it would prevent the flow of electrons to go
Speaker 1: from positive to negative because again those negative electrons in
Speaker 1: the N type silicon will will repel any incoming electrons.
Speaker 1: This is the basis of a very specific type of
Speaker 1: electronic component called the diode. Diodes are important. They're kind
Speaker 1: of a one way street in electronics and uh. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons this is in orton is when
Speaker 1: you have something like alternating current. Alternating current, it's exactly
Speaker 1: what sounds like. It alternates direction. Remember I was saying before.
Speaker 1: Current is the flow of positive charge in a circuit.
Speaker 1: If you have alternating current running through it, then that
Speaker 1: current is running one way and then the other way,
Speaker 1: and it alternates at thousands of times per second. We
Speaker 1: call it hurts. That those cycles per second, So it's
Speaker 1: usually like twenty hurts, so twenty thousand times a second.
Speaker 1: It's going pooh back and forth. Now I like that
Speaker 1: sound effect. Yeah, that's the sound of electrons just zig zagging.
Speaker 1: But a lot of our electronics don't run on alternating current.
Speaker 1: They need to run on direct current. So diodes are
Speaker 1: a good way of addressing that because they will only
Speaker 1: allow charge to pass through in one direction. So even
Speaker 1: if you have an alternating current, then it's going to
Speaker 1: prevent current from passing through one way and allow it
Speaker 1: to pass through the other way. That's one of the
Speaker 1: ways we use to to transform alternating current into direct current.
Speaker 1: So right, and this problem is why you get those
Speaker 1: little um, those little boxes on your electric plugs to
Speaker 1: transform the alternating current coming in through your through your
Speaker 1: system to be yeah, through through that the pluggy thing, outlets, outlets.
Speaker 1: It's been a long day, it has, it has. I'm
Speaker 1: giggling more than usual. We've been in a meeting for
Speaker 1: a long long time. If you need to know how long.
Speaker 1: Just a quick aside, check out Josh and Chuck's series
Speaker 1: Trapped in a Meeting. It's very good. It's very funny,
Speaker 1: and it's very real. It's it's so real, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's my video debut. So check that out. That's right.
Speaker 1: You can see Lauren blocking me for almost every episode.
Speaker 1: I can just see like either the front of my
Speaker 1: face or the back of my head and almost every shot.
Speaker 1: But uh, that's just me complaining. That's fine. So let's
Speaker 1: move on to we we've we mentioned resistance. Resist is
Speaker 1: this property that resists the flow of a charge, and
Speaker 1: it depends on the material of the conductor, uh and
Speaker 1: the flaws that that conductor might have that create resistance. Uh.
Speaker 1: The gauge of the conductor, So example, the gauge of wire.
Speaker 1: So how how much of it there is? Right, The
Speaker 1: thinner the wire, the greater the resistance in general, So
Speaker 1: if you're talking about copper wire and you're talking about
Speaker 1: smaller gauges which are actually larger wires. I don't know
Speaker 1: why that is. I'm sure someone out there understands why
Speaker 1: the gauge and size are inversely related aperture related things.
Speaker 1: There's something out there, I'm sure, and I bet I
Speaker 1: could have found it out easily if I looked it up.
Speaker 1: I didn't think too, but I'm sure some of our
Speaker 1: electronic attrician friends out there know exactly why. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: larger the diameter of the wire, the lower the resistance. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is the temperature of the material itself.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you lower the temperature of the material,
Speaker 1: then you can decrease the resistance. That's the varying basis.
Speaker 1: And and that that that temperature comes in because uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he heat makes atoms bang around into each
Speaker 1: other more, which which is part of what causes resistance.
Speaker 1: And and on the flip side, resistance causes heat. Right,
Speaker 1: those atoms are starting to bang around. That actually creates heat.
Speaker 1: It's essentially friction on an atomic level or sub atomic
Speaker 1: level because you're talking about electrons, but it still creates heat.
Speaker 1: And that's where you get this loss of energy in
Speaker 1: your system or loss of output where you're not really
Speaker 1: losing energy in the sense that you know it's still
Speaker 1: going somewhere, it's just no longer contained within the system
Speaker 1: that you have created. Right. So what does Owns law
Speaker 1: have to do? Right? Ohms law is the relationship between
Speaker 1: voltage and resistance. All right, So it is explained as
Speaker 1: voltage equals current times resistance, or because we can switch
Speaker 1: these around, current equals voltage divided by resistance. So you
Speaker 1: look at the voltage across whatever the resistor itself is,
Speaker 1: whether it's a specific component in electronic circuit or the
Speaker 1: overall circuit or just a wire. And uh, that way,
Speaker 1: you can if you know the voltage and the current,
Speaker 1: you can determine what the resistance is. Actually, as long
Speaker 1: as you know any of those two, you can determine
Speaker 1: the third because you know what how they relate to
Speaker 1: one another. UM. Now, on top of all of this,
Speaker 1: we then have the concept of power. This is that
Speaker 1: output that you're getting, and power is we measure that
Speaker 1: in watt's w A T T S and power released
Speaker 1: into a resistor equals the voltage times the current or
Speaker 1: voltage squared divided by resistance or current squared multiplied by resistance.
