Green methanol is a combustible gas collected from decomposing plant waste and can reduce CO2 emissions and equivalents from a container ship by as much as 70%.
… if true, this is one of the big ones. Like the discovery of atomic fission, which led to power plants and bombs.
This one leads to a lot of sci fi shit. We could never transfer energy without losing a big chunk of it to waste heat, waste that builds up and ruins everything eventually. This has held back electronics, and really almost all electrical applications for a long time.
This would fix that. Room temp superconductor is your phone no longer getting hot, your computer no longer needing a fan system. It’s also easy maglev and small supercomputers.
The first superconductors were weird, and required EXTREME conditions to function (generally liquid helium). These allowed for the first MRI machines, and some other tech.
“Type 2” superconductors changed the game. They function at far higher temperatures. This means that liquid nitrogen is enough to keep them functional. These allowed for the large scale roll out of smaller, cheaper MRI machines. You no longer needed a small factory to keep them from self destructing.
The holy grail was room temperature superconductors. These wouldn’t need special conditions to function. Unfortunately, they didn’t account for pressure. It turns out that superconductors can be made roon temperature, if the pressure is EXTREME. While this is very interesting from a science perspective, it’s completely useless to technology improvement.
Hense the newer category, room temperature and pressure. It’s what the holy grail should have been, but no one accounted for the pedants.
If this material performs as claimed, it’s a big deal. A lot of sci-fi like tech suddenly becomes viable. Much of it centered around power generation, storage, and distribution.
Yeah, it’s a really big breakthrough! I noticed while reading the abstract that it uses lead in its molecular (cristaline?) structure. It’s a big thing in electronics to avoid lead because when soldering it releases harmful gas, I was just making a joke about this… Yet I hope to someday be able to purchase superconducting wire spools and simply substitute copper in our procedures!
As for unleaded, it will likely be take what we can get. I still find it insane that we’ve pulled a quantum level effect all the way up into the realm of liquid water! If lead is what’s needed, we just need to make sure it’s processed properly.
I personally suspect that wire spools won’t be a thing. The internal structure of a high temperature superconductor is critical. That’s not something conducive to hyper flexible wire. Flexible, maybe, but not to that extent. Also, quenching events will still be a risk. Not quite as explosive as a liquid-He quench, but it would be quite spectacular, nevertheless.
I’d still love to be proven wrong however!
One place it will be a big deal is computing. Superconducting chips and memory will be a big deal. A lot of our limitations are resistive in origin. No resistance means FAR less heat, and so faster chips. They are also already mostly equipped for the sort of production processes required.
The process they describe for making it is simple, takes a bit over 3 days, and the tools and ingredients are fairly common. I would hope someone tries to replicate this ASAP and we start to see whispers of the validity of this soon, like in the next week or two.
The only other Superconductor news that I can think of recently involved Ringa Dias, who has had to retract a couple of his papers. I can't find anything about this team having retracted papers regarding Superconductors.
I just had a read of the paper. It’s very unambiguous. Proven in multiple ways. Unless they actively faked the results, it’s definitely a room temperature superconductor. If they did fake it, it will come out VERY quickly.
The effect in the paper looks quite weak, but just it’s existence is critical for many problems. It’s also easy to improve from the first material, it’s finding a starting example that is hard.
I just read the (pre-published) paper. It looks like exactly what they are claiming. It’s a small effect, but it’s definitely superconductivity, proven in multiple ways. It’s also maintained (very weakly) all the way up to 398K, which is insane.
Your not going to be building a room temperature MRI machine with it, but it’s there. Critically, now we have an example of a functional RTP superconductor, scientists can iterate around it to improve. That’s how most type-II superconductors were discovered/developed.
Solidarity with unions is something that should be celebrated, not whined about.
The entire OCM argument is stupid. There’s no denying our society is fucked up beyond all reason. It doesn’t justify the system, it just acknowledges it instead of living in a fantasy. Why are you being sour when you see people stand up for themselves and each other?
I'm an IATSE member (Editor's Guild) and yeah, I think "high skilled workers asking for reasonable compensation parity from streaming platforms forced to use foodbanks for the audacity" definitely fits the spirit of that sub.
I'm not whining about the solidarity. I'm whining about the greedy Studio execs that made this necessary.
The OCM analogy is that a lot of "wholesome" content points to much deeper and darker systemic issues, but rather than diving into those, such articles only scratch the surface and present their stories in a Rosy light of "Thing turned out good this time!!! Yay!!!", rather than the -- IMO, more appropriate -- light of tearing their hair out and asking "why the fuck is this sort of generosity even needed on an individual level??? Why is society producing this situation in the first place???"
For instance, this article's title could be rewritten as "Writers for multi-billion-dollar streaming platforms, striking over lack of traditional media residuals, forced to resort to good banks during era of record profits" to avoid OCM-syndrome.
My wife and I are both self employed for many years. We work hard but it’s really just enough to live where we love. Some savings, no retirement, but we are so so wealthy in friendship. We have a wide, varied friend group that’s very close. Our group spans the political spectrum, the class spectrum, and I credit it to our ability to meet each other individually without judgement and with vulnerability. We’re very blessed, very wealthy even though our family struggles financially sometimes.
I went to the food bank this year. We couldn’t figure out how we were paying for food that month along with our bills. It was so hard to initiate because I felt like others deserved it more, that others were in harder situations and that we’d somehow figure it out. But we didn’t know how we were going to eat. I was in tears when they brought out our boxes. I asked if this was all for us. It broke my heart while also rebuilding it. We’ve donated our time, our food, our money to help support this charity for years. To see what we were given just to us, it was so generous. It made the biggest difference. Three boxes full of fresh produce, frozen meats, canned goods, bread.
I came home and started bringing in boxes. My wife saw the first box and asked if everything was okay. She saw the next box and started crying. I brought in the next box and we hugged and cried and cried and cried. It was hard for me to initiate, but what brought us to tears was the sense of relief, the feeling that our community was looking out for us, the feeling that we were going to be alright. The folks at the food bank treated me with dignity through and through.
The following week, we had dinner with some friends at their house. We sat at the table in this stunning house eating dinner and soon realized that a town council member sat to my left, the head of the charity that runs the food bank was to my wife’s right, her husband is a state senator who sat across from us. And we all broke bread together. When the food bank came up in conversation, we wanted to tell them, but we were scared. Talking with my wife afterwards, we were most scared about outing each other and making the other feel uncomfortable. We wanted to tell them our experience and what it meant to us. That’s how close to home that charity hits in our community. Our story highlights that you never know what someone is going through and that everyone deserves compassion and dignity.
Please support your local food banks and community support programs. I volunteer at them, donate to them, refer them, and use their services. Reach out when you need help, please, and support where you can. Dignity, no shame, we’re all people, humans, making our way in life on our own individual paths, and we need each other. For community, by community. Together.
thanks for helping me find this comment! i’m new here and haven’t even figured out how to post yet. later developments made me wonder if the debunking was too early and ultimately wrong, so i was going to delete the comment but couldn’t find it. 🙏
it was in a science blog the very day after i saw the original claim that it was now a thing, but the sciences i follow are biological and adjacent (genetics, neurology, biochemistry, medical stuff, etc).
Even ignoring the humanity aspect of it: the simple notion of focusing on rehabilitation rather than profit. That should be the goal of all incarceration.
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