It might 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 to transmit electrical energy completely, with none resistance. It might decide up renewable vitality the place it’s plentiful and ship it effectively to faraway cities, going a great distance in the direction of fixing the local weather disaster.

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

However the fuss over these research obscures a extra refined and fascinating fact: broader analysis in pursuit of a sensible superconductor is racing forwards and there’s a sense that, lastly, the search is popping a nook. Previously 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 latest superconducting supplies from scratch. “Of us my age can bear in mind when it was completely…