As a lapsed superconductivity physicist, I hate to burst the bubble. In the community there has been a long-standing joke about USOs, Unidentified Superconducting Objects, and it is well known that just because you see "Signs of Superconductivity" does not prove that something is superconducting.
There are really three questions at hand: 1> Does the sample show the Meissner effect, 2> Does it show zero resistance, and 3> Is it stable under addition of impurities. It turns out that for most ceramic compounds, even if 1 is true, 2 and 3 are often not true. For example, the Cuprates (the first to cross the 77K mark) actually have a higher resistance close to the critical temperature than copper. Point 3 is especially damning as sensitivity to impurities also means you can't draw these things into wires (certainly not wires you can bend) as the very act of bending may introduce defects that change local concentration of ingredients and hurt the superconductivity.
So the burden of proof remains very high, and the small blurb is very underwhelming.
I agree and I remember the days of being a grad student and scouring the pages of High Tc Update looking for the next super-material. It seemed like every other quarter there was a hint of room T superconductivity and it was always dashed by the next quarter.
I have no idea why you are getting upvoted. You're not bursting any bubble, you're just parading your cynicism and knowledge of a specialized field before a technical audience. The post http://www.superconductors.org/276K.htm contains a whole bunch of data which may answer your 3 points. How about you go through it, or email the author who has "released [the details] into the public domain without patent protection in order to encourage additional research" and get back to us? You ask, "Does the sample show the Meissner effect" and I ask you does the information provided supply you with the answer? In which case you should write, "the published research information does not provide any information regarding the Meissner effect" because otherwise it sounds like you didn't even look closely at the article. And 10 out of 10 for not explaining what the Meissner effect is by the way. The top graph on the linked to page has a portion of the plotted function circled and labelled Meissner transition, is this what you mean? From Wiki P: "The Meissner effect is the expulsion of a magnetic field from a superconductor during its transition to the superconducting state. Walther Meissner and Robert Ochsenfeld discovered the phenomenon in 1933 by measuring the magnetic field distribution outside superconducting tin and lead samples."
Is (Tl4Pb)Ba2MgCu8O13+ a ceramic compound? If not, why mention them? They are claiming superconductivity, so this implies zero resistance doesn't it? We can worry about impurities when we make enough of the stuff to extrude and bend it.
I for one am grateful he commented on this at all.
He has professional experience in this field, and his hunches are worth a thousand completely uninformed responses such as yours.
If you want him to dig through data, email the author, and look up stuff on Wikipedia for you, then how about you pay him before indignantly demanding that he do it?
After receiving backbiting chastisements from the popcorn gallery, I wouldn't be surprised if he refrained from commenting at all next time some similar announcement in his field of expertise came up.
That would be a pity, as his expertise, insight, and any time he cares to spend explaining his field to us are certainly valued.
You're not bursting any bubble, you're just parading your cynicism and knowledge of a specialized field before a technical audience.
In this case, I'd have to say that it's probably well deserved cynicism, though. An extremely effective first filter when any scientific or mathematical discovery is announced is to ask, "Does it look like science?", where "it" refers to whatever materials have been released.
In this case, the announcement does not look much like most science, and in fact the design reminds me more of all of those "Einstein was wrong, here's the real special theory of relativity!" sites than anything else.
This might not be a 100% correct filter, but I can't think of the last scientific breakthrough where the author didn't bother to at least set the paper in LaTeX and throw up a preprint somewhere. These days, even most incorrect proofs and discoveries look more like science than this does.
That said, as I know nothing about this field, I'd definitely be curious to hear what an expert had to say in about the specifics of these claims, as well as the other stuff at http://www.superconductors.org - it looks very crank-y to me, but then again I have known legit scientists that suck quite badly at web design, so who knows...
The Meisner transition is the transition to a state where the Meisner effect is observed.
The author also reports a "resistive transition", 1°C lower than the Meisner transition. He claims that this signs the superconductivity of the material and confirms the origin of the magnetic transition.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I have to ask: why?
I believe a great deal in the capability of individuals to accomplish great things, but I don't care how ingenious the methods, how confident the claims, how insightful the theory... I want to see science as a group activity.
Because no matter how good you are, you need replication and criticism, and constant skeptical feedback. I'm not saying it's impossible to get that by yourself, but I certainly don't believe in it so much.
Science as a whole can only be a group activity, of course - without replication of findings, it isn't really science (just mad science).
But the peer review process as it stands necessarily entails a certain barrier to entry. While we all would like to believe that every deserving idea gets peer review, in practice, most people don't have the time to bother with a submitted paper unless it's coming from an institution they've more or less heard of. How could it be otherwise? There are huge numbers of crackpots out there, and institutional affiliation is an efficient way of filtering them out.
My wife wants to do theoretical physics research (she's qualified: she has a doctorate in theoretical physics) but unless she's affiliated with an institution, it's unlikely she'll get anything published, or so she says. The problem is that unless you're a rock star, affiliation with an institution entails teaching, which in turn translates into all-out effort for roughly 22 hours a day by my own observations of the past semester. The resulting Catch-22 is that my wife can't reasonably do research at all, and that's illogical; she needs no resources but time and access to books and preprints, which she has at home.
So I'd like to see some research done using these new-fangled informational access tools we have now - research that is both sound and eventually makes its way into traditional peer review simply on the basis of its soundness, and not because the institutional affiliation of the researcher makes it plausible. This is one more thing that I think the Internet can do for us, and I'd like to see it happen.
