[jacquesm]

You'd expect the y to be a Y then.

What is interesting in this whole superconductivity business is that in many years of research there actually is real progress in return for all the money spent.

Also the molecules appear to be getting larger and larger as the transition temperature goes up, suggesting that if that trend continues the 'room temperature' superconducting molecule will be something that will take a long time to find because of the number of combinations increasing as the length of the molecule goes up.

The highest temperature superconductor has a whopping 247 atoms in its structure. By comparison, the one before that only had 19 atoms, the one before that 12. And that's for a 46 degree K difference.

[tocomment]

Except for some work with elements under pressure. I think I remember reading that if we could create hydrogen as a solid, it would be a superconductor.

[jacquesm]

From the same wikipedia article: "Theoretical work by Neil Ashcroft predicted that liquid metallic hydrogen at extremely high pressure should become superconducting at approximately room-temperature because of its extremely high speed of sound and expected strong coupling between the conduction electrons and the lattice vibrations.[33] This prediction is yet to be experimentally verified."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconductiv...