<story><title>Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be</title><url>https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/breaking-superconductor-news</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>akjssdk</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think the actual proposed superconductivity mechanism is the relevant part of this paper. It is much easier to prove that this is superconducting than to prove why. And in a sense it is a bit less relevant. Although developing a working theory for room temperature is also probably worth a Nobel prize, so I am willing to bet some theorists are also running to their blackboards as we speak.</text></item><item><author>mmastrac</author><text>This is an extremely useful summarization of the original paper.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The authors believe that the modified&amp;#x2F;strained structure of their material creates a large number of “quantum wells” between particular lead atoms and the adjacent oxygens of the phosphate groups bound to them, in effect making a two-dimensional “electron gas”. They propose that electron tunneling between these quantum wells, which are between 3.7 and 6.5 Ångstroms apart, is the superconducting mechanism. I am not enough of a solid-state physicist to judge this proposal, but the authors are making a detailed mechanistic claim that is subject to experimental proof, which is very good to see, and and they adduce a good deal of data to back it up (x-ray diffraction, EPR, and more). And they demonstrate the behaviors that a superconductor should have, such as the Meissner effect (expulsion of a magnetic field), sudden resistivity changes at a critical temperature (bizarrely high though that is in this case), current-voltage (I-V) plots at different temperatures and under different magnetic field strengths, etc. If these data reproduce, the superconductivity of this material seems beyond doubt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Terr_</author><text>&amp;gt; I don&amp;#x27;t think the actual proposed superconductivity mechanism is the relevant part of this paper.&lt;p&gt;Plus even if the proposed-mechanism is incorrect and even if the effect is not strong enough for practical engineering... There&amp;#x27;s value in a &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; (if weak) superconductor which is both easy to fabricate and easy to run tests on.&lt;p&gt;It could become a starting-point for dozens of other tweaked formulations, enabling all sorts of not-so-expensive experiments and fresh data about how different parameters lead to different electromagnetic outcomes.</text></comment>
<story><title>Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be</title><url>https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/breaking-superconductor-news</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>akjssdk</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think the actual proposed superconductivity mechanism is the relevant part of this paper. It is much easier to prove that this is superconducting than to prove why. And in a sense it is a bit less relevant. Although developing a working theory for room temperature is also probably worth a Nobel prize, so I am willing to bet some theorists are also running to their blackboards as we speak.</text></item><item><author>mmastrac</author><text>This is an extremely useful summarization of the original paper.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The authors believe that the modified&amp;#x2F;strained structure of their material creates a large number of “quantum wells” between particular lead atoms and the adjacent oxygens of the phosphate groups bound to them, in effect making a two-dimensional “electron gas”. They propose that electron tunneling between these quantum wells, which are between 3.7 and 6.5 Ångstroms apart, is the superconducting mechanism. I am not enough of a solid-state physicist to judge this proposal, but the authors are making a detailed mechanistic claim that is subject to experimental proof, which is very good to see, and and they adduce a good deal of data to back it up (x-ray diffraction, EPR, and more). And they demonstrate the behaviors that a superconductor should have, such as the Meissner effect (expulsion of a magnetic field), sudden resistivity changes at a critical temperature (bizarrely high though that is in this case), current-voltage (I-V) plots at different temperatures and under different magnetic field strengths, etc. If these data reproduce, the superconductivity of this material seems beyond doubt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>scarmig</author><text>Yeah. BCS was proposed a half century after the first conventional superconductor was discovered, and even today we don&amp;#x27;t have a convincing mechanism for &amp;quot;regular&amp;quot; high-Tc superconductors. But if it superconducts, it superconducts, and research into the how is useful but not a blocker to using it.</text></comment>