Of course, the romantic in me just likes the idea of the lone mad scientist in his lair discovering room-temperature superconductivity, because that is the twenty-first century I signed up for. Today room-temperature superconductivity, tomorrow super-intelligent lab rats and cheap immortality. It's all good.
I believe his point was that research published by a single researcher on a blog is sketchy, and that he wishes that scientific discoveries could be done by individuals. If the researcher in question can provide proof of their claim, then normal peer review will happen.
"This discovery is being released into the public domain without patent protection in order to encourage additional research. "
Think of the thousands (millions?) of useless patents that are created for no other purpose than to extract monetary gain, at the cost of slowing down economic and technological growth, and read through the details of this detailed process that has been released for all to improve on.
I'm somewhat ignorant of superconductors. I know that it's a material that has zero electrical resistance, so a current flowing along a loop of superconductive material will flow forever, or something like that. But what are the implications of finding a superconductive material over 0C, other than it's really cool to play with?
No offense intended but it definitely is a more complete list than what I could come up with off the top of my head. There's a wide variety of very practical applications, if a practical one can be found.
It should also be noted that while "room temperature" is the holy grail, there's a gradient of practicality that ranges along the necessary refrigeration technology. Even a superconductor that only require conventional refrigeration (ie, no liquid nitrogen or helium involved) could be put to good use, if it can be made practical in all necessary ways.
If it works, you could use it for power transmission. You could put a ring around the globe, and have 24 hour solar power. Actually, wind would be better, but it's the same kind of deal.
It has been reproduced and journallized by Sharif University in Iran.
It looks legit, but his spec sheet does indicate that there are problems with commercialisation. http://www.superconductors.org/276K.htm indicates how to reproduce and what results to expect. A regular freezer can sustain -5C to 5C. An ammonia freezer can go as low as -27C, so 3C is easy to hold.
And the fact that he has been known for good results in the past shows, at least to me that this is the real thing. But of course, always the skeptic in these kinds of claims. At least it's not cold fusion, yet ;)
> And the fact that he has been known for good results in the past shows, at least to me that this is the real thing.
It means that the claims should be taken seriously, since he's competent in the field, but he might have made a mistake somewhere (even though, from what I understand of his report, the results seem clear. But since I'm not even a physicist, my opinion is worth peanuts).
The chair of Electrical Engineering Department of Stanford University has announced that: "Without a doubt the finest university in the world preparing undergraduate Electrical engineers is Sharif University of Technology in Tehran"
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharif_University_of_Technology...
Which large scale science project in the US had the highest number of "graduates" who went on to win nobel prizes and make gigantic contributions to science? The Manhattan Project.
Which countries are currently working on their own versions of that project? Uh, North Korea and Iran.
You can be DAMN sure that some of the best scientific minds outside of western main-stream are at the moment toiling away in Iran and North Korea.
Nobel Prizes aren't awarded for brilliancy. They're ostensibly awarded for contributions to science. Since that generally involves discovering something new, it's really no surprise that members of the Manhattan Project (who were working in a previously unexplored area of physics, with gigantic resources at their command) would make some momentous discoveries.
Contrary to this, the Iranians and North Koreans aren't working on anything new (at least not under the auspices of the nuclear energy/bomb project). So don't expect many Nobel Prizes to come their way.
They're rehashing a tried and true path, with a lot of information (both in the public domain, along with probably a good deal of stolen classified material) available to them that the members of the Manhattan Project did not have.
That isn't to say that there aren't any brilliant Iranian and North Korean physicists working on the project. I'm sure they've got the cream of the crop in Iran and North Korea. But just because they're working on this doesn't make them world class physicists.
Resistance does go lower as temperature drops, but when you hit the transition temperature it suddenly drops to zero.
There are other unusual things that happen too, and only with superconductors.
One of the main ones is that Meissner effect they talked about - that's the exclusion of magnetic fields from inside the superconductor, and regular conductors don't do that.
It sounds like you're asking asking whether some regions of a sample could be superconducting while others are normal phase. This can occur in heterogeneous materials as in a Josephson's junction. Pretty cool stuff when you look at it. An unknown 23 yr old grad student faced down a two-time Nobel prize winner and was right!
I never understood why a vacuum isn't considered a superconductor. Surely there's nothing to resist the motion of an electron in a vacuum. Would anyone be able to explain that to me?
A vacuum isn't even a conductor, so it can't be a superconductor. Sure, the electors are unimpeded, but you have to boil them off something to get them into the vacuum. Conductors have a sea of electrons that moves very easily along the material. Which brings up a second point: once in the vacuum, the electrons travel in a straight line (except in the presence of electric fields). In a conductor, they follow the surface, which often bends.
Furthermore, a super-conductor excludes magnetic fields; vacuums do not exclude magnetic fields (otherwise Earth wouldn't have the Van Allen Belts).
There are really three questions at hand: 1> Does the sample show the Meissner effect, 2> Does it show zero resistance, and 3> Is it stable under addition of impurities. It turns out that for most ceramic compounds, even if 1 is true, 2 and 3 are often not true. For example, the Cuprates (the first to cross the 77K mark) actually have a higher resistance close to the critical temperature than copper. Point 3 is especially damning as sensitivity to impurities also means you can't draw these things into wires (certainly not wires you can bend) as the very act of bending may introduce defects that change local concentration of ingredients and hurt the superconductivity.
So the burden of proof remains very high, and the small blurb is very underwhelming.