Speaker 1: The point we're getting to is that these basic concepts
Speaker 1: of electronics are all very very closely related to one another,
Speaker 1: and the more we understand about them, the greater potential
Speaker 1: we have to UH creating new stuff that really takes
Speaker 1: advantage of Right, it was our eventual understanding of these
Speaker 1: basic principles that has allowed us to kind of break
Speaker 1: the physics that that or or twinge the physics them.
Speaker 1: What happened was we understood things how we we understood
Speaker 1: how things worked and kind of our normal, under normal
Speaker 1: room temperature situation. Because because you know, early early people
Speaker 1: working in electronics, early people early electronics work, they were
Speaker 1: trying to plug in their xbox. No. No, the people
Speaker 1: who are working on electricity, very early on, when we
Speaker 1: were just learning about the principles of electricity and and
Speaker 1: what it is, how these different elements relate to one another,
Speaker 1: they didn't necessarily have the capacity to alter things enough
Speaker 1: to really see like, gosh, what would happen if we
Speaker 1: super cool super cool that. Yeah, they didn't have the
Speaker 1: ability to do it early early on, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: too late when they started to to really experiment with it.
Speaker 1: But we'll get into that alright. So that is our
Speaker 1: down and dirty basic electronics coverage there, and now we
Speaker 1: can actually look at super conductors and explain exactly what
Speaker 1: they are, how they work, and why they're so amazing.
Speaker 1: So before we jump into that, let's take a very
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor a right back to superconductors.
Speaker 1: So we've covered conductors, insulators, we've covered semiconductors, we've heard
Speaker 1: about resistance. What exactly is a superconductor? All right? Technically
Speaker 1: this is some sort of material that will conduct electricity
Speaker 1: without resistance below a certain temperature, and you don't want
Speaker 1: that resistance obviously, because again you have that loss of energy.
Speaker 1: You wanted to be as efficient as possible. So if
Speaker 1: you could find a material that does not convert any
Speaker 1: of that energy into heat and it's all output, then
Speaker 1: you've just dramatically increased the efficiency of your system. It's
Speaker 1: about as close to perpetual motion as we can ever
Speaker 1: expect to get, which is really exciting, you know, for
Speaker 1: cost purposes and all kinds of all kinds of fun
Speaker 1: research bits which will get into in a minute sure.
Speaker 1: And uh. In fact, the according to superconductors dot org,
Speaker 1: which has a lot of really fun information about superconductors.
Speaker 1: By the way, UH, scientists call it a quote macroscopic
Speaker 1: quantum phenomenon in the quote, which is huge literally because
Speaker 1: you're talking about macroscopic But but that's the things that
Speaker 1: quantum phenomena. We normally think of quantum mechanics quantum phenomena
Speaker 1: as happening on a subatomic scale, right, so small that
Speaker 1: even our most powerful light microscope couldn't see it. You'd
Speaker 1: have to use something like an electron telling microscope it's
Speaker 1: highly theoretical and and all very tricky. It's really interesting
Speaker 1: because our laws of physics as we know it start
Speaker 1: breaking down at that point. But right, but it's really
Speaker 1: hard to figure out what's going on there because it's
Speaker 1: so darn tiny. Right, Yeah, it's it's a totally different
Speaker 1: set of rules than what we're used to on the
Speaker 1: classic level. And to have something on the macroscopic level
Speaker 1: that seems to behave under these quantum phenomena is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: So exactly what's going on, Well, let's go back a
Speaker 1: little bit and look at the history of learning about this. Right, so,
Speaker 1: way back in nineteen eleven, a Dutch physicist whose name
Speaker 1: I am now going to butcher, And I apologize to
Speaker 1: anyone out there who is from the Netherlands who's going
Speaker 1: to WinCE at everything. I say, um, hi k Kummerling
Speaker 1: on this of Leighton University, and I bet it's Laden
Speaker 1: University too, as soon as I say it's Laden because
Speaker 1: Laden jars. But anyway, Uh, this physicist discovered super conductivity,
Speaker 1: or at least observed it for the first time as
Speaker 1: far as we know, looking at solid mercury. They he
Speaker 1: had made a solid mercury wire and cooled it to
Speaker 1: the temperature of a about four kelvin using liquid helium,
Speaker 1: and that is about negative four hundred fifty two degrees
Speaker 1: fahrenheit or negative two hundred sixty nine degrees celsius. And
Speaker 1: he noticed that when he did this, its resistance suddenly disappeared. Right,
Speaker 1: So this was interesting. And this is the sort of
Speaker 1: thing that I thought I always imagined scientists doing there,
Speaker 1: sitting around the lab and just saying, huh, I got
Speaker 1: this stuff. I wonder what happens if I do X
Speaker 1: to it. You know, let's drop the temperature down to
Speaker 1: almost absolute zero and see if that doesn't anything interesting. Uh.
Speaker 1: I know it's way more complicated than that, but I
Speaker 1: like to think that that's what scientists are doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and what's what was really going on there was
Speaker 1: that um, the mercury at that temperature underwent a phase transition. UM.
