Hacker News Reader

Someone with a chem/physics background, could you please explain why metallic hydrogen is only theorized to be a superconductor? Is such a property not predictable?

View on HN

The problem (not having a condensed matter background, so my answer might not be entirely right) is that we can't solve the Schrödinger equation exactly for many-atom systems.

So we need to approximate our solutions to be able to get a good idea of what properties a material will have. Our approximations are pretty good and we have a decent idea of when some things superconductor. But our theories of superconduction aren't yet perfect, and sometimes the approximations can fail//generate behavior unexpected by our theories.

In general, we can only predict ground state properties with accuracy. Properly predicting high temperature superconductivity requires generating information about the Fermi surface that is not just a matter of ground states. If this is standard BCS model stuff then you might be able to get away with some rules of thumb.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com