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Why Scientists Are Obsessed With Finding a Room-Temperature Superconductor
(www.popularmechanics.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
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It’ll be a long time after room temperature superconductors are discovered before they’re very useful- most superconductors in that temperature range are ceramics, not very useful for power cables and lines.
While you are correct about time. That is true of most if not all new science.
But. While media oversimplification of science. Concentrates on cost etc. power lines ETC is in no way the main needs of super conductors. We already have theability to move electricity that way. And the cost of lose at high voltage is nothing compared to rebuilding the system with some new materials we don't have yet. It works ATM. With transformers etc. a relatively cheap and very easy technology.
The more needed tech is in the small scale. Magnetic effects with super conductors etc. The effect on magnetic flux when using low to no resistance conductors is huge. Basically a whole different science to the every day electro magnetic effect we see in almost all modern technology.
So how come brittle glass is useful for fibre optic data cable? Thinness, that's why. Superconductors don't need to be thick either, because of the "super". Also, multi-strand.
That’s not necessarily the case- glass is amorphous, so there’s ways of making it flexible that won’t directly apply to crystalline materials such as ceramics immediately- it’ll take time to modify or innovate methods of making the crystals flexible.