Will Better Superconductors Transform the World?
The Joy of Why
Steven Strogatz, Janna Levin and Quanta Magazine
4.9 • 577 Ratings
🗓️ 9 May 2024
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If superconductors — materials that conduct electricity without any resistance — worked at temperatures and pressures close to what we would consider normal, they would be world-changing. They could dramatically amplify power grids, levitate high-speed trains and enable more affordable medical technologies. For more than a century, physicists have tinkered with different compounds and environmental conditions in pursuit of this elusive property, but while success has sometimes been claimed, the reports were always debunked or withdrawn. What makes this challenge so tricky?
In this episode, Siddharth Shanker Saxena, a condensed-matter physicist at the University of Cambridge, gives co-host Janna Levin the details about why high-temperature superconductors remain so stubbornly out of reach.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On April 8th, 1911, a Dutch scientist made a chilling discovery. |
| 0:11.7 | Using a carefully engineered instrument filled with liquid helium, physicist Heike Cameron |
| 0:17.2 | Ones, delicately lowered the temperature of mercury closer and closer to absolute zero. |
| 0:24.7 | Suddenly, at an unimaginably cold negative 452 Fahrenheit, |
| 0:31.2 | the super-cooled mercury conducted electricity with perfect efficiency, |
| 0:37.0 | and no energy loss to heat. It was the first |
| 0:40.0 | superconductor. I'm Jan 11 and this is the joy of why, a podcast from Quantum |
| 0:48.0 | Magazine where I take turns with my co-host Steve Strogatz exploring the biggest |
| 0:53.4 | questions in math and science today. |
| 0:59.3 | The discovery of superconductivity would win Camerling Onez the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics. |
| 1:06.3 | But more importantly, it marked the start of an unresolved quest for material that maintains perfect conductivity |
| 1:13.0 | at room temperature, a quest that's recently seen many claims put forward and then retracted. |
| 1:20.2 | Today, we ask physicist, Siddharat Shankar Saxena, known to his friends as Montu, what makes |
| 1:26.4 | room temperature superconductivity so elusive, |
| 1:30.4 | and how might its discovery reshape society? |
| 1:34.3 | Montu is a principal research associate in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, |
| 1:40.3 | researching superconductors, magnets, graphite, and renewable energy applications. |
| 1:46.0 | He also teaches at Cambridge's Center for Development Studies and shares the Cambridge Central Asia Forum. |
| 1:52.6 | Welcome to the show, Montere. |
| 1:54.4 | Thank you, Jana. |
| 1:55.3 | Excellent intro. |
| 1:56.9 | Thank you. |
... |
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