Scientists Achieve The Impossible By Making A Room-Temperature Superconductor

For the first time, a group of scientists has created a superconducting material that operates at room temperature.

It has been a long-standing objective of physicists and was previously regarded to be unattainable, according to MIT Technology Review. However, an ultra-condensed material has been shown to function as a superconductor at 58 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degree Centigrade) — the first time a superconductor has worked above freezing temperatures — implying a future with a lossless energy grid, high-speed levitating trains, and useful quantum computers.

According to MIT Tech, the material had to be created under such harsh circumstances that even the University of Rochester scientists who created it do not completely comprehend it.

According to the team's findings, which were published Wednesday in the journal Nature, the substance is a combination of carbon, sulfur, and hydrogen that was smushed at around 2.5 million times the pressure of the Earth's atmosphere while being blasted with a laser.

At the moment, the superconductor is too tiny to be helpful. However, if it works at greater scales and under less strain, it will provide us with the tools necessary to fundamentally reimagine our energy and technological infrastructure in order to make it more clean, efficient, and powerful.

“We live in a semiconductor society, and with this kind of technology, you can take society into a superconducting society where you’ll never need things like batteries again,” coauthor Ashkan Salamat of the University of Nevada Las Vegas said in a press release.

Reference(s): Peer-Reviewed Research, ScienceNews, Phys.org