Speaker 1: But we'll get more into that in a second, right,
Speaker 1: So then we skip ahead a little bit. That was
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven and nineteen thirty three some German researchers Walter Meisner,
Speaker 1: not the famed theater mentor, because I have a lot
Speaker 1: of my Eisner technique different shiffering Guy Nicer and Robert
Speaker 1: Oceanfeld discovered that a super conducting material will repel a
Speaker 1: magnetic field. Now, this is super cool as well. I
Speaker 1: keep using that I didn't mean to, and I should
Speaker 1: have caught myself. It's it's really interesting. It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen there's lots of videos on YouTube,
Speaker 1: right of people using magnets and super cooled super conductor
Speaker 1: material and they can lock the material in a levitating
Speaker 1: state above the magnet, right. Or sometimes they have a
Speaker 1: super conducting bass that is super cooled and then they
Speaker 1: put a magnet on top of it and it seems
Speaker 1: to just hang in the air. Now, technically, if you
Speaker 1: if you actually listen to the physicists who talked about this,
Speaker 1: there's a great Ted talk where a guy demonstrates this eleven.
Speaker 1: It's will link it on social I mean everyone's seen it, yeah,
Speaker 1: but we'll we'll link it anyway because it's still fun
Speaker 1: to watch. Uh. He explains that technically it's not levitation,
Speaker 1: it's what they call quantum lock. Uh, And so it's
Speaker 1: a little different from that, but we'll we'll get more
Speaker 1: into that in a little bit. And then you skip
Speaker 1: ahead to nineteen seven, when a trio of scientists leon
Speaker 1: In Cooper, John Bardine, and John Robert Schreefer proposed the
Speaker 1: first successful model that explained super conductivity. This might be
Speaker 1: a good time to mention that while we talk about
Speaker 1: models that explain super connectivity, honestly, scientists are still learning
Speaker 1: about the properties of super conductors and how they do
Speaker 1: what they do, and why they operate at certain temperatures
Speaker 1: better than other temperatures. So while we're describing this stuff,
Speaker 1: and while we have superconductors in actual use around the
Speaker 1: world in thousands of different applications, we still don't understand
Speaker 1: everything about precisely how it's right. And when I say we,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about just me and Lauren. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about super smart people that that's their job. We're still learning.
Speaker 1: This is one of those things that I always find exciting.
Speaker 1: It's just, you know, when you know that you don't
Speaker 1: know everything, that always gives you that kind of tingle
Speaker 1: to like you want to learn more. So their theory
Speaker 1: became known as the B. C. S theory, and it
Speaker 1: earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: Now we kind of need to sort of talk about
Speaker 1: what this theory says. Okay, the atoms in a conductive
Speaker 1: material that have given up electrons are are are then
Speaker 1: positively charged ions, right right, okay, um, and when electrons
Speaker 1: are flowing through them, they're attracted to those negative negatively
Speaker 1: charged electrons. Cool. Right, Cool, that's a really bad word
Speaker 1: to use this podcast. Okay, already having made three or
Speaker 1: four times under under usual circumstances, uh, those ions kind
Speaker 1: of crunching together towards the electrons that are flowing through
Speaker 1: them would cause resistance, but not in superconductors. And what
Speaker 1: we kind of did realized until we started getting into
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics is that that resistance happens because electrons have
Speaker 1: properties of both particles and waves, right this, This is
Speaker 1: that duality thing that always got me confused when I
Speaker 1: got to that point and learning about science was the
Speaker 1: idea that something can behave as both a wave and
Speaker 1: a particle. We see this a lot in quantum mechanics,
Speaker 1: and it's part of the reason why it's such an
Speaker 1: interesting and counterintuitive field. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean honestly, my
Speaker 1: brain kind of just goes, well, well, okay, that's that's fine,
Speaker 1: to be fair. I think a lot of string theorists
Speaker 1: have that same reaction to their work. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: being honest. I've seen interviews where they say, there comes
Speaker 1: a point where you just have to say, this is
Speaker 1: how it works, because it's how it works. It always
Speaker 1: feels a little bit like double think to me. But yeah,
Speaker 1: So we've got electrons acting like particles and waves, and um,
Speaker 1: those excited ions that are in the conductive material kind
Speaker 1: of create counter ripples in this this flowing lake or
Speaker 1: river of electrons, and and that winds up causing that
Speaker 1: resistance I see. But in superconductors, the electrons assume a
Speaker 1: nearly identical speed and direction, forming a kind of single
Speaker 1: organized wave that resists that disruption from the ions I see.
Speaker 1: So instead of having let's let's let's put this on
Speaker 1: a macro scale. And keep in mind that whenever you
Speaker 1: change anything from the quantum scale to the macro scale
Speaker 1: and you're using an analogy, it's imperfect to say the right.
Speaker 1: And this is also an extreme oversimplification that I'm presenting
Speaker 1: to you. So, but let's imagine that you have a
Speaker 1: room full of people, and you have one doorway leading
Speaker 1: out of the room, and someone walks into the room
Speaker 1: and says free cake and then leaves, and then everyone
Speaker 1: just tries to rush the door. All right, Well, the
Speaker 1: fact that people could only fit through the door a
Speaker 1: few at a time, but everyone's trying to get through there,
Speaker 1: that kind of represents resistance in a way. Now, let's
Speaker 1: say that someone comes in and says, uh, free cake,
Speaker 1: but there's plenty for everyone, so just come in in
Speaker 1: the same order that you, you know, walked into the room,
Speaker 1: and everyone obeys the rules and they all just smoothly exit.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the idea of superconductors. You've created this
Speaker 1: experience where everything's happening in a very uh, very ordered,
Speaker 1: controlled right. Yeah. Yeah, it's sort of like if all
Speaker 1: those people were members of a dance troupe and they
Speaker 1: just kind of fell into line and danced quietly out.
