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Will Better Superconductors Transform the World?

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Manage episode 417324458 series 3328067
Content provided by Quanta Magazine, Steven Strogatz, and Janna Levin. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Quanta Magazine, Steven Strogatz, and Janna Levin or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

If superconductors — materials that conduct electricity without any resistance — worked at temperatures and pressures close to what we would consider normal, they would be world-changing. They could dramatically amplify power grids, levitate high-speed trains and enable more affordable medical technologies. For more than a century, physicists have tinkered with different compounds and environmental conditions in pursuit of this elusive property, but while success has sometimes been claimed, the reports were always debunked or withdrawn. What makes this challenge so tricky?

In this episode, Siddharth Shanker Saxena, a condensed-matter physicist at the University of Cambridge, gives co-host Janna Levin the details about why high-temperature superconductors remain so stubbornly out of reach..

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn or your favorite podcasting app, or you can stream it from Quanta.

  continue reading

63 episodes

Artwork
iconShare
 
Manage episode 417324458 series 3328067
Content provided by Quanta Magazine, Steven Strogatz, and Janna Levin. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Quanta Magazine, Steven Strogatz, and Janna Levin or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

If superconductors — materials that conduct electricity without any resistance — worked at temperatures and pressures close to what we would consider normal, they would be world-changing. They could dramatically amplify power grids, levitate high-speed trains and enable more affordable medical technologies. For more than a century, physicists have tinkered with different compounds and environmental conditions in pursuit of this elusive property, but while success has sometimes been claimed, the reports were always debunked or withdrawn. What makes this challenge so tricky?

In this episode, Siddharth Shanker Saxena, a condensed-matter physicist at the University of Cambridge, gives co-host Janna Levin the details about why high-temperature superconductors remain so stubbornly out of reach..

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn or your favorite podcasting app, or you can stream it from Quanta.

  continue reading

63 episodes

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