Superconductivity is awaiting a planet-changing breakthrough

Groundbreaking discoveries often start with whispers before they become roars. A few weeks back, those whispers revolved around a dark pebble-sized rock known as LK-99. This seemingly innocuous chunk, composed of lead, phosphorus, copper and oxygen, set the digital world ablaze, causing ripples in stock markets and sending scientists and investors into a frenzy. The frenzy was short-lived, but it still offered a tantalizing glimpse of what could be possible.

LK-99 was proclaimed to be one of the most sought-after breakthroughs in physics—a superconductor. The phenomenon of superconductivity was first theorized in 1911, but an efficient one had still not been created. Anyone who creates one is guaranteed a Nobel prize. The inventors of LK-99, Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim of Korea University, had perhaps hoped for that award when they revealed the existence of their creation—named after the first alphabets of their names and the year 1999, when they claimed they first synthesized it. A superconductor is an almost magical object, with no resistance to electric current at room temperature and normal atmospheric pressure. This can help the world do stupendous things: from nuclear fusion and making ultra cheap MRI machines and quantum computers to potentially halting global warming. Superconductors do exist, but work only in super-cold settings. For instance, an MRI machine cannot work without superconductors, and 500 gallons of helium is needed to cool one to a cryogenic -263° Celsius.

Room temperature superconductivity would be a miracle. Besides affordable MRI machines, it could help create a quantum computer sitting on your desk with computation power thousands of times greater than a regular PC. There are even bigger miracles possible with superconductivity: lossless transmission of energy could mean billions of kilowatt hours of electricity saved, and clean energy created at a location could be transported thousands of miles with minimal energy loss. More impressively, it would also enable nuclear fusion. Experimental reactors require superconductivity, which is done at cryogenic temperatures using liquid helium and other materials. A superconducting material could resolve this and create a reactor that may theoretically produce unlimited clean energy. There’s more. The biggest problem in creating more efficient and cheaper semiconductor chips is the heat generated in the process. Chips using superconductors would not have that problem and could reportedly be 300 times more energy efficient and 10 times faster than the existing silicon-based ones. This could make everything cheaper, faster and energy efficient, as today chips power everything. Even your smartphone would be thinner and never heat up. It would make maglev trains much cheaper and more efficient.

How do these marvels happen? Anjana Ahuja explains it in a Financial Times article (bit.ly/3QF0Vqw). An electrical current, essentially a flow of electrons “is a messy affair—a bit like a dance floor of rowdy partygoers attempting a conga,” she writes. “But below a critical temperature, many materials become superconducting: the electrons abruptly pair up and begin to move smoothly. It is as if the partygoers disappear amid clouds of dry ice—and instantly reappear as pairs of ballroom dancers gliding effortlessly in unison.” This reduces resistance and enables lossless translation. The key is to make this happen at or near room temperature. There are usually two ways you know you have conjured a super conductor: the measured resistance plummets to zero, and it has a mystifying ability to start floating above a magnet (called the Meissner effect). Lee and Kim thought they had made this happen and the video clip of it gripped the world. Scientists rushed to prove its veracity or otherwise. Physicist Alex Kaplan’s explanatory tweet on it (bit.ly/3ODqW73) got 30 million views. There were ‘instructions’ on how to bake one of your own, and an aficionado livestreamed his effort to create one on Twitch with 16,000 people watching.

But a few days later, the frenzy was over. Researchers found big holes in the evidence, though some thought it was theoretically plausible. A team in China tried replicating it and reported limited success; a team in India reported failure. Kaplan declared to his disappointed Twitter followers that he was “pretty convinced it was over.” LK-99 became the latest of what scientists nicknamed ‘USOs’—unidentified superconducting objects. But the hope lives on that science will deliver a breakthrough.