Speaker 1: In fact, that as analogy I've seen several times when
Speaker 1: looking at superconductors. Now, the BCS theory that we had
Speaker 1: mentioned explains that the electrons travel in ever changing Cooper pairs,
Speaker 1: named after leon In Cooper, one of the three of
Speaker 1: that ps, and that, uh so you have that leading electron.
Speaker 1: The pairs have a leading electron in a following electron
Speaker 1: they're both going down this pathway. Keeping in mind, electrons
Speaker 1: do repel one another. Yeah, so which is where that
Speaker 1: where the ever changing comes in. They kind of swap
Speaker 1: around a whole bunch, right. So you've got this pair
Speaker 1: going down, swappings places occasionally. Uh. And the positively charged
Speaker 1: ions start to be attracted to that leading electron, which
Speaker 1: means that you have a growing positive charge, which starts
Speaker 1: pulling that second electron even harder. That creates this increased
Speaker 1: pressure if you will of poll really right, it's pulling
Speaker 1: those electrons even harder than it normally would because the
Speaker 1: positive charges growing and all of this, all of these
Speaker 1: different opposing forces essentially end up canceling each other out
Speaker 1: so that you don't end up with resistance, right, And
Speaker 1: this this is opposite to the way that resistance normally works,
Speaker 1: which is so cool, not cool, so interesting. Now, keep
Speaker 1: in mind this was the first working model of super conductivity,
Speaker 1: and uh, then future study would end up kind of
Speaker 1: tweaking this and changing our understanding a little bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, in nineteen sixty two, we then had Brian D.
Speaker 1: Josephson who predicted that electrical current would flow between two
Speaker 1: superconducting materials even if they were separated by non superconductors
Speaker 1: or even insulators. Now, that prediction that he made was
Speaker 1: later on confirmed and he earned the Nobel Prize in
Speaker 1: Physics in nineteen seventy three, so one year after the
Speaker 1: BCS team won the Nobel Prize in Physics. So clearly
Speaker 1: superconductor's big important thing in physics from the fifties through
Speaker 1: the seventies and up through to today. Oh sure, sure,
Speaker 1: what more research conducted in the eighties would change the
Speaker 1: field all over again. But we will talk more about
Speaker 1: that in a moment. Yeah, yeah, we have to. We
Speaker 1: have to then discuss the different major types of superconductors,
Speaker 1: and uh, they're different ways you can divide them up,
Speaker 1: but the most common way is to refer to them
Speaker 1: as type one and type two, which not that helpful
Speaker 1: upon the surface to list actually define these Type one superconductors, Uh,
Speaker 1: made out of pure metal, right, So you get this
Speaker 1: pure toll material, whatever the metal is, and then you
Speaker 1: have to cool it to a point where the metal
Speaker 1: exhibits zero electrical resistivity and perfect dia magnetism. Alright, so
Speaker 1: we're talking now about any particular metal. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: which one it is. The temperature will will vary depending
Speaker 1: upon the actual metal you're using, right, So lead is
Speaker 1: different from copper, that kind of thing. But they all
Speaker 1: have this they have they all have this specific critical temperature, right,
Speaker 1: and most of them are pretty cold, so you have
Speaker 1: to use something really really cold to cool them, like
Speaker 1: liquid helium, which is hard to get. It's it's very
Speaker 1: it's expensive, yes, and there's not that much left of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, in the grand scheme of things, we don't
Speaker 1: we don't have enough helium for all the stuff we
Speaker 1: would like to do with helium. For one thing, they're
Speaker 1: all those children's parties and you think I'm joking, but
Speaker 1: I'm not. Helium is actually being used in those helium
Speaker 1: balloons that you see. But you can go out and
Speaker 1: I there are scientists who say it's a real shame
Speaker 1: that we're using helium to entertain children when we could
Speaker 1: be using it to run m R I machines or
Speaker 1: a super collider or one of a thousand other devices.
Speaker 1: So so that's one of the downsides of the type
Speaker 1: one superconductors is that they do need to be cool
Speaker 1: to these very very low temperatures, and if they go
Speaker 1: above that temperature, the superconductivity is broken. You can get
Speaker 1: it back by cooling it back down again, but the
Speaker 1: actual properties it exhibits as a superconductor go away if
Speaker 1: the temperature goes over whatever it's critical temperature is for
Speaker 1: being a superconductor. Another thing that will cause the breakdown
Speaker 1: of the superconductive state is if you subject it to
Speaker 1: what's called a critical magnetic field. Right, So remember we
Speaker 1: we talked about diet magnetism. This means that magnetic fields
Speaker 1: cannot penetrate this superconductor metal while it's in the superconductor state,
Speaker 1: so you can't make It's what allows a superconductor to
Speaker 1: kind of uh float above a magnet, although with type
Speaker 1: one superconductors that always tends to be wobbly. If you've
Speaker 1: ever seen a demonstration of this, the whatever the materials
Speaker 1: is going to be kind of kind of spinning and
Speaker 1: end and shaking. It doesn't hold it doesn't hold a
Speaker 1: position very well. It does tend to wobble quite a bit.
