1. Review of the incident
Let's review the whole story.
At the annual meeting of physics in the United States on March 8, the news that shocked the scientific community was broken, and the team of Dias, an Indian-born scholar from the University of Rochester, announced that they had achieved room-temperature superconductivity under near-ambient pressure.
According to reports, the research group uses the superconductivity of ternary hydrides at room temperature of 20 degrees. If this is true, it will definitely cause an earthquake in the scientific community.
Second, why the breakthrough of superconducting materials caused such a big repercussion
1. It is very difficult to achieve room temperature superconductivity
Why is it so difficult to achieve room temperature superconductivity? Because we first discovered superconductivity dating back to 1911, until now, no scientist or team in the world has reported that they have made significant progress.
In fact, the most powerful in the field of room temperature superconductivity is not abroad, but we China, not only leading, but also far ahead. Therefore, even if there is a breakthrough, it should be our scientists. If any scientist or team can achieve room temperature superconductivity, it is a blockbuster honor comparable to the Nobel Prize.
2. The application of room temperature superconductivity has broad "prospects"
Many people do not understand why the news of room temperature superconductivity can attract so much attention, in fact, there is another reason that the application prospects of room temperature superconducting materials are very broad.
We all know that electricity is a very important energy source, whether it is production or life is inseparable from electricity, no electricity is really unrealistic, mobile phone no power, no signal, traffic lights suspended, bus suspended, can not cook rice cooker, not to mention work, life is difficult.
However, due to technical problems and the uneven geographical distribution of electricity, a large amount of electricity needs to be transported over long distances, from areas rich in electric energy to economically developed but areas with a shortage of electric energy, such as the mainland's west-to-east power transmission project, thousands of kilometers of transportation distance, because of technical problems, resulting in serious loss and waste of electric energy.
Let me give you two examples.
China's transmission technology is the most advanced in the world, even so, we have to waste a lot of electricity every year because of power transmission, because there is no room temperature superconducting material, a lot of electricity is wasted, about 100 billion degrees per year, which is equivalent to wasting a whole year's power generation of the Three Gorges.
Unlike the mainland, India does not have UHV transmission technology, and the average transmission and distribution loss rate is as high as 23%, which is one of the highest transmission and distribution losses in the world. This means that India sends 100 degrees of electricity, and only 77 degrees can be delivered to users.
And the application of room temperature superconductivity is not only the above aspects, his application is very wide, see the figure below.
Third, the team has a bad record, and the reversal lays the foreshadowing
Why is this team so bad? Because it's not the first time they've done this, in fact, Dias is a master of hype and opinion.
Let's first take a look at what his previous convictions are.
In 2017, their team announced that metal hydrogen had been produced at a high pressure of 495GPa, which was published in the top journal Science. But when someone asked him where is the finished metal hydrogen product to be prepared? He actually said: "It disappeared due to improper preservation". The rest is gone.
In 2020, he published a paper saying that at 270GPa, the room-temperature superconductivity of hydrides was achieved. Later, because the paper was too doubtful, it was unanimously protested by peers, and finally his paper was also withdrawn by the journal Nature.
So, given his several previous convictions, I suspected from the beginning that they were just for eyeballs. As a result, the news broke within a few days.
What do you think?