Room Temperature Superconductor Discovered? If these results can be replicated, it will be a game changer
First discovered in 1911, superconductivity gives materials two key properties -- Electrical resistance vanishes and any semblance of a magnetic field is expelled, due to a phenomenon called the Meissner effect. The magnetic field lines have to pass around the superconducting material, making it possible to levitate such materials, something that could be used for frictionless high-speed trains, for example. Powerful superconducting electromagnets are already critical components of maglev trains, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) machines, particle accelerators, and quantum supercomputers. But the superconducting materials used in the devices work only at extremely low temperatures. This restriction makes them costly to maintain and too costly to extend to other potential applications. In an historic achievement, University of Rochester researchers have announced the creation of a superconducting material at a temperature and pressure low enough for practical applications. If these results can be replicated, it will be a game changer.
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- Power grids that transmit electricity without the loss of up to 200 million megawatt hours (MWh) of the energy that now occurs due to resistance in the wires
This won't happen. When transmitting power from power plants, the wires you see strung between the big towers get really hot. Especially in the summer. Back in 2003, one wire in Cleveland got so hot, and sagged so much, it touched a tree and grounded 25,000 volts. Knocked out power to Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Michigan, and Ontario. Until they can get a superconductor that works at 250 deg. F, it's all a big pipe dream.
https://www.science.org/content/article/something-seriously-wrong-room-temperature-superconductivity-study-retracted
"Faith in the result is now evaporating. On Monday Nature retracted the study, citing data issues other scientists have raised over the past 2 years that have undermined confidence in one of two key signs of superconductivity Dias’s team had claimed. “There have been a lot of questions about this result for a while,” says James Hamlin, an experimental condensed matter physicist at the University of Florida. But Jorge Hirsch, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and longtime critic of the study, says the retraction does not go far enough. He believes it glosses over what he says is evidence of scientific misconduct. “I think this is a real problem,” he says. “You cannot leave it as, ‘Oh, it’s a difference of opinion.’” "