Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech, and today we're going
Speaker 1: to listen to another tech Stuff classic episode. This episode
Speaker 1: originally published on June five, two thousand thirteen, and it
Speaker 1: has the title It's a bird, it's a plane, It's
Speaker 1: a superconductor. Yep, we're gonna talk about superconductors, those super
Speaker 1: cool literally pieces of technology that allow us to do
Speaker 1: all sorts of really advanced stuff. I hope you guys enjoy.
Speaker 1: Let's listen in. So, here's a fundamental problem with electronics,
Speaker 1: with with any sort of circuitry, with any kind of system. Really,
Speaker 1: it's not just electronics. That's that's one way we can
Speaker 1: look at it. But there's this problem where you pour
Speaker 1: energy into a system and because of things like entropy,
Speaker 1: the output you get is less than the energy you
Speaker 1: put in. Now, of course, we know we cannot create
Speaker 1: or destroy energy, correct, Yeah, it's one of those laws
Speaker 1: of thermodynamics, and if you try and break them, then
Speaker 1: the thermodynamics police show up. So actually, it just means
Speaker 1: that you cannot break that law. So if you can't
Speaker 1: break that law, if you pour energy into a system
Speaker 1: and you're not getting as much output as you're getting input,
Speaker 1: it's because you're losing energy through some other action. Normally
Speaker 1: in almost every system that we're really familiar with, that's heat. Right,
Speaker 1: Heat becomes a byproduct. Energy goes to produce heat, which
Speaker 1: means that whatever you were trying to do is slightly
Speaker 1: less effective than what you had intended. So we see
Speaker 1: this with things like car engines are a great example.
Speaker 1: You pour in fuel, the engine burns up the fuel
Speaker 1: and converts that into power, but you don't get as
Speaker 1: much power out as you're getting energy in from the
Speaker 1: source of that fuel. So the same sort of thing
Speaker 1: is true with electronics. And in this case, the thing
Speaker 1: we talk about when we're talking about losing energy is
Speaker 1: called resistance. That's the resistance of any particular material to
Speaker 1: the flow of electricity through that material. So with that
Speaker 1: basic information there, now we're going to really dive into
Speaker 1: the very very basic building blocks of electronics. Yes, because
Speaker 1: the thing is that superconductors lose no energy to resistance, right,
Speaker 1: They have no resistance exactly. However, they require extraordinarily cold temperatures,
Speaker 1: like on the magnitude of thirty nine kelvin's which is
Speaker 1: that's cold. Yeah, when you remember, zero kelvin is zero
Speaker 1: molecular movement. That's absolute zero. That's that's like if you
Speaker 1: were to go into the deepest reaches of space and
Speaker 1: there are no molecules moving around, everything is perfectly still.
Speaker 1: That's zero kelvin equivalent to negative two and thirty four
Speaker 1: degrees celsius or negative nine degrees fahrenheit. Right, So that's
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty cold. But to understand again about resistance,
Speaker 1: let's let's take this this this tour through the building
Speaker 1: blocks of electronics. So now, the early early understanding we
Speaker 1: had about electricity, uh gave us some ideas that we
Speaker 1: kind of have to work around these days. Like specifically,
Speaker 1: the idea of current. Current is a confusing thing for
Speaker 1: someone who has doesn't understand electricity because it run the
Speaker 1: direction of current runs counter to the actual flow of electrons.
Speaker 1: Right when all of these terms were being created, we
Speaker 1: didn't know as much about sub atomic particles a k a.
Speaker 1: Much at all anything so so today, so before we
Speaker 1: understood anything about electricity, we began to learn things about
Speaker 1: about charge and the idea of opposite charges attracting one
Speaker 1: another and like charges repelling one another. Now we could
Speaker 1: have called electrons positive charge. We could have done that.
Speaker 1: There's no reason why we would have said electrons are
Speaker 1: negatively charged. It's just a word, right, But that was
Speaker 1: what was considered a negative charge, and then you would
Speaker 1: have the opposite would obviously be a positive charge. We
Speaker 1: could have called these left and right, are are up
Speaker 1: and down or anything really, but banana and obo would choices.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows the obo is nature's opposite to the banana.
Speaker 1: So 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 charges to mix together. So back in early days
Speaker 1: of electricity before we really understood the mechanics of it.
Speaker 1: You would think that all right, well, all the positively
Speaker 1: charged particles would leap over to the negative side and
Speaker 1: the negative charge particles would lead to the positive side
Speaker 1: until the charges had equalized. Right, And even if you
Speaker 1: had one material that was more negatively charged than the
Speaker 1: other material was positively charged, the actual negative charge would
Speaker 1: also even out. Actually, like osmosis, it would kind of
Speaker 1: work itself out, so you would you would end up
Speaker 1: with a larger amount of material that had a negative charge.
Speaker 1: It would just be a lower negative charge than the
Speaker 1: original material you started with. Right. So here we were
Speaker 1: still thinking about this as these little charged bodies, these
Speaker 1: charged particles, both of positive and negative zipping across um.