Speaker 1: But uh, if you were to introduce a magnetic field
Speaker 1: that is stronger than what that superconductor can yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the expel really because it's expelling magnetic field. But yeah,
Speaker 1: if it's too strong a magnetic field, it again will
Speaker 1: break down that superconducting state and it will just become
Speaker 1: a regular conductor as opposed to a superconductor. So you
Speaker 1: have to maintain its critical temperature and make sure it
Speaker 1: is not subjected to a magnetic field above that critical limit.
Speaker 1: All right. So that's Type one superconductors, which then raises
Speaker 1: the question, what is a Type too superconductor. Now, these
Speaker 1: are made up of alloys, uh, and they have a
Speaker 1: much more complex diamagnetic feature to them. Right, They're not
Speaker 1: They're not as simple as type one. They actually have
Speaker 1: two thresholds for critical magnetic fields. All right. So if
Speaker 1: it's if the magnetic field is below the primary threshold,
Speaker 1: the type two uh superconductor acts more or less like
Speaker 1: a type one. So in other words, if you super
Speaker 1: cool this down to below that that threshold, it will
Speaker 1: behave just like it would be just as if it
Speaker 1: were a Type one superconductor. Now, um, if if that
Speaker 1: magnetic field goes above that threshold but still is below
Speaker 1: the second threshold, you then have a superconductor entering into
Speaker 1: what is called a vortex state, which to me just
Speaker 1: sounds like it's some sort of science fiction ee like
Speaker 1: pulled through the portal into another dimension. But that's not
Speaker 1: exactly what's happening. It's it's pretty science fiction. It's what's
Speaker 1: what's going on here is that um uh currents or
Speaker 1: or whirlpools of of superconducting material will flow around spots
Speaker 1: of normal material. So you have these islands of conducting
Speaker 1: material and these vortices of super conducting materials. So within
Speaker 1: the same substance, some of it is acting like a superconductor,
Speaker 1: some of it's acting like a conductor. And this creates
Speaker 1: really interesting properties that will that will cover in a
Speaker 1: secure right, So that's what really makes it different. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: if you were to again increase that magnetic field so
Speaker 1: that it goes above that second threshold, the superconductivity properties
Speaker 1: breakdown down, so and and and you do have to
Speaker 1: cool down the type two superconductors. Although there's been some
Speaker 1: amazing work fairly recently, and that that that eighties stuff
Speaker 1: that I was talking about, right, that will that will
Speaker 1: cover in a minute, that really kind of give us
Speaker 1: some hope for future applications. Um But before we get
Speaker 1: into all of that, I think it's important we take
Speaker 1: another quick break and thank our other sponsored. All right,
Speaker 1: so we talked a little bit earlier about this levitating
Speaker 1: effect that you can see with superconductors. It's not really levitating.
Speaker 1: It's called quantum lock or flux pinning, right, And this
Speaker 1: has to do with that vortex state that we mentioned
Speaker 1: a second ago. Right. This is for type two, specifically
Speaker 1: Type one superconductors can do this too, but as we said,
Speaker 1: they're very unsteady. But type two, if you keep it
Speaker 1: within that critical uh boundary between those two thresholds we
Speaker 1: talked about, where it's above the type one threshold but
Speaker 1: below the type two threshold, you can have this quantum
Speaker 1: lock where you can put a magnet above a superconducting
Speaker 1: base or a super super cooled superconductor over a magnet
Speaker 1: and lock it into a position where it's seemingly just floating.
Speaker 1: Really it is floating above the magnet or no, for
Speaker 1: the magnets, floating above the superconductor. However you've had it arranged.
Speaker 1: And that and that that Ted talk that we mentioned
Speaker 1: from from two thousand eleven that probably you've seen a
Speaker 1: call that that was calling it quantum levitation. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's the dude just just pushed a magnet around
Speaker 1: and it kind of float in a circle when it
Speaker 1: was what he had was he had a I think
Speaker 1: he had a big circular bang. Yeah, it was exactly
Speaker 1: like a doughnut in the sense that had a band
Speaker 1: of magnetic material that runs in a circle. But was
Speaker 1: it was just a band. It wasn't a disk or anything.
Speaker 1: It was a band of this magnetic material. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: like a donut. And then had this super cooled super
Speaker 1: conducting material that he put He put it in place
Speaker 1: above the band, so it's not touching the band at all,
Speaker 1: it's floating above it. And he could actually change the
Speaker 1: orientation of the superconductor so it could be flat, or
Speaker 1: he could tilt it so suddenly it was at a
Speaker 1: forty five degree tilt, and then he could just give
Speaker 1: it a little push and it would float around the
Speaker 1: circle of this magnetic band, just floating as though it
Speaker 1: were on a track and but not touching anything. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's there's no real apart for air resistance. There's
Speaker 1: no real force acting against it. So in other words,
Speaker 1: it's about as close to perpetual motion as you can get.
