Superconductivity: One Step Closer

Bold Names

The Wall Street Journal

Technology

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Superconductivity means zero wasted electricity; perfectly conducted energy. Typically it's been made using either super high pressure or extremely low temperatures. This makes it inefficient and expensive for practical use. But in an incremental first, researchers have managed to create a superconducting material that works at room temperature and with less pressure. If we could create this technology large-scale, it would completely revolutionize our energy grid and the way we travel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	The monopoly game is back at McDonald's, and guess what? It's still twice as nice, because
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0:30.0	Hey, future of everything listeners, it's Janet Babin. The UN Climate Conference that
0:35.4	just wrapped up in Glasgow, Scotland, it elevated global conversations about new,
0:40.1	clean energy sources, and the podcast has spent the last couple of months now reporting out
0:46.8	strategies for a zero-carbon future that include a reboot of the world's energy sector.
0:53.7	And earlier this year, we reported on a development that could one day reboot the energy sector
0:59.6	in a completely different way, by eliminating electrical resistance, thereby dramatically
1:06.4	improving energy efficiency. This is the game-changing potential of superconductivity.
1:13.6	If the world could harness it, we could make trains that run routinely from New York to
1:18.8	California in record time and power rockets that could fly to Jupiter. We're taking this holiday
1:25.9	week as an opportunity to bring back this popular episode. Hope you enjoy.
1:34.7	Several months ago, the Wall Street Journal featured an article about a man who was mining Bitcoin
1:40.5	from a computer in his house. The computer was working so hard, it was heating up the entire room.
1:47.7	Bitcoin put your computer through a lot of calculations, and many of us are spending most of
1:53.6	our time at home these days. So the man found a way to use all that energy coming off of his
1:59.8	computer. He siphoned it to heat a greenhouse and grow basil and cherry tomatoes.
2:06.4	That's how much energy his computer was wasting. And it's not just the Bitcoin guy,
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