Speaker 1: And you can you can measure voltage by measuring the
Speaker 1: the two different points. So for example, if you have
Speaker 1: one on the positive node and one the electric node
Speaker 1: are negative node rather uh, you then look at those
Speaker 1: two contact points. That's where you get your voltage. If
Speaker 1: you're using the same point of contact and you're checking
Speaker 1: different other electrodes, uh, that same contact though contact you're
Speaker 1: using for all of them. We usually call the ground, right,
Speaker 1: that's the ground contact. Now, a material that does conduct
Speaker 1: electricity is called a conductor for that very reason, right,
Speaker 1: so convenient and there, and there are some materials that
Speaker 1: are very good conductors. A lot of the metals, for example,
Speaker 1: are great conductors. How how conductive material is depends on
Speaker 1: how easily it's component atoms donate electrons, right, right, You
Speaker 1: need to have these free electrons. Free electrons are this
Speaker 1: when you have an atom obviously have an electron shell
Speaker 1: or several shells, depending on how how large the atomist.
Speaker 1: Right and uh, and if you have free electrons that
Speaker 1: aren't tied down to anything on the outer shells, then
Speaker 1: that allows electricity to pass more freely because what happens
Speaker 1: is a new electron comes in. This is over simple,
Speaker 1: but a new electron comes in and essentially bonks out
Speaker 1: one of the other electrons in that outer shell, which
Speaker 1: then will bonk out one further down the line. So
Speaker 1: if you've got a lot of free electrons, then that
Speaker 1: allows this this passage to happen fairly easily. And uh,
Speaker 1: that's what allows you to connect these these differently charged
Speaker 1: uh materials to equal that out. We call this current.
Speaker 1: But again, the current is the idea of positively charged
Speaker 1: particles passing from one material to the other. As we
Speaker 1: learned later, it's actually electrons that are passing through, not
Speaker 1: positive charges. But we we consider it stuck with the terminology,
Speaker 1: which means which means that when you say current, you're
Speaker 1: actually talking about the opposite direction as what the electrons
Speaker 1: are really going through. So if you're talking about a
Speaker 1: circuit's current, you are looking at it going positive to negative,
Speaker 1: when in reality the electrons are going negative to 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, kind of 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. Now, current, of course does have the
Speaker 1: direction as the flow of positive charges. You can think
Speaker 1: of positive charge in a way as vacancies holes, positive
Speaker 1: holes that could accept an electron. Right, because 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 electronwhere, right, So that brings us to the concept
Speaker 1: of an insulator. Now, an insulator is sort of the
Speaker 1: opposite of a conductor. This is a material that charge
Speaker 1: cannot flow through those those component atoms out there. Their
Speaker 1: electrons just want to stay put. Yeah, yeah, they usually
Speaker 1: the usually you don't have any free electrons on the outside.
Speaker 1: They're all uh, they're all bonded together. So that means
Speaker 1: that an incoming electron has nowhere to go. So with
Speaker 1: nowhere to go, then this stuff just halts the flow
Speaker 1: of electricity. And this includes things like air is an insulator. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: if you were to pour enough energy into air, you
Speaker 1: could ionize it and then it becomes a conductor. But
Speaker 1: you have to pour energy into air for that to happen.
Speaker 1: That's what happens with lightning strikes, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it's more commonly it's it's it's all those things
Speaker 1: you know, like like rubber or glass. Exactly exactly. Now
Speaker 1: we've covered conductors, we've covered insulators. That brings us to
Speaker 1: semi conductors. Now, this is a term that a lot
Speaker 1: of people are familiar with because semiconductors we talk about
Speaker 1: that all the time. We talk about electronics like microprocessors,
Speaker 1: semiconductor plants, or a silicon wafer. That's what silicon chip
Speaker 1: that has a microprocessor on it. So what exactly is
Speaker 1: a semiconductor, Well, if you're looking at the name, it
Speaker 1: kind of gives it away. It's a material that can
Speaker 1: act like a conductor or connect like an insulator. Now, naturally,
Speaker 1: if you were to just make a if you were
Speaker 1: to make like a wafer of silicon it was pure silicon,
Speaker 1: it would be an insulator. Because those those electrons are
Speaker 1: all tied up, right, so you an'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 atoms that
Speaker 1: have extra electrons, extra being free electrons in that that
Speaker 1: outer shell, I don't mean that they're actually carrying around
Speaker 1: more electronic electrons, right yeah, like phosphorus exactly, free 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 type. Now, boron has what we would
Speaker 1: call vacancies or holes that what electrons could flow into.
Speaker 1: So if you 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 sidea 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 important is when you
Speaker 1: have something like alternating current. Alternating current, it's exactly what
Speaker 1: 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 altering 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 yea 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. So also, we've been in a
Speaker 1: meeting for a long long time. If you need to
Speaker 1: know how long, just a quick aside, check out Josh
Speaker 1: and Chuck's series Trapped in a Meeting. It's very good,
Speaker 1: it's very funny, and it's very real. It's it's so real,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's my video debut, So check that out.
