Morning,

Not in the news today, 6 Korean researchers (or 3 if you’re Noble committee) have seemingly discovered and tested the world’s first room temperature, ambient pressure superconductor.

It’s a lead ceramic called LK-99

Now that we have one, machine learning crystallography is probably going to quickly brute force discover a number of others.

This is the sort of thing that pops up in certain newspapers all the time from clueless science reporters and is absolutely bogus, but I happen to know 3 or 4 material science guys who all independently say this is a legitimate breakthrough and is easy to replicate with a pestle and mortar and a desktop furnace.

What does zero resistance electronics mean?

It means a new generation of chips (and fabs), cold data centres, new battery technology, it takes cryogenics out of fusion, far more efficient electronics (less energy demand), stable quantum computers, maglev, list goes on and on.

It’s one of those breakthroughs that once accepted would disrupt geopolitics, as it upends industrial strategy and obsoletes trillions of dollars of infrastructure still being amortised.

There are three big physics black swans left, Shor’s algorithm, ambient SC, fusion plasma ignition.

We might see all three in relatively quick succession given ambient SC is a lock on the other two.