Are room-temperature superconductors close?
July 27, 2010
Topflight boffins believe they may be on the track of the fabled room-temperature superconductor, a technology which - if achieved - promises to revolutionise various fields including hover trains, electric power, mighty dimension-portal atom smashers and even supercomputing.
The new science relates to the study of copper-oxide superconductors. A superconductor is a material which carries an electric current without any resistance: naturally, as a result, it is excellent for generating tremendously powerful magnetic fields. These are useful for such purposes as building MRI scanners, mag-lev hover trains and colossal very-fabric-of-spacetime-rending particle punchers such as the famous Large Hadron Collider.