Speaker 1: That's right. You can see Lauren blocking me for almost
Speaker 1: every episode. I can just see like either the front
Speaker 1: on my face or the back of my head and
Speaker 1: almost every shot. But uh, that's just me complaining. That's fine.
Speaker 1: So let's move on to we we've we mentioned resistance.
Speaker 1: Resistance is this property that resists the flow of a charge,
Speaker 1: and it depends on the material of the conductor, uh
Speaker 1: and 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 things. There's something
Speaker 1: out there, I'm sure, and I bet I could have
Speaker 1: found it out easily if I looked it up. I
Speaker 1: didn't think too, but I'm sure some of our electron
Speaker 1: attrician friends out there know exactly why. Anyway, the larger
Speaker 1: 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. And that's the vary
Speaker 1: basis of conductors. So and and that that that temperature
Speaker 1: comes in because uh oh, you know, he heat makes
Speaker 1: atoms bang around into each other more, which which is
Speaker 1: part of what causes resistance. And and on the flip side,
Speaker 1: resistance causes heat, right, those atoms are starting to bang around.
Speaker 1: That actually creates heat. It's essentially friction on an atomic
Speaker 1: level or sub atomic level because you're talking about electrons,
Speaker 1: but it still creates heat. And that's where you get
Speaker 1: this loss of energy in your system or loss of output,
Speaker 1: where you're not really losing energy in the sense that
Speaker 1: you know it's still going somewhere, it's just no longer
Speaker 1: contained within the system that you have created. Right, So,
Speaker 1: what does Owns law have to do? Right? Owns law
Speaker 1: is the relationship between voltage and resistance, all right, So
Speaker 1: it is explained as voltage equals current times resistance, or
Speaker 1: because we can switch these around, current equals voltage divided
Speaker 1: by resistance. So you look at the voltage across whatever
Speaker 1: the resistor itself is, whether it's a specific component in
Speaker 1: electronic circuit or the overall circuit or just a wire,
Speaker 1: and uh, that way, you can if you know the
Speaker 1: voltage and the current, you can determine what the resistance is. Actually,
Speaker 1: as long as you know any of those two, you
Speaker 1: can determine the third because you know what how they
Speaker 1: relate to one another. UM. Now, on top of all
Speaker 1: of this, we then have the concept of power. This
Speaker 1: is that output that you're getting. And power is we
Speaker 1: measure that in watt's w A T T S, and
Speaker 1: power released into a resistor equals the voltage times the
Speaker 1: current or voltage squared divided by resistance or current squared
Speaker 1: multiplied by resistance. The point we're getting to is that
Speaker 1: these basic concepts of electronics are all very very closely
Speaker 1: related to one another, and the more we understand about them,
Speaker 1: the greater potential we have to uh creating new stuff
Speaker 1: that really takes advantage of Right, it was our eventual
Speaker 1: understanding of these basic principles that has allowed us to
Speaker 1: kind of break the physics that that or or twinge
Speaker 1: the physics make them go what happened was we understood things,
Speaker 1: how we understood how things worked in kind of our normal,
Speaker 1: under normal room temperature kind of situation. Because because you know,
Speaker 1: early early people working in electronics, early people early electronics work,
Speaker 1: you know, and they were trying to plug in their xbox. No. No,
Speaker 1: the people who are working on electricity, very early on,
Speaker 1: when we were just learning about the principles of electricity
Speaker 1: and and what it is, how these different elements relate
Speaker 1: to one another, they didn't necessarily have the capacity to
Speaker 1: alter things enough to really see like, gosh, what would
Speaker 1: happen if we super cool super cool that. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: didn't have the ability to do it early early on,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't too late when they started to to
Speaker 1: really experiment with it. But we'll get into that, all right.
Speaker 1: So that is our down and dirty basic electronics coverage there,
Speaker 1: and now we can actually look at superconductors and explain
Speaker 1: exactly what they are, how they work, and why they're
Speaker 1: so amazing. We're gonna take a quick break from this
Speaker 1: classic episode about superconductors to thank our sponsors. All right,
Speaker 1: back to superconductors. So we've covered conductors, insulators, we've covered semiconductors,
Speaker 1: we've heard about resistance. What exactly is a superconductor? All right?
Speaker 1: Technically this is some sort of material that will conduct
Speaker 1: electricity without resistance below a certain temperature. And you don't
Speaker 1: want that resistance obviously, because again you have that loss
Speaker 1: of energy. You wanted to be as efficient as possible.
Speaker 1: So if you could find a material that does not
Speaker 1: convert any of that energy into heat and it's all output,
Speaker 1: then you've just dramatically increased the efficiency of your system.
Speaker 1: It's about as close to perpetual motion as we can
Speaker 1: ever expect to get, which is really exciting, you know,
Speaker 1: for cost purposes and all kinds of all kinds of
Speaker 1: fun 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 we know it starts breaking
Speaker 1: down at that point. But right, but it's really hard
Speaker 1: to figure out what's going on there because it's so
Speaker 1: dark and 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 Leyden
Speaker 1: University too as soon as I say it's Laden because
Speaker 1: Leyden 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 had
Speaker 1: made a solid artery wire and cooled it to the
Speaker 1: temperature of about four kelvin using liquid helium, and that
Speaker 1: is about negative four hundred fifty two degrees fahrenheit or
Speaker 1: negative two d sixty nine degrees celsius. And he noticed
Speaker 1: that when he did this, its resistance suddenly disappeared. Right,
Speaker 1: So this was interesting. This is the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that I thought I always imagined scientists doing, sitting around
Speaker 1: the lab and just saying, huh, I got this stuff.
Speaker 1: I wonder what happens if I do X to it.
Speaker 1: You know, let's drop the temperature down to almost absolute
Speaker 1: zero and see if that does anything interesting. Uh. I
Speaker 1: know it's way more complicated than that, but I like
Speaker 1: to think that that's what scientists are doing. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: what's what was really going on there was that the
Speaker 1: mercury at that temperature underwent a phase transition. But we'll
Speaker 1: get more into that in a second. Right, So then
Speaker 1: we skip ahead a little bit. That was nineteen eleven
Speaker 1: and nineteen thirty three some German researchers Walter Meisner, not
Speaker 1: the aimed theater mentor because I have a lot of
Speaker 1: Meisner technique different sharing. Guyisner and Robert Oceanfeld discovered that
Speaker 1: a super conducting material will repel a magnetic field. Now,
Speaker 1: this is super cool as well. I keep using that.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to, and I should have caught myself.
Speaker 1: It's it's really interesting. It's really interesting. If you've ever
Speaker 1: seen there's lots of videos on YouTube, right of people
Speaker 1: using magnets and super cooled super conductor material and they
Speaker 1: can lock the material in a levitating state above the magnet, right.
Speaker 1: Or sometimes they have a super conducting base that is
Speaker 1: super cooled and then they put a magnet on top
Speaker 1: of it and it seems to just hang in the air. Now, technically,
Speaker 1: if you if you actually listen to the physicists who
Speaker 1: talked about this, there's a great Ted talk where a
Speaker 1: guy demonstrates this. Town it's will link it on social
Speaker 1: I mean everyone's seen it, but we'll we'll link it
Speaker 1: anyway because it's still fun to watch. Uh. He explains
Speaker 1: that technically it's not levitation, it's what they call quantum lock. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so it's a little different from that that we'll
Speaker 1: we'll get more into that in a little bit. And
Speaker 1: then you skip ahead to nineteen seven, when a trio
Speaker 1: of scientists leon In Cooper, John Bardine, and John Robert
Speaker 1: Schreefer proposed the first successful model that explained super conductivity.
Speaker 1: This might be a good time to mention that while
Speaker 1: we talk about models that explain super connectivity, honestly, scientists
Speaker 1: are still learning about the properties of super conductors and
Speaker 1: how they do what they do, and why they operate
Speaker 1: at certain temperatures better than other temperatures. So while we're
Speaker 1: describing this stuff, and while we have super conductors in
Speaker 1: actual use around the world in thousands of different applications,
Speaker 1: we still don't understand everything about precisely how it's right.
Speaker 1: And when I say we, I'm not talking about just
Speaker 1: me and Lauren. I'm talking about super smart people that
Speaker 1: that's their job. We're still learning. This is one of
Speaker 1: those things that I always find exciting. It's just, you know,
Speaker 1: when you know that you don't know everything, that always
Speaker 1: gives you that kind of tingle to right you want
Speaker 1: to learn more. So their theory became known as the B. C.
Speaker 1: S Theory, and it earned them the Nobel Prize in
Speaker 1: Physics in nineteen seventy two. Now we kind of need
Speaker 1: to sort of talk about what this theory says. Okay,
Speaker 1: the atoms in a conductive material that have given up
Speaker 1: electrons are are are then positively charged ions, right right, okay, um,
Speaker 1: and when electrons are flowing through them, they're attracted to
Speaker 1: those negative negatively charged electrons. Cool. Right, Cool, that's a
Speaker 1: really bad word to use me in this podcast. Okay,
Speaker 1: already having made three or four times under usual circumstances, Uh,
Speaker 1: those ions kind of crunching together towards the electrons that
Speaker 1: are flowing through them would cause for existance, but not
Speaker 1: in superconductors. And what we kind of didn't realize until
Speaker 1: we started getting into quantum mechanics is that that resistance
Speaker 1: happens because electrons have properties of both particles and waves,
Speaker 1: right this, this is that duality thing that always got
Speaker 1: me confused when I got to that point and learning
Speaker 1: about science was the idea that something can behave as
Speaker 1: both a wave and a particle. We see this a
Speaker 1: lot in quantum mechanics, and it's part of the reason
Speaker 1: why it's such an interesting and counterintuitive field. Absolutely yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, my brain kind of just goes, well, well, okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's fine to be fair. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of string theorists have that same reaction to their work.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm being honest. I've seen interviews where they say,
Speaker 1: there comes a point where you just have to say,
Speaker 1: this is how it works, because it's how it works.
