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Comment by eterevsky | Hacker News Reader

> the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years

I would say that electronic computers would take take the first spot for me, but I don't deny that room-temperature superconductors would be pretty close to the top.

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This (or something derived from it) would be used for power delivery literally everywhere in the world. It might well be bigger in scale and volume than all the computers.

Superconducting power transmission cables solves the power storage problem of renewable energy sources.

We'd just make a global energy grid, and the sunny side powers the dark side.

That won't save us. Not unless you know how to build it in the next 5 years.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36836722

^Soyjacks pointing^

Joking aside, besides power transmission, what other obvious things can this tech be used for?

I'm just going to link the comment I wrote above :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36867709

Needless to say, this would be game-changing. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence etc, let's be cautiously optimistic here.

Thank bro! are we talking like no heat loss in the traces on the motherboard type a deal or also on a wafer level internal to the CPU?

Probably both? At least the first. For integrated circuits, I think lead is a hard pass (for now), and the deposition process needs to be worked out.

Ideally, this could be useful for the hottest paths: clock tree, high-speed buses, as well as the power supplies.

There are a few hurdles though: high-speed voltage changes create changing currents, which creates variable magnetic fields, which IIRC may be a problem depending on the superconductor's characteristics. Processors also work at low voltages, which means that they need huge currents. Both magnetic fields and large current (as well as high temperatures) can break down superconductivity. So it's challenging, but probably doable.

There are also superconducting structures that could replace transistors, see applications of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephson_effect

Appreciate the follow up. This could be really cool!

Even if you were right, it behooves us to act as if our actions mattered. Otherwise, what’s the point.

I don’t think you’re right, for the record.

You're right. But, we should also do things that matter. This wouldn't. Right now, our horizon is literally 5 years. Anything that doesn't help in the next 5 years needs to get in line, because we've got 50 years of inaction to make up for.

OTOH, I am also not sure what we as a species can do in the next 5 years that actually will matter.

It solves them for some cost of power cables < $X, where X is the cost of the power lost in traditional cables.

I think it's comparing incomparable technologies. Like the wheel and the alphabet; both changed human history in profound ways, without competing with one another.

Dunno. A fancy tape or such made out of lead compounds would be a hard sell in comparison to ordinary copper for household wiring.

But yes, for serious uses, this will be a big deal if it works out and can be made into a flexible cable. And I’m sure people will work on a less-toxic version.

Losses to resistance inside your home don’t matter much. In your computer they do, but it’s not clear this helps with that.

This would enable really long distance electrical transmission, which solves the whole intermittency issue with solar energy.

Long distance electrical transmission will still require huge capital investments and lots of maintenance even if transmission losses are eliminated. And as a practical matter, strategic political concerns will take precedence. In the current political climate it's hard to imagine connecting our grid to potentially hostile nation states which might cut off power supplies to apply pressure during a crisis.

If we can't handle / get motivation for long-line HVDC transmission I guarantee you we aren't going to be able to put together the will to make an entire transmission system out of a novel material with unknown mechanical constraints. Long distance transmission is not a solved problem, but it's close. We have the technological capability now to make much, much better transmission systems. We just don't want to.

I think we'd get over the whole RoHS thing, if room-temperature superconductivity is part of the deal.

While that would be nice, it's not exactly revolutionary. We can already build cables to transmit power over vast distances and can certainly imagine a world where we do the same, but with higher efficiency. The computer transformed how we live our lives and reshaped our culture, to the point where what we are doing right now - casually chatting with anonymous people spread around the globe about a scientific paper that we can all read at our leisure immediately upon publication - was inconceivable within living memory.

I think it would still change the world less than computers have changed it. Without computers we wouldn't have this conversation. So much in the modern world is basically impossible without computers.

Superconductivity will for sure enable some innovations and could change how we are building power grids, but I don't see it changing the world to the same extent.

I’d say electronic computers were the biggest invention of the last 100 years. But it wasn’t one discovery, that built upon many, many discoveries and breakthroughs.

As a singular discovery goes, it’s hard to think of something that tops this. Of course, even if this is true, bringing it to market in a practical way will probably look a lot more like the invention of electronic computers.

The transistor could probably qualify

Yeah, probably.

Hmm, maybe the atomic bomb? The wright brothers's first flight took place about 120 years ago, so it doesn't qualify. However, in both cases, people knew it was a matter of time before someone figured the proper recipe. Room temperature/pressure semiconductors? That was still science fiction yesterday.

In short, you are probably right, with the sibling commenting on (BJT) transistors.

Computers were invented long before they became invented.

So that wouldn't be in the last 100 years.

However unlike computers, if this idea works, it will get productized quickly.

I wrote electronic computers: a bunch of technologies like transistor and integrated circuits.

I'd say that not keeping electronic computers in mind is a testament to how big of a discovery they were, in the sense that we need to think hard about transformative discoveries to realize that not so long ago humanity didn't had electronic computers,and yet they are everywhere.

Discovery vs invention

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