[cogman10]

> improved battery longevity

No

> probably in an order of magnitude

Absolutely not.

> Low friction transport improvements

This material is superconductive at 110K (-163C). Not exactly usable for transport applications.

> faster and higher bandwidth wired connections.

Absolutely not, resistance has no impact on bandwidth.

I've seen variations of this comment on hacker news. Superconductors are not magic dust to make things better. They are conductors with 0 resistance. There are certainly applications for that (see the wiki you linked) but like all things based in reality those are all a lot more muted and probably not possible with the current materials.

You are getting excited about the possibility of wires. There are certainly cool things you can do with a nice wire, but it's still a wire. You can't store power much with it, It's too big to make logic circuits with, and applications (like levitating a train) require too many amps for our poor wire to remain a special wire. (Most super conductive materials lose conductivity when amps are too high).

[snitty]

>and applications (like levitating a train) require too many amps for our poor wire to remain a special wire. (Most super conductive materials lose conductivity when amps are too high).

I was wondering if there was a current limit on superconductors.

1) Is there any understanding as to why superconductivity breaks down at higher amperage? 2) If so, is there any explanation as to why that doesn't require a PhD in physics?

[cogman10]

> Is there any understanding as to why superconductivity breaks down at higher amperage?

This is a good read [1]

> As long as the induced magnetic field at the edges is less than the critical field, the material remains superconducting, but at higher currents, the field becomes too strong and the superconducting state is lost. This limit on current density has important practical implications in applications of superconducting materials – despite zero resistance they cannot carry unlimited quantities of electric power.

Tl;Dr (and probably wrong) as current flows through any conductor it creates a magnetic field. In superconductors when that magnetic field gets too strong it impedes current from being able to flow. A little like a traffic wave [2]. Everything works fine so long as there's enough space between cars to allow for them to speed up and slow down, but as the density of the cars increases if someone slows down that has a reverberating effect down the chain.

The magnetic field on a superconductor in turn induces a current on the conductor in the opposite direction.

Here's a video discussing some of the implications of this effect in a way that seems counter intuitive :) [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_field

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_wave

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI_X2cMHNe0

[P_I_Staker]

as always the smart comment, ignore ant, them all