moreeee news
https://www.fastcompany.com/90932066/team-claims-to-successfully-replicate-lk-99-superconductor
That's another B.S. article of a science journalists who have half baked knowledge at most.
First off, it must clearly be emphasized, that this levitation effect is no real evidence for SC at all, it could be as well a simple diamagnetic behavior.
Therefore all following statements, that this could be a sign of proof, is misleading.
Second, even the older High T
c type II superconductors did not give a technological breakthrough, as their magnetic properties were too weak to provide SC wires with good properties at liquid nitrogen temperature. To make wires out of Perovskit Ceramics is also extremely difficult, compared to the traditional metallic superconductors. I've heard of some projects using such wires for energy transfer, but I doubt that it is really an industrial application. (*)
It's also not possible to produce mono crystalline and stable layers / structures for Josephson Junction or other Quantum devices.
There was an approach for a JJA from the Jülich Research Center (linked to Aachen and Cologne Universities), the laboratory sample also worked quite ok, demonstrating the existence of Shapiro-steps, but that paper is maybe over 20 years old, and I did not hear anything that you could commercially buy such a device. Would have been great for all of us volt-nuts.
With increasing jump temperature, the magnetic "hardness" (pinning of magnetic field lines) gets worse and worse. So a room temperature superconductor would have even worse characteristics, I guess.
Third, the Nobel Price was also not granted for already existing RT SCs at high pressure, so it's very unlikely that there would be even a nomination.
It might be of academic interest only, but it would not yield new physics and no new revolutionary application as such articles imply.
Think how the discoveries of the Blue LED, the Li system for batteries, the GMR (Giant Magnetic Resistance, Peter Grünberg et al, as well from Jülich) for high capacity HDs, the LASER really changed our lives. That is not to be expected at all from a new class of superconductors.
There's too much hype and wishful thinking inside this story.
Frank
(*) The City of Munich is planning a 12km long High Voltage line to transfer energy from a power plant to a south access point.
German company THEVA advertises to have working SC cables with Gd, but the latter project is still in evaluation phase , since 3 years.