The South Korean Society of Superconductivity and Cryogenics (KSSC) announced on Thursday it will establish a committee to investigate a claim by the Quantum Energy Research Center, a private research institute in Seoul, that it has achieved room-temperature superconductivity.
Investors went wild after the announcement, which could revolutionize computer design and numerous other industries if the discovery is validated and becomes commercially viable.
“As the authenticity of reports released domestically and abroad in the past few days has stirred controversy, and unverified claims are continuing to pop up, the KSSC, as the representative academic society in this field, intends to respond by forming a verification committee,” the KSSC statement on Thursday said.
Seoul National University professor Kim Chang-young was named chair of the new committee, which will include scientists from Seoul National University, Korea University, Pohang University of Science and Technology, and Sungkyunkwan University.
The KSSC said it has asked Quantum Energy Research to provide samples of its superconductive material for testing. The committee’s statement included some skepticism about the claim, noting that the “movement of the specimen shown in the footage” released by the private research firm could arguably be “recreated with materials that are not superconductive.”
The footage in question was created by a Chinese research team at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, following the instructions in a research paper published by Quantum Energy Research on a non-peer-reviewed, open-access platform called Arxiv on July 22.
The paper claimed a “modified lead-apatite (LK-99) structure” demonstrated superconductive qualities at room temperature. The Chinese team followed the recipe for mixing lead, copper, phosphorus, and oxygen provided by the South Korean research institute, and demonstrated the results with the most quietly spectacular result of room-temperature superconductive material: levitation.
Superconductors are materials that can conduct electric current without any loss of power — they “super” conduct current because they offer no resistance to the current at all. Electricity flowing through other materials is trudging through a swamp in hip waders, while superconductors are a theme-park waterslide thrill ride for electrons.
Transmitting energy without losing any power is a very big deal, as previous experiments with superconductive material have demonstrated. The problem with those experiments is that very high, or low, levels of temperature and pressure were needed to create the proper environment. There will never be much of a market for high-performance computers that must be heated to 1000º Fahrenheit or frozen to sub-Arctic conditions to function.
Quantum Energy Research used its formula to magnetically levitate an LK-99 crystal at “room temperature” (which, in scientific terms, really means “temperatures that are not insanely hot or cold” — the South Korean paper calls for a temperature of about 260ºF and normal air pressure.) The Chinese team that replicated the experiment claimed it was able to float its crystal a little better by refining the LK-99 mixture.
The big dreamers of superconductivity imagine such materials might one day be capable of levitating vehicles or other enormous weights, or producing computers with dramatically more power than current models, because the superconducting circuit boards will not lose any energy while they process data. Flying cars might have to wait a while, but incredibly fast maglev trains that require very little power to operate would soon be feasible.
Superconductors are extremely useful for creating magnetic fields because they are perfect diamagnets — which, to put it simply, means the merest touch of a magnetic field causes superconductive materials to generate an equal and opposite magnetic charge. Generating a strong electromagnetic field usually requires huge amounts of energy, which is why our Back to the Future dreams of floating skateboards have been cruelly dashed. With room-temperature superconductors? Maybe. Rest assured that someone will try.
A useful benefit of room-temperature superconducting technology is that every machine or electronic device would theoretically require less power to operate, so they could become smaller and lighter. MRI machines in hospitals, for example, use superconducting electromagnets that require precise temperature and pressure to operate — which is one reason the machines are so large and expensive. Room-temperature superconductors could make MRI systems much smaller, cheaper, and easier to maintain.
Hopes for room-temperature superconductivity have been raised, and dashed, before. There is already controversy surrounding the Quantum Energy Research Center paper, which was criticized for containing insufficient data to back up its claims.
One of the three authors of the paper reportedly submitted it for publication without the approval of the others, prompting the paper to be revised and then withdrawn, pending a more carefully prepared six-author study that Quantum Energy Research intends to submit for peer review. As the KSSC pointed out, both the original levitation demonstration and the alleged Chinese replication could have been achieved without true superconductivity.
“It may be a while before we understand what has actually been going on behind the scenes, but honestly, I can’t blame anyone for some excitability and confusion. If I’d been in on the discovery of a room-temperature superconductor I would have surely have gone into Headless Poultry Mode myself,” Science writer Derek Lowe wryly observed on Tuesday.
Lowe pronounced himself “guardedly optimistic” that one of the Holy Grails of 21st Century technology might have been discovered.
“This is by far the most believable shot at room-temperature-and-pressure superconductivity the world has seen so far, and the coming days and weeks are going to be extremely damned interesting,” he predicted.
China’s state-run Global Times on Thursday held a hilarious psychotherapy session for itself, as the arrogant nationalist Chinese Communist Party tried to cope with the possibility that South Korean capitalists might have made the greatest breakthrough in applied physics of the new century:
Any major breakthrough in technology has global significance. Just like this time, no one would refuse to see a major scientific breakthrough achieved by South Korea based on which alliance or camp it belongs to. At this moment, everyone will realize that we are all human beings, and perhaps we have complex differences and contradictions, when facing the most significant problems, our interests are aligned and our destinies linked.
Imagine boldly, if room-temperature superconductor materials really achieve a breakthrough and are put into application on a large scale, then many things that are fought between countries and people today, especially geopolitical and ideological, will be unnecessary. Now the US and Western countries are a bit stuck in this; they need to look at themselves, the world and the situation of humans from a higher dimension and broader perspective, and jump out of geopolitical and ideological paranoia.
Translation: We hope to Mao that the South Koreans and their pals in the United States don’t keep this technology to themselves, because it’s a lot harder for us to steal intellectual property these days.