Speaker 1: It would just keep going around and around and around
Speaker 1: until the air resistance finally would make it stop, and
Speaker 1: he even demonstrates that, uh, it is completely independent of
Speaker 1: gravity as well. If you were to turn the whole
Speaker 1: thing upside down, which which is pretty awesome. Uh, it
Speaker 1: then floats underneath the band. But again, you can change
Speaker 1: the orientation of the superconducting material. And it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of a mind blowing video. It's it's really terrific. Uh.
Speaker 1: And what's what's going on in it is that UM
Speaker 1: so as superconductors UM cool down, they increasingly expel magnetic fields.
Speaker 1: And when you when you get a type two superconductor
Speaker 1: into that vortex state, UM electrons can can form these
Speaker 1: kind of eddy currents that produce a counter field. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of crazy. And and so you've got this,
Speaker 1: you've got this expelling of fields out from the super
Speaker 1: conducting material. You also have the norm the quote unquote
Speaker 1: normal islands of material in there that are attracted to
Speaker 1: whatever the magnet is UM. And so it's the balance
Speaker 1: of those two that make that type to superconductor stable
Speaker 1: as opposed to the type ones that are all wobbly. UM.
Speaker 1: There's there's also been you might remember background the year
Speaker 1: two thousand, Uh, some some people got a whole lot
Speaker 1: of attention for levitating a frog, and you know, water
Speaker 1: and hazelnuts and all kinds of fun stuff. It was
Speaker 1: along the same principles and and works because although technically,
Speaker 1: you know what we think of things like water in
Speaker 1: organic tissue like frogs is being non magnetic um, they
Speaker 1: will exhibit a very weak repulsive effect when placed in
Speaker 1: a very strong magnetic field. I know that I can
Speaker 1: be repulsed by frogs quite easily. However, if you want
Speaker 1: to have a fun experiment with frogs and magnetism, you
Speaker 1: take a frog and you go up to your little
Speaker 1: sister and you rub it against her hair and then
Speaker 1: you run. It doesn't actually do anything scientific, but it
Speaker 1: can be quite amusing. Now over how stuff works. We
Speaker 1: have articles that cover all sorts of stuff, and we
Speaker 1: even have one on superconductors. And there was one particular
Speaker 1: section of the article I wanted to quote that was
Speaker 1: that was just very effective. Right. This comes straight from
Speaker 1: our article on superconductors. Superconductors boast more than zero resistance.
Speaker 1: They also offer extremely high current carrying density, exceptionally low
Speaker 1: resistance and high frequencies, very low signal dispersion, and high
Speaker 1: magnetic field sensitivity. They exclude externally applied magnetic fields exhibit
Speaker 1: unusual quantum behaviors and are capable of near light speed
Speaker 1: signal transmission. This combination of factors effectively rewrites the rules
Speaker 1: for electromagnetic industries and suggests numerous possible innovations, including improved
Speaker 1: electric power transmission, generation and storage, smaller, more powerful magnets
Speaker 1: for motors, cutting edge medical equipment, improved microwave components for
Speaker 1: communications and military applications, vastly boosted sensors, and using magnetic
Speaker 1: fields to contain charged particles. So that's that's you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk a little bit more about some
Speaker 1: of the applications, but the potential is phenomenal. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and thank you to Nicholas Jervis or Gurbius, depending on
Speaker 1: how you pronounce that, for for writing that excellent little
Speaker 1: bit for that article on superconductivity for us. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it's a great read. I do recommend it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: there are lots of different substances that can exhibit superconductivity. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some of them were you know, the pure substances we
Speaker 1: talked about. The metallic elements can do this if you
Speaker 1: cool them to the correct temperature. Uh, some of them,
Speaker 1: some of them that are not metals can exhibit superconductivity Uranium, yeah,
Speaker 1: or selenium or s l con if you if you
Speaker 1: lower the temperature enough you have to pressure. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: they don't. If it's at just a normal one atmosphere pressure,
Speaker 1: you can't get it cold enough to do that. But
Speaker 1: if you increase the pressures, uh, then that the combination
Speaker 1: of the pressure and the temperature will have them exhibit
Speaker 1: this superconductive property, and then that you have hot superconductors.
Speaker 1: All right, this is that recent, more recent research that
Speaker 1: was begun in the eighties, and so so tell us,
Speaker 1: tell us what hot superconductors do. Okay, So you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked about the idea of cold fusion, the idea
Speaker 1: of having a fusion reactor that could operate at temperatures
Speaker 1: that are much lower than what we would expect a
Speaker 1: fusion reactor to to perform at. Right. A hot superconductor
Speaker 1: is kind of the opposite idea. And while we don't
Speaker 1: know if cold fusion will ever really work, we do
Speaker 1: know that hot superconductors are a thing. But when we
Speaker 1: say hot, we're talking relative terms. It's still very, very
Speaker 1: very cold. It's still cold enough to kill you if
Speaker 1: you were to be exposed to it, but it's not
Speaker 1: so cold as to require liquid helium to cool it. Um.
Speaker 1: So this was something that that lots of different people
Speaker 1: were working on throughout the years. Uh and you know,
Speaker 1: just sort of experimenting with different combinations and materials. Again,
Speaker 1: getting back to that scientist in the lab saying, Huh,
Speaker 1: I wonder what would happen if we did this to this. Uh.