Speaker 1: It always feels a little bit like double think to me.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So we've got electrons acting like particles and waves,
Speaker 1: and um, those excited ions that are in the conductive
Speaker 1: areal kind of create counter ripples in this this flowing
Speaker 1: lake or river of electrons, and and that winds up
Speaker 1: causing that resistance I see. But in superconductors, the electrons
Speaker 1: assume a nearly identical speed and direction, forming a kind
Speaker 1: of single organized wave that resists that disruption from the
Speaker 1: ions I see. So instead of having let's let's let's
Speaker 1: put this on a macro scale. And keep in mind
Speaker 1: that whenever you change anything from the quantum scale to
Speaker 1: the macro scale and you're using an analogy, it's imperfect
Speaker 1: to say the right. And this is also an extreme
Speaker 1: oversimplification that I'm presenting to you. So, but let's imagine
Speaker 1: that you have a room full of people, and you
Speaker 1: have one doorway leading out of the room. And someone
Speaker 1: walks into the room and says free cake and then leaves,
Speaker 1: and then everyone just tries to rush the door. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: the fact that people could only fit through the door
Speaker 1: a few at a time, but everyone's trying to get
Speaker 1: through there, that kind of represents resistance in a way. Now,
Speaker 1: let's say that someone comes in and says, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: free cake, but there's plenty for everyone, so just come
Speaker 1: in the same order that you you know, walked into
Speaker 1: the room, and everyone obeys the rules and they all
Speaker 1: just smoothly exit. That's kind of the idea of superconductors.
Speaker 1: You've created this experience where everything's happening in a very uh,
Speaker 1: very ordered, controlled right. Yeah. Yeah, it's sort of like
Speaker 1: if all those people were members of a dance troupe
Speaker 1: and they just kind of fell into line and danced
Speaker 1: quietly out. In fact, that as analogy I've seen several
Speaker 1: times when looking at superconductors. Now, the BCS theory that
Speaker 1: we had mentioned explains that the electrons travel in ever
Speaker 1: changing Cooper pairs, named after leon In Cooper, one of
Speaker 1: the three of that and that uh so you have
Speaker 1: that leading electron. The pairs have a leading electron and
Speaker 1: a following electron. They're both going down this pathway. Keeping
Speaker 1: in mind electrons do repel one another. Yeah, so which
Speaker 1: is way that where the ever changing comes in. They
Speaker 1: they kind of swap around a whole bunch, right. So
Speaker 1: you've got this pair going down, swapping places occasionally. Uh,
Speaker 1: And the positively charged ions start to be attracted to
Speaker 1: that leading electron, which means that you have a growing
Speaker 1: positive charge, which starts pulling that second electron even harder.
Speaker 1: That creates this increased pressure if you will of poll
Speaker 1: really right, it's pulling those electrons even harder than it
Speaker 1: normally would because the positive charges growing and all of this,
Speaker 1: all of these different opposing forces essentially end up canceling
Speaker 1: each other out so that you don't end up with resistance, right,
Speaker 1: And 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 ninety three, so one year after the BCS
Speaker 1: team won the Nobel Prize in Physics. So clearly superconductor's
Speaker 1: big important thing in physics from the fifties through the
Speaker 1: seventies and up through to today. Oh sure, sure, what
Speaker 1: more research conducted in the eighties would change the field
Speaker 1: all over again. But we will talk more about that
Speaker 1: in a moment. Yeah, yeah, we have to. We have
Speaker 1: to then discuss the different major types of superconductors, and uh,
Speaker 1: there are different ways you can divide them up, but
Speaker 1: the most common way is to refer to them as
Speaker 1: type one and type two, which not that helpful upon
Speaker 1: the surface. So lists actually define these type one superconductors. Uh,
Speaker 1: made out of pure metal, right, So you get this
Speaker 1: pure metal 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. So we're
Speaker 1: talking now about any particular metal. It doesn't matter which
Speaker 1: one it is. The temperature will well vary depending upon
Speaker 1: the actual metal you're using, right, So lead is different
Speaker 1: from copper, that kind of thing. But they all have
Speaker 1: 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. Light
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 that you can go out and buy.
Speaker 1: There are scientists who say it's a real shame that
Speaker 1: we're using helium to entertain children when we could be
Speaker 1: using it to run m R I machines or a
Speaker 1: super collider or one of a thousand other devices. So
Speaker 1: so that's one of the downsides of the type one
Speaker 1: superconductors is that they do need to be cool to
Speaker 1: these very very low temperatures, and if they go above
Speaker 1: that temperature, the superconductivity is broken. You can get it
Speaker 1: back by cooling it back down again, but the actual
Speaker 1: properties it exhibits as a superconductor go away if the
Speaker 1: temperature goes over whatever it's critical temperature is for being
Speaker 1: a superconductor. Another thing that will cause the breakdown of
Speaker 1: the superconductive state is if you subject it to what's
Speaker 1: called a critical magnetic field. Right, So remember we talked
Speaker 1: about diet magnetism. This means that magnetic fields cannot penetrate
Speaker 1: this superconductor met all 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 shaking.
Speaker 1: It doesn't hold it doesn't hold a position very well.
Speaker 1: It does tend to wobble quite a bit. But uh,
Speaker 1: if you were to introduce a magnetic field that is
Speaker 1: stronger than what that superconductor can land, yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: expel really because it's expelling magnetic field. But yeah, if
Speaker 1: it's too strong a magnetic field, it again will break
Speaker 1: down that superconducting state and it will just become a
Speaker 1: regular conductor as opposed to a superconductor. So you have
Speaker 1: to maintain its critical temperature and make sure it is
Speaker 1: 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 x 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 you do have to cool
Speaker 1: down the type two superconductors. Although there's been some amazing
Speaker 1: work fairly recently, and that that that eighties stuff that
Speaker 1: I was talking about, right that will that will cover
Speaker 1: in a minute. That really kind of give us some
Speaker 1: hope for future applications. We'll be right back with more
Speaker 1: on superconductors in just a moment, but first let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break, all right, So we talked a little
Speaker 1: bit earlier about this levitating effect that you can see
Speaker 1: with superconductors. It's not really levitating. It's called quantum lock
Speaker 1: or flux pinning. Right, And this has to do with
Speaker 1: that vortex state that we mentioned a second ago. Right.
Speaker 1: This is for type two, specifically Type one superconductors can
Speaker 1: do this too, but as we said, they're very unsteady.
Speaker 1: But type two, if you keep it within that critical
Speaker 1: boundary between those two thresholds we talked about, where it's
Speaker 1: above the type one threshold but below the type two threshold,
Speaker 1: you can have this quantum lock where you can put
Speaker 1: a magnet above a superconducting base or a super super
Speaker 1: cooled superconductor over a magnet and lock it into a
Speaker 1: position shin where it's seemingly just floating. Really it is
Speaker 1: floating above the magnet or no, for the magnets, floating
Speaker 1: above the superconductor. However you've had it arranged. And that
Speaker 1: and that that Ted talk that we mentioned from from
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven that probably you've seen a call that
Speaker 1: that was calling it quantum levitation. You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: the dude just just pushed a magnet around and it
Speaker 1: kind of float in a circle when it was what
Speaker 1: he had was he had a I think he had
Speaker 1: a big circular magnet. Like yeah, it was exactly like
Speaker 1: a doughnut in the sense that had a band of
Speaker 1: magnetic material that runs in a circle. But was it
Speaker 1: 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 we're
Speaker 1: on a track, but not touching anything. Right, So there's
Speaker 1: there's no real apart from air resistance, there's no real
Speaker 1: force acting against it. So in other words, it's about
Speaker 1: as close to perpetual motion as you can get. It
Speaker 1: would just keep going around and around and around until
Speaker 1: the air resistance finally would make it stop, and he
Speaker 1: even demonstrates that, uh, it is completely independent of gravity
Speaker 1: as well. If you were to turn the whole thing
Speaker 1: upside down, it would, yes, which it is pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: It then floats underneath the band. But again you can
Speaker 1: change the orientation of the superconducting material. And it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a mind blowing video. It's it's really terrific.
Speaker 1: And what's what's going on in it is that UM.
Speaker 1: So as superconductors UM cool down, they increase recently expel
Speaker 1: magnetic fields. And when you when you get a type
Speaker 1: two superconductor into that vortex state, UM electrons can can
Speaker 1: form these kind of eddy currents that produce a counter field, right, 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 that article I wanted to quote the sidebar
Speaker 1: that was that was just very effective. Right, This comes
Speaker 1: straight from our article on superconductors. Superconductors boast more than
Speaker 1: zero resistance. They also offer extremely high current carrying density,
Speaker 1: exceptionally low resistance and high frequencies, very low signal dispersion,
Speaker 1: and high magnetic field sensitivity. They exclude externally applied magnetic fields,
Speaker 1: exhibit unusual quantum behaviors, and are capable of near light
Speaker 1: speed signal transmission. This combination of factors effectively rewrites the
Speaker 1: rules for electromagnetic industries and suggests numerous possible innovations, including
Speaker 1: improved electric power transmission, generation and storage, smaller, more powerful
Speaker 1: magnets for motors, cutting edge medical equipment, improved microwave components
Speaker 1: for communications and military applications, vastly boosted sensors, and using
Speaker 1: magnetic 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 Gurbous, 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 and 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 silicon. If you if you lower the
Speaker 1: temperature enough, you have to pressure. Yeah, that's they don't.
