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by M_Grey 3570 days ago
The day a room temp superconductor is developed (and is scalable to mass production) you'll see that change in a crazy hurry. Assuming we're alive then, which is probably not a safe assumption. There are a few things like that which could change the game almost overnight, but a room temp superconductor would be one of, if not the biggest.
2 comments

Following my hypothesis would suggest that in the end we will "just" gradually lower the room temperature to -70°C.
I wasn't expecting to laugh out loud here, thanks!
Room temp superconductors will probably also take a while to come down in price enough to make sense and will see some limited deployment for costly applications before that. It's unlikely that we'll go from "no superconductors except in MRTs" to "superconductors as an essential part of the power grid" in a time frame that is measured in years instead of decades.