Speaker 1: That that first one was I believe it was discovered
Speaker 1: by IBM researchers. They they presented a a superconductor of
Speaker 1: barium lanthum, lanthanum and copper oxide um and and it
Speaker 1: could achieve zero resistance at thirty five kelvin r what
Speaker 1: minus two hundred and thirty eight celsius and minus three
Speaker 1: and nine seven fahrenheit. Wow, Lauren does some wicked math
Speaker 1: in her head. Yeah. And so instead of using liquid helium,
Speaker 1: that meant that you could use liquid nitrogen, which is
Speaker 1: much more plentiful and inexpensive, right, yes, you can, you know,
Speaker 1: compare to liquid helium. Liquid nitrogen we're lousy with it,
Speaker 1: right yeah. Yeah, and you can pick it up at
Speaker 1: the supermarket if you really. The point being that it
Speaker 1: is much it really lowered the bar for what you
Speaker 1: could make a superconductor out of, which meant that suddenly
Speaker 1: you could use them for a lot more applications. You know,
Speaker 1: before only the most well funded applications could ever afford
Speaker 1: any sort of superconductor material because everything we had needed
Speaker 1: to be cooled down so far that you had to
Speaker 1: have liquid helium to do it. And there are there
Speaker 1: are plenty of places out there that are using that
Speaker 1: kind of material, like the Large Hadron Collider, for example,
Speaker 1: uses superconductors and it's and it's electronics in order for
Speaker 1: it to increase the speed of proton beams so that
Speaker 1: they can collide at massive, massive speeds and create a
Speaker 1: situation that looks like a tiny micro cosmic version of
Speaker 1: the Big Bang or shortly amediate following the Big Bang.
Speaker 1: I guess I should say the world record for the
Speaker 1: hottest quote unquote superconductor was a four, and that it
Speaker 1: was at thirty eight calvin, which is only a mirror
Speaker 1: negative on five celsius and negative two eleven fahrenheit. Right,
Speaker 1: so again still really cold to us, but downright bal
Speaker 1: me because yeah, it's like a it's like a vacation
Speaker 1: in the tropics, really, And they were using thallium doped
Speaker 1: mercuric cuperate which was comprised of the following elements. So
Speaker 1: this is what you have on your shopping list if
Speaker 1: you want to make one of these, it's not easy
Speaker 1: and most of these things are poisonous mercury which is poisonous,
Speaker 1: thallium which is also poisonous, barium, calcium, copper, and oxygen.
Speaker 1: It's not something that you can actually go and put
Speaker 1: together on your own. I wouldn't recommend trying fairly. No, No, Now,
Speaker 1: your average science lab is not gonna be able to
Speaker 1: produce that kind of super conductor. But then we can
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what we would use this
Speaker 1: stuff for once being used already, how it's being already used. Yeah,
Speaker 1: m R I I think is the probably most common
Speaker 1: that that's magnetic resonance imaging. Yes, so MR eyes are
Speaker 1: used to look at soft tissues, right, because X rays
Speaker 1: are very good at looking at things like like your skeleton,
Speaker 1: but they don't they don't pick up soft tissue very well.
Speaker 1: M R i's, however, are very good at looking at
Speaker 1: soft tissue, so they became very important in the field
Speaker 1: of medicine. And super conductors are a great component for
Speaker 1: m r I machines, as Jonathan mentioned a moment ago,
Speaker 1: super colliders such as the Large Hadron collider YEP, and there,
Speaker 1: of course there are more than just that. That's just
Speaker 1: probably the most famous one that people have heard about recently.
Speaker 1: Magnetic levitation trains mag lev trains. There's a couple of
Speaker 1: examples of these, mostly out in Japan, where the idea
Speaker 1: is to use the super conductors along a track, so
Speaker 1: you super cool them and create this uh, this this
Speaker 1: quantum lock phenomena, and then there are magnets on the
Speaker 1: actual train that can allow it to levitate above the track,
Speaker 1: thus allowing it to move without that friction that would
Speaker 1: normally cause the train to be less efficient and uh
Speaker 1: and allow it to move it on a high speed
Speaker 1: um without with a relative minimum of energy input, right
Speaker 1: right uh. And of course you could also make a
Speaker 1: train the other way around, where the superconductors are on
Speaker 1: the train and the magnets are in the track. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think Japan might have examples of both. I wrote
Speaker 1: an article years and years ago for Discovery News about it,
Speaker 1: but frankly I honestly can't remember at this point. But
Speaker 1: other things, we could use it for nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
Speaker 1: That's that that that's just very useful in a pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical research. It catches yeah, biotechnology, etcetera, etcetera. And they're
Speaker 1: they're looking forward to uh to maybe trying to use
Speaker 1: this in more efficient forms of energy storage or energy
Speaker 1: capture like wind turbines, right, also just other electric generators
Speaker 1: in general, so that you don't lose as much of
Speaker 1: that electricity that you've generated through heat. So again that's
Speaker 1: one of those things. You know, if we can make
Speaker 1: power systems more efficient where more of the power we are,
Speaker 1: more of the electricity we're generating, gets to wherever it
Speaker 1: needs to be to do work, then that's a win
Speaker 1: for everybody. It means that you have to consume fewer
Speaker 1: resources because you don't have to worry about losing you know,
Speaker 1: x amount of the energy you're trying to produce as heat. Right.
