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Breakthrough in Superconductivity Research

posted by mattie_p on Monday February 17 2014, @11:37PM   
from the how-super-is-it dept.

romanr writes:

"Copper oxides, also known as cuprates, are the most promising materials for superconductivity. Today, cuprates can be superconductive at temperatures as high as -150 °C. But for many years scientists wondered why they lose superconductivity when concentration of electrons drops below certain level. Most scientist thought that the cuprates gradually became insulators.

Scientists from Université de Sherbrooke discovered that the loss of superconductivity is because of a sudden appearance of a distinct electronic phase in the material that enters into competition with the superconductivity and weakens it. It means, that higher temperature superconductors will be possible if we can get rid of the competing phase. This new approach opens a way to get an ambient temperature superconductivity."

• Re:Non battery power storage for solar, wind etcRe:Non battery power storage for solar, wind etc (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @12:06AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @12:06AM (#1184)

  To be fair, I think it was only Williams who used a flywheel and they ended up giving up on it and swapping to a battery-based system, but the point remains that a Formula One team, who employ some of the best engineers in the world, let alone in motorsports, spent a year or more experimenting with a flywheel-based energy recovery system, including development along with testing and the races they used it in -- which says quite a bit.

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• Re:Non battery power storage for solar, wind etcRe:Non battery power storage for solar, wind etc (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:49AM

  by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:49AM (#1484) Journal

  A lot of powerplants use huge flywheels to store excess capacity. Nuclear power plants have a fairly constant generating capacity and use one to absorb the excess when demand suddenly drops. I was slightly alarmed by one that had the wheel spinning vertically, in such a way that if the axel broke it would roll straight towards the reactor core, and given the amount of energy it contained would do a lot of damage on the way...

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  sudo mod me up

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  • Re:Non battery power storage for solar, wind etc(Score: 1) by ls671 on Wednesday February 19 2014, @11:58PM

    by ls671 (891) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @11:58PM (#2988) Homepage

    Yep, catastrophic failure can be well, pretty catastrophic, especially with those type of flywheels.

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    Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.

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