"We'd get advances ranging from a vastly more efficient electricity grid..."
My understanding is in western countries grid loss is of the order of 25 percent to 30 percent. And not all of it is resistive; much of the loss is due to transmission lines acting like aerials, radiating away power.
So: *vastly* more efficient, no. Mildly more efficient: perhaps. Given time (decades to centuries) and a business case for replacement.
"... to viable quantum computers." The difficulties with quantum computers are not primarily to do with conductivity of the conductors therein.
Superconductivity is as uncritically overhyped as fusion power generation, by more-or-less the same people.
Thanks for the great summary of the superconductor hype. The pun at the end made me laugh out loud and then go run to show my husband!
Maybe we need to re-define the word "breakthrough"?
"We'd get advances ranging from a vastly more efficient electricity grid..."
My understanding is in western countries grid loss is of the order of 25 percent to 30 percent. And not all of it is resistive; much of the loss is due to transmission lines acting like aerials, radiating away power.
So: *vastly* more efficient, no. Mildly more efficient: perhaps. Given time (decades to centuries) and a business case for replacement.
"... to viable quantum computers." The difficulties with quantum computers are not primarily to do with conductivity of the conductors therein.
Superconductivity is as uncritically overhyped as fusion power generation, by more-or-less the same people.