Speaker 1: Also on the on the quantum level, this could be
Speaker 1: very useful for things like quantum computers because it's it's
Speaker 1: working on that tiny quantum scale. Yeah, quantum computers. There's
Speaker 1: always a super cooling element with quantum computers as well.
Speaker 1: In order to make them work, we've talked about quantum
Speaker 1: computers in previous episodes, but I have a feeling we're
Speaker 1: going to need to do a full episode on quantum
Speaker 1: computers to really explain what the concept is and how
Speaker 1: they work, because again, it gets pretty I guess Einstein
Speaker 1: would call it spooky. I guess I guess he would
Speaker 1: ump speaking of spooky a quantum entanglement. Superconductors are used
Speaker 1: to create quantum entanglement, ah so, which is again a
Speaker 1: very important component in things like the quantum cryptography. Now
Speaker 1: you have a note here that I've read I see
Speaker 1: in front of me. I wanted to mention that this
Speaker 1: is not anti gravity, um, you know it is. You are.
Speaker 1: You are canceling out a magnetic field, right, but it's
Speaker 1: not like you have created some way like you can't
Speaker 1: turn us switch. Everyone floats off the floor exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're we're not we're not counteracting gravitons. We still
Speaker 1: don't really know how gravity actually works. I mean, wait,
Speaker 1: we obviously see uh, the effect of it, right, we
Speaker 1: don't see the actual mechanism. Yeah. Back was a Russian
Speaker 1: physicist whose name I'm not even going to attempt right now. Um,
Speaker 1: but but he he claimed to have successfully tested this
Speaker 1: device that would shield an object from gravity. UM. It
Speaker 1: involved levitating a a superconducting disc above m magnet and UM,
Speaker 1: no one, no one in the past couple of decades
Speaker 1: has figured out how has has been able to replicate
Speaker 1: this experiment. So that's not that's not what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: right right. And then, of course the other note I
Speaker 1: was going to mention was the one about people thought
Speaker 1: that we somehow reverse engineered superconductors from alien spacecraft. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know what Area fifty one they were. They
Speaker 1: were holding all those that that that alien space craft,
Speaker 1: and so they were You wrote that, and I wrote
Speaker 1: that whole article Area fifty one, and I don't remember
Speaker 1: any alien spacecraft being in there. No. This is again
Speaker 1: why those conspiracy theories where people thought that perhaps humans
Speaker 1: are not ingenious or inventive enough to have come up
Speaker 1: with this on our own now greted. Since we already
Speaker 1: talked about how the first experiments with super conductivity date
Speaker 1: back to nineteen eleven, I think we can be safe
Speaker 1: to say that it's not the Area fifty one reverse
Speaker 1: engineering nonsense. Sure, However, I mean, you know it's I
Speaker 1: do see the connections since we started really up pushing
Speaker 1: pushing the technology off the ground in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and nine and nine seven being the year that um oh,
Speaker 1: the Roswell incident. Of the Roswell incident. Also keep in
Speaker 1: mind that Roswell an Area fifty one are not remotely
Speaker 1: close clearly connected. So I this is where Jonathan says,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, humans are amazingly smart and amazingly creative,
Speaker 1: and we come up with some amazing accidents. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: sometimes we find out we find stuff that we weren't
Speaker 1: even looking for, but it becomes really important. And I
Speaker 1: don't I personally, whenever I think of these reverse engineering stories,
Speaker 1: it really to me is just downplaying how how brilliant
Speaker 1: people can be. And that kind of gets me a
Speaker 1: little upset because I've met folks who are truly geniuses
Speaker 1: at specific fields and uh, and you know, I think
Speaker 1: it's an insult to them to say that, Oh, obviously
Speaker 1: no person could have thought this up. It's too magical.
Speaker 1: It must have come from somewhere else. Also, reverse engineering
Speaker 1: isn't really easier necessary. I mean, yeah, because you have
Speaker 1: to figure out how it works in the first place.
Speaker 1: And then it's not like you don't. You don't, just
Speaker 1: know it doesn't involve using a Mac computer to upload
Speaker 1: of virus to a mothership. Boy, we could do a
Speaker 1: full episode on just uh, that would be fun to do.
Speaker 1: Sometimes do a tech stuff episode where we just pick
Speaker 1: a science fiction film and pick apart all the technical
Speaker 1: and accuracies in that film. And we could do that occasionally,
Speaker 1: just once in a while. Let us know. Let us
Speaker 1: know how you guys feel about that, because that could
Speaker 1: either be incredibly tiresome or really fun and I'm not
Speaker 1: entirely sure which one. If you guys, If you guys
Speaker 1: do think that would be a fun idea, let us know,
Speaker 1: and I go ahead and propose it. Independent Stay could
Speaker 1: be the first film that we tackle. That would be
Speaker 1: a fun one, But we don't have to obviously. If
Speaker 1: you all think no, that's lane, well that stuff, you
Speaker 1: should now do it. So, guys, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for tuning in. This has been a really fun podcast
Speaker 1: to to really dive into something really interesting and and
Speaker 1: still mysterious. We're still learning about it. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to learn more about this and see how we use
Speaker 1: it in the future. I expect that this is going
Speaker 1: to be one of those transformative scientific developments that really
Speaker 1: makes the future an exciting time to live in, which
Speaker 1: is good because I don't have any choice in the matter.
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