Are Room Temperature Superconductors IMPOSSIBLE?

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Superconductive materials seem miraculous. Their resistanceless flow of electricity has been exploited in some powerful ways—from super-strong magnets used in MRIs, particle accelerators and fusion plants. And then there’s, their bizarre ability to levitate in magnetic fields. But the broader use of superconductors is limited because they need to be cooled to extremely low temperatures to work. But what if we could produce superconductivity at room temperature? It would change the world.

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[adpirtle]

What I've learned from this video is that studying superconductivity is a great way to win a Nobel prize.

[Mandragara]

I'm imagining a schoolkid in 2123 learning about the 3 types of superconductors, low-temperature, high-temperature and room temperature. Then they ask why 'high temperature' is cooler than room temperature, then the teacher explains it's historical terminology and everyone groans

[stillprophet]

one of the few channels who can discuss a question for 15 minutes only to end with "we have no idea" and still make it incredibly worth watching

[unvergebeneid]

Can someone please win another Nobel prize for figuring out how high temperature superconductors work? Cool, thanks a bunch!

[oberonpanopticon]

Clearly the solution is to sneak into the room temperature room (the one used to define room temperature, much like the old physical kilogram), turn the thermostat to -200° C, and boom! Now you’ve got tons of room temperature superconductors!

[ronniabati]

Electron: “I will resist you with my last ounce of strength.”
Superconductor: “Strength is irrelevant. Resistance is futile.”

[SP-nyfk]

If LK 99 can trick the research team, maybe it can trick the cars to levitate on superhighways

[peterkovacs]

Just a small correction (and feel free to correct me if I misunderstood something):

At 5:10 it's mentioned that "Magnetic fields induce electric current" which in itself is not really true, yes it happens in superconductors, but that is a very special case, and this can not be stated generally. Imagine if you put a slab of copper on a magnet, based on this statement there should be currents flowing in the copper block at any time, basically heating up the copper, which we do not experience...
The proper statement is that CHANGING magnetic fields induce currents and there are really cool experiments for that, for example when you drop a magnet in a copper tube it falls slower than dropping it in a plastic tube, which is related to the 3rd rule (since a moving magnet makes a changing magnetic field, it induces currents in the tube, which has an opposing magnetic field)

Also superconductivity is usually claimed to be "zero resistance", but it is more than that. The main point of superconductivity is the Meissner-effect, and the zero resistance is just an extra thing. Imagine if you place a "superconductor" above Tc on a magnet, then you start cooling it down below Tc. If "superconductivity" only meant zero resistance, then nothing would happen to the magnetic field inside the "superconductor", since the magnetic field is not changing so there would be no current induced. But in reality we see that the magnetic field is expelled, so superconductivity is MORE than simply 0 resistance. Regarding this just follow up on the London model, even they realized that simply having 0 resistance would lead to CONSTANT (not necessarily zero) or exponentially decaying magnetic field. They arbitrarily modified their equations to also include the expelled magnetic field, since this was not a direct consequence of the 0 resistance.

[Merennulli]

We almost had an above room temperature superconductor, but Mr. Kent decided to become a reporter instead of a rail worker.

[marknovak]

I have followed all the high-temperature superconductor news since it broke in the mid-1980s. Cool stories. Some of the things we do with lower-temperature superconductors may not be possible at higher temperatures superconductors because of the very nature of the material that allows for high-temperature phenomena. Still. I am always an optimist.

[StraveTube]

I'm sure this gets said a lot, but can I just point out how great the animations are for these videos? Your graphics team really goes above and beyond to make them look awesome while still being very informative.

[johnjamison]

Quick correction. Flux pinning is actually when fluxons in a type 2 Superconductor are prevented from moving. Fluxons can move via Lorentz forces which adds some resistance.

[fluffigverbimmelt]

16:37 Not so sure about that. The way the paper was phrased was already very sensational and claimed a massive breakthrough without checking their results well.
The media hype just followed, but the original paper was clumsy and such a potentially massive breakthrough should not have been pushed to pre print at that stage.

[NeonVisual]

Nothing is impossible if you watch enough Star Trek.

[BRUXXUS]

The animations in this are incredible! This is the first time I’ve had an intuitive understanding of flux pinning. Super cool!

[byronwatkins]

The Meissner effect is due to macroscopic skin current not vortices. If a material's Cooper pairs can remain coherent around a vortex whose radius is determined by the London penetration depth, then that material is Type II and can sustain magnetic vortices on its interior; otherwise, attempts to form vortices collapse and the material is Type I. Flux pinning and vortex formation are entirely distinct. Type II superconductors need NOT have pinning centers. Type II superconductor materials with impurities, stress fractures, and/or topological 'defects' arrange their vortices so that the non-superconducting vortex cores occupy the locations of these material anomalies; this leaves the best superconducting volume to conduct the persistent vortex current. The attraction between these anomalies and a vortex is "vortex pinning."

[ravenlord]

If somehow we could combine cold fusion and warm superconductors . . . .

[Nuovoswiss]

Minor correction for that Critical Temp vs Year chart around 14 min: the FeSe is labeled "LM", but that should be "ML", as the material was a MonoLayer, rather than a bulk semiconductor.
Also, a major problem with the LK99 paper was they didn't actually post a specific procedure. They said they combined Pb2(SO4)O + Cu3P to make Pb9Cu(PO4)6O, but there's no stoichiometry (ie, the weights of the two ingredients) to do that reaction without massive leftover impurities, which they never address.
Replications just mixed them in equal proportion or equimolar, but the original paper never specified that.

[ChrisLhamon]

For some reason, this reminded me of a high school teacher that I had (not in any science class) who thought that the lights in his classroom turning on was because it took the electricity so long to get to his room. Florescent lights... The only thing that I remember learning from that class is that teachers aren't infallible.

[hoba]

One important thing is that helium cooled superconductors are usually just a piece of metal that you can make into whatever shape you want and does not break.
Nitrogen cooled is usually ceramic stuff, brittle, fragile and hard to make in a desired shape. No matter how cheaper liquid nitrogen is, serious applications still use old school helium cooling.