It could be unfair to name it a thinker’s stone, but there’s something beguiling in regards to the seek for a room-temperature superconductor. This materials would be capable of transmit electrical energy completely, with none resistance. It might choose up renewable power the place it’s ample and ship it effectively to faraway cities, going a good distance in direction of fixing the local weather disaster.

No surprise, then, that when not one, however two such supplies have been supposedly found final 12 months, the physics world went right into a frenzy. In March 2023, researchers reported a cloth often known as “pink matter” that might purportedly do the enterprise at 21°C (70°F), albeit solely at unimaginable pressures. A matter of weeks later, information broke of one other substance known as LK-99 that apparently labored at each room temperature and ambient stress. Alas, all that glitters isn’t gold – each claims have now been broadly dismissed.

However the fuss over these research obscures a extra delicate and attention-grabbing reality: broader analysis in pursuit of a sensible superconductor is racing forwards and there’s a sense that, lastly, the search is popping a nook. Up to now few years, there have been extra experimental breakthroughs than you may shake a stick at, whereas theorists are honing a wealth of strategies to foretell the composition of recent superconducting supplies from scratch. “People my age can keep in mind when it was completely…