Speaker 1: If it's at just a normal one atmosphere pressure, you
Speaker 1: can't get it cold enough to do that. But if
Speaker 1: you increase the pressures, uh, then that the combination of
Speaker 1: the pressure and the temperature will have them exhibit this
Speaker 1: superconductive property, and then that you have hot superconductors. All right,
Speaker 1: this is that recent, more recent research that was begun
Speaker 1: in the eighties. And so so tell us, tell us
Speaker 1: what hot superconductors do. Okay, So you know, we've talked
Speaker 1: about the idea of cold fusion, the idea of having
Speaker 1: a fusion reactor that could operate at temperatures that are
Speaker 1: much lower than what we would expect a fusion reactor
Speaker 1: to to perform at. Right A hot superconductor is kind
Speaker 1: of the opposite idea. And while we don't know if
Speaker 1: cold fusion will ever really work, we do know that
Speaker 1: hot superconductors are a thing. Right Well, when we say hot,
Speaker 1: we're talking relative terms. It's still very, very very cold.
Speaker 1: It's still cold enough to kill you if you were
Speaker 1: to be exposed to it. But it's not so cold
Speaker 1: as to require liquid helium to cool it. Um. So
Speaker 1: this was something that that lots of different people were
Speaker 1: working on throughout the years, and you know, just sort
Speaker 1: of experimenting with different combinations and materials. Again, getting back
Speaker 1: to that scientist in the lab saying, Huh, I wonder
Speaker 1: what would happen if we did this to this. Uh.
Speaker 1: That first one was, I believe it was discovered by
Speaker 1: IBM researchers. They presented a a superconductor of barium lanthenom
Speaker 1: lanthanum and copper oxide um and and it could achieve
Speaker 1: zero resistance at thirty five kelvin, right, which is what
Speaker 1: minus two hundred and thirty eight celsius and minus three
Speaker 1: d and ninety seven fahrenheit. Wow, Lauren does some wicked
Speaker 1: math in her head. Yeah. And so instead of using
Speaker 1: liquid helium, that meant that you could use liquid nitrogen,
Speaker 1: which is much more plentiful and inexpensive, right, Yes, you can,
Speaker 1: you know, compare to liquid helium. Liquid nitrogen we're lousy
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah, yeah, and you can pick it up
Speaker 1: at the supermarket if you really. The point being that
Speaker 1: it is much. It really lowered the bar for what
Speaker 1: you could make a superconductor out of, which meant that
Speaker 1: suddenly you could use them for a lot more applications.
Speaker 1: You know, before only the most well funded applications could
Speaker 1: ever afford any source of superconductor material because everything we
Speaker 1: had needed to be cooled down so far that you
Speaker 1: had to have liquid helium to do it. And there
Speaker 1: are there are plenty of places out there that are
Speaker 1: using that kind of material, like the Large Hadron Collider,
Speaker 1: for example, uses superconductors and it's and it's electronics in
Speaker 1: order for it to increase the speed of proton beams
Speaker 1: so that they can collide at massive, massive speeds and
Speaker 1: create a situation that looks like a tiny microcosmic version
Speaker 1: of the Big Bang or shortly ameliate following the Big Bang.
Speaker 1: I guess I should say the world record for the
Speaker 1: hottest quote unquote superconductor was that and that it was
Speaker 1: at thirty eight calvin, which is only a mirror negative
Speaker 1: celsius and negative two eleven fahrenheit. Right, so again still
Speaker 1: really cold to us, but downright bal mecause yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like a it's like a vacation in the tropics, really
Speaker 1: and they were using thallium doped mercuric cuprate, which was
Speaker 1: comprised of the following elements. So this is what you
Speaker 1: have on your shopping list if you want to make
Speaker 1: one of these. It's not easy. And most of these
Speaker 1: things are poisonous. Mercury which is poisonous, thallium which is
Speaker 1: also poisonous, barrier, calcium, copper, and oxygen. It's not something
Speaker 1: that you can actually go and put together on your own.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't recommend trying. No, no, Now, your average science
Speaker 1: lab is not gonna be able to produce that kind
Speaker 1: of superconductor. But then we can talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about what we would use this stuff for, what's being
Speaker 1: used already, how it's being already used. Yeah, m R
Speaker 1: I I think is the probably most common that that's
Speaker 1: magnetic resonance imaging. Yes, so MR eyes are used to
Speaker 1: look at soft tissues, right, because X rays are very
Speaker 1: good at looking at things like like your skeleton, but
Speaker 1: they don't they don't pick up soft tissue very well.
Speaker 1: M R eyes, however, are very good at looking at
Speaker 1: soft tissue, so they became very important in the field
Speaker 1: of medicine. And superconductors are a great component for m
Speaker 1: r I machines, as Jonathan mentioned a moment ago, super
Speaker 1: 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 maglev trains. There's a couple of examples
Speaker 1: of these, mostly out in Japan, where the idea is
Speaker 1: to use the superconductors along a track, so you super
Speaker 1: cool them and you create this uh, this this quantum
Speaker 1: lock phenomena, and then there are magnets on the actual
Speaker 1: 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 right, Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course you could also make a train the
Speaker 1: other way around, where the superconductors are on the train
Speaker 1: and the magnets are in the track. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think Japan might have examples of both. I wrote an
Speaker 1: 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 resident
Speaker 1: it's spectroscopy, that's that's that's just very useful in a
Speaker 1: pharmacutical pharmaceutical research. It catches yeah, biotechnologies, etcetera, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: they're they're looking forward to uh to maybe trying to
Speaker 1: use this in more efficient forms of energy storage or
Speaker 1: energy capture like wind turbines, right, also just other electric
Speaker 1: generators in general, so that you don't lose as much
Speaker 1: of that electricity that you've generated through heat. So again
Speaker 1: that's one of those things. You know, if we can
Speaker 1: make power systems more efficient where more of the power
Speaker 1: we are, more of the electricity we're generating, gets to
Speaker 1: wherever it needs to be to do work, then that's
Speaker 1: a win for everybody. It means that you have to
Speaker 1: consume fewer resources because you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: losing you know, x amount of the energy you're trying
Speaker 1: to produce as heat. Right. Also on the on the
Speaker 1: quantum level, it could be very useful for things like
Speaker 1: quantum computers because it's it's working that tiny quantum scale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: quantum computers. There's always a super cooling element with quantum
Speaker 1: computers as well, in order to make them work. We've
Speaker 1: talked about quantum computers in previous episodes, but I have
Speaker 1: a feeling we're going to need to do a full
Speaker 1: episode on quantum computers to really explain what the concept
Speaker 1: is and how they work, because again, it gets pretty
Speaker 1: I guess Einstein would call it spooky. I guess I
Speaker 1: guess you would. Um speaking of spooky a quantum entanglement.
Speaker 1: Superconductors are used to create quantum entanglement, ah so, which
Speaker 1: is again a very important component in things like the
Speaker 1: quantum cryptography. Now you have a note here that I've
Speaker 1: read I see in front of me. I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention that this is not anti gravity, right, Um, you
Speaker 1: know it is. You are. You are canceling out a
Speaker 1: magnetic field, right, But it's not like you have created
Speaker 1: some way like you can't turn a switch on the
Speaker 1: room everyone floats off the floor exactly. Yeah, And we're
Speaker 1: we're not we're not counteracting gravitons. We still don't really
Speaker 1: know how gravity actually works. I mean, wit, we obviously
Speaker 1: see uh, the effect of it, right, we don't see
Speaker 1: the actual mechanism. Yeah. Back was a Russian physicist whose
Speaker 1: 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 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 where you wrote that and I wrote that
Speaker 1: whole article Area fifty one, and I don't remember any
Speaker 1: alien spacecraft being in there. No. This is again why
Speaker 1: those conspiracy theories where people thought that perhaps humans are
Speaker 1: not ingenious or inventive enough to have come up with
Speaker 1: this on our own. Now credit, since we already talked
Speaker 1: about how the first experiments with super conductivity date back
Speaker 1: to nineteen eleven, I think we can be safe to
Speaker 1: say that it's not the Area fifty one reverse engineering nonsense. However,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know it's I do see the connection
Speaker 1: since we started really up pushing pushing the technology off
Speaker 1: the ground in the nineteen fifties and nine and nine
Speaker 1: seven being the year that um oh, the Roswell incident.
Speaker 1: Of the Roswell incident. Also keep in mind that Roswell
Speaker 1: an Area fifty one are not remotely closely clearly connected.
Speaker 1: So I this is where Jonathan says, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: humans are amazingly smart and amazingly creative, and we come
Speaker 1: up with some amazing accidents. Yeah, there's sometimes we find
Speaker 1: out we find stuff that we weren't even looking for,
Speaker 1: but it becomes really important. And I don't I personally,
Speaker 1: whenever I think of these reverse engineering stories, it really,
Speaker 1: to me is just downplaying how how brilliant people can be.
Speaker 1: And that kind of gets me a little upset because
Speaker 1: I've met folks who are truly geniuses at specific fields
Speaker 1: and uh, and you know, I think it's an insult
Speaker 1: to them to say that, oh, obviously no person could
Speaker 1: have thought this up. It's too magical. It must have
Speaker 1: come from somewhere else. Also, reverse engineering isn't really easier necessary.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, because you have to figure out how
Speaker 1: it works in the first place, and then it's not
Speaker 1: like you don't you don't just know it doesn't involve
Speaker 1: using a Mac computer to upload of virus to a mothership. Boy,
Speaker 1: we could do a full episode on just uh, that
Speaker 1: would be fun to do. Sometimes do a tech stuff
Speaker 1: episode where we just pick a science fiction film and
Speaker 1: pick apart all the technical and accuracies in that film.
Speaker 1: And we could do that occasionally, just once in a while.
Speaker 1: Let us know. Let us know how you guys feel
Speaker 1: about that, because that could either be incredibly tiresome er
Speaker 1: really fun and I'm not entirely sure which one. If
Speaker 1: you guys, If you guys do think that that would
Speaker 1: be a fun idea, let us know, and I go
Speaker 1: ahead and propose it depended. Stay could be the first
Speaker 1: film that we tackle and that does it for that
Speaker 1: classic episode on super conductors. Hope you guys enjoyed it.
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Speaker 1: both is tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Y. Text Stuff is an I
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