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What scientific discovery, which could actually happen in the next 5 years, would have the most impact in our lives in you opinion? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago by linucs@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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[–] fox@hexbear.net 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Room temperature superconductors would represent the greatest leap forward since electricity itself. Ultra-cheap, ultra-high resolution MRIs, lossless power transmission across vast distances, massive gains in computing power, much lower cost supercolliders for advanced physics, low-cost magnetic confinement for fusion power experiments, and so on.

[–] Mike1576218@lemmy.ml 12 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Just a note: Superconductivity is not only destroyed by temperature, but also by magnetic fields or a too high current. We might find a room temperature superconductor that is basically useless for energy transportation or high magnetic field applications.

Another problem: almost all known high-temperature superconductors are ceramics and thus very brittle and hard to work with.

What we want is a cheap, metallic, high temperature superconductor with a high maximum critical magnetic field and high critical max current density...

But of course any improvement could give big improvements in some applications. Having a nitrogen cooled MRI wound be awesome.

[–] IsoSpandy@lemm.ee 3 points 4 months ago

An6 form if room temp super conductor would be awesome. Like electronics will stop emitting heat and in case of ICs and microprocessors, difficulty to work with won't he an issue as you fab them.

Also school level science experiments will get more exciting