Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology teamed up with colleagues from the U.S. and Switzerland and returned the state of a quantum computer a fraction of a second into the past. They also calculated ...
Quantum Physics
Mar 13, 2019
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A team of physicists affiliated with several institutions in South Korea is claiming to have created the elusive room-temperature/ambient-pressure superconducting material. Their work has not yet been peer reviewed. They ...
A team of physicists has uncovered a new state of matter—a breakthrough that offers promise for increasing storage capabilities in electronic devices and enhancing quantum computing.
General Physics
Aug 15, 2019
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4088
(PhysOrg.com) -- A renowned expert on helium says we are wasting our supplies of the inert gas helium and will run out within 25 to 30 years, which will have disastrous consequences for hospitals and industry.
The first researchers to use the new high-field superconducting magnet at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron facility, are searching for “hidden magnetic states”. If found, they will provide ...
General Physics
May 17, 2012
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0
Physicists at the University of Zurich have developed an amazingly simple device that allows heat to flow temporarily from a cold to a warm object without an external power supply. Intriguingly, the process initially appears ...
General Physics
Apr 19, 2019
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A ground-breaking fusion reactor built by Chinese scientists is underscoring Beijing's determination to be at the core of clean energy technology, as it eyes a fully-functioning plant by 2050.
Energy & Green Tech
Apr 28, 2019
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(PhysOrg.com) -- In this 100th anniversary year of the discovery of superconductivity, physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology have published a fully self-consistent ...
Superconductivity
Oct 24, 2011
7
0
When the transistor was invented in 1947 at Bell Labs, few could have foreseen the future impact of the device. This fundamental development in science and engineering was critical to the invention of handheld radios, led ...
Superconductivity
Aug 10, 2015
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The practicality of quantum computing hangs on the integrity of the quantum bit, or qubit.
Quantum Physics
Aug 26, 2020
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Superconductivity is a phenomenon occurring in certain materials generally at very low temperatures, characterized by exactly zero electrical resistance and the exclusion of the interior magnetic field (the Meissner effect). It was discovered by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911. Like ferromagnetism and atomic spectral lines, superconductivity is a quantum mechanical phenomenon. It cannot be understood simply as the idealization of "perfect conductivity" in classical physics.
The electrical resistivity of a metallic conductor decreases gradually as the temperature is lowered. However, in ordinary conductors such as copper and silver, impurities and other defects impose a lower limit. Even near absolute zero a real sample of copper shows a non-zero resistance. The resistance of a superconductor, despite these imperfections, drops abruptly to zero when the material is cooled below its "critical temperature". An electric current flowing in a loop of superconducting wire can persist indefinitely with no power source.
Superconductivity occurs in a wide variety of materials, including simple elements like tin and aluminium, various metallic alloys and some heavily-doped semiconductors. Superconductivity does not occur in noble metals like gold and silver, nor in pure samples of ferromagnetic metals.
In 1986 the discovery of a family of cuprate-perovskite ceramic materials known as high-temperature superconductors, with critical temperatures in excess of 90 kelvin, spurred renewed interest and research in superconductivity for several reasons. As a topic of pure research, these materials represented a new phenomenon not explained by the current theory. In addition, because the superconducting state persists up to more manageable temperatures, past the economically-important boiling point of liquid nitrogen (77 kelvin), more commercial applications are feasible, especially if materials with even higher critical temperatures could be discovered.
See also the